The Knicks and Balkman
so last night with the 20th overall pick in the NBA draft the new york knicks decided it would be a great idea to draft renaldo balkman. who is this you might ask? well he played for the south carolina gamecocks, back to back winners of the not invited tournament. he never averaged double digit points in a season and was generally not a good player. the only reason isiah thomas could have thought he was good is that he got to see him at the garden over the last two seasons. now many people have critisized adam morrison for crying at the end of gonzagas tourny run... however balkman was seen crying at the end of a game against clemson... in december! he was unable to take the verbal abuse the fans gave him and at the end of the game broke down crying in his hands and on the shoulder of a coach. someone this emotionally frail will never make it in the big apple, especially with the knicks fans who so desperately want a winning product at the moment.
Clemson's NCAA Football Ranking
gamespot has been kind enough to give all of the faithful who await the release NCAA Football 2007 a preview of the rankings of the top 25 in the game. so far they have released 20-25 with clemson coming in at #23. while many here believe that this is too low of a ranking it is just 2 spots lower than where we finished the season. also released were the impact players for the game, gaines adams, anthony waters, and chansi stuckey. this will come as no surprise to anyone who has watched clemson over the last couple of years.
the one place it will be interesting to see how they rate our incoming freshman, redshirts, and transfers. jacoby ford has amazing speed but may be penalized due to no one really knowing about him; rendrick taylor is such a freak that we have created a new position for him; and no one can forget about cj spiller, the number 3 running back in the country. i think they may have underestimated clemson this year as going away to bc, fsu, and vt are the only games that we should lose all year. bc is beatable, fsu has not been up to par the last couple of years, and who knows what vt will do in the post marcus vick era.
however the most disturbing thing released in the game will be the fact that they rate death valley as only the 23rd hardest place to play. anyone who has gone to a big game can attest to the difficulty of playing in death valley. anyone at the miami game last year knows how difficult it can be when the decible level in the stadium was over 126, louder than a 747 taking off. however, with the xbox 360 graphics the stadium looks amazing... especially the new west end zone.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6153236/index.html
World Cup Refs
FIFA announced today that certain refs would be sent home for the rest of the World Cup. these include graham poll, who issued three yellow cards to one player, and valenin ivanov, who handed out more cards in the portugal/netherlands match than most people do at christmas...
many people, including myself, have been critical of the style of officiating at this years WC. while FIFA claims that they want the game to be called more strict and have urged refs to use cards for certain fouls all they have done is slow the game down. they have turned it into the NBA with every time you breathe on someone there is a foul and this severely disrupts the flow of the game. the one thing that it has done is increase the amount of diving, especially in the box. when players know a game will be called tight every bump turns into a flow and every high arm turns into an elbow to the face. hopefully FIFA will go back and look at the footage from these games and make changes on the way they ask the refs to officiate...
so now the round of eight is upon us and all we can hope for is some better officiating and that the best players can stay on the field and can be the ones to determine the outcome of the games.
