Posts Tagged ‘Professional Sports’

Note: The Tennesseeum is in its infancy, but I hope to eventually develop it into a virtual museum (hence “Tennessee-um”) of rosters, images, articles, and records pertaining to the Vols.  For now, however, it is little more than a landing page for current rosters and a few other items of interest.

If you have any content that you think belongs in a virtual museum dedicated to the Vols, feel free to contact me.

2009 Football Collection:

• 2009 Tennessee Football:

  • 2009 Coaching Staff
  • 2009 Alphabetical Roster

• 2009 SEC Previews:

  • SEC East:

    • Florida
    • Georgia
    • Kentucky
    • South Carolina
    • Tennessee
    • Vanderbilt

  • SEC West:

    • Alabama
    • Auburn
    • Arkansas
    • LSU
    • Ole Miss
    • Mississippi State

Other Collections:

The Cumberland Wing:

Dedicated to the sights, sounds and history of that little collection of buildings along Cumberland Avenue known simply as “The Strip”

• “Sam & Andy’s Forever”: Remembering the legendary hangout that was Sam & Andy’s

The Tennessee Home for the Visually Offensive:

A virtual museum of some of the finest Farks (a/k/a “photoshopped”) images from the world of sports that the web has to offer including the following sub-collections:

• Lawvol’s Masterpieces
• The SEC Collection:
  • Tennessee
  • Alabama
  • Arkansas
  • Auburn
  • Florida
  • Georgia
  • Kentucky
  • LSU
  • Ole Miss
  • Mississippi State
  • South Carolina
  • Vanderbilt
• The College Sports Collection:
  • Memphis
  • The Big Ten
  • The ACC
  • The PAC-10
  • The Big XII
  • The Big East & Notre Dame
• The Professional Sports Collection:
  • NFL Farks
  • MLB Farks
• The Broad Horizons (Miscellaneous) Collection

This virtual museum is under construction.

New Collections Debuting Soon!!

This post is part of a continuing series — “The Cost of Sports” — examining the impact of current economic changes on the world of major sports.    To see the other posts in this series, click here.

As I discussed in Part 1 of this series on the cost of sports, at Tennessee, the price can be high when it comes to paying your way into Neyland Stadium — a truth of which Nashville’s Thomas Luck is all too aware.  I discussed the issue purely in terms of the experience at Tennessee mainly because it is what I am familiar with.  Tennessee was but a lens — the reality is largely the same at all schools with a major athletics presence.

The world of professional sports, however, makes the college ranks look like small potatoes in the way it is wed to the almighty dollar.  Given the current uncertain economic times, however, I question whether professional sports in particular can continue in the way it has for so long.

I suppose that sports fans should not be surprised at the notion that professional teams would necessarily focus on money, after all that is what professional athletics are all about: getting paid to play.  I suppose Rod Tidwell (from the movie “Jerry Maguire”) summed it up best with the oft quoted line “Show me the money!“  What I think is a bit surprising is how willingly and uncomplainingly professional sports fans have accepted the “money first” approach of all the teams in all the major leagues.  The increases in costs passed along to professional sports fans over the last generation is really quite staggering.

Video: Show me the Money!!

But don’t take my word for it…

Read the rest of this entry »

A little mindless YouTube action this morning courtesy of NESW Sports, and the Ethanator.

I grew up watching Larry Bird as a kid. I always remember how amazing it was that this geeky looking white guy, who seemed to have a perpetual wedgy while on the floor, could seemingly run circles around the competition and light up the basket like no other. The other thing about Bird was that he never seemed to get frazzled, always played with composure, and never seemed to get into any shoving matches with other players.

All except for this one day …

Nothing like a nice brawl to get the crowd into the game…

Meanwhile, Michael Jordan decides to throwdown on the backboard with authority:

Guess MJ was ticked about the silly uniform…

Finally, this is a good example of why you should never fall asleep in public — especially at a stadium …

By the way, if you’re looking for some good sports videos, make sure to check out NESW Sports, and tell ’em Lawvol sent you…

– Go Figure …

Videos Courtesy of: NESW Sports

Once again the sports world is abuzz about the start of spring training, and yet another Major League Baseball season. Baseball has a long list of issues on its plate as the season gets rolling along. All of the off-season chatter has centered on the problems arising from the Mitchell Report, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Bud Selig, Brian McNamee, Bob Uecker, Pedro Cerrano, Ebby “Nuke” LaLoosh, Rick Vaughn, and Crash Davis. Those last five names actually have nothing to do with the controversy swirling in baseball, but I threw them in just for the hell of it — after all, the more the merrier.

Anyway, I am sure that the powers that be in baseball simply cannot wait to get the 2008 season going so they can put all of this ugliness behind them — “move on” as it were. There are only 2 problems with this line of thinking:

1. The start of the 2008 season is not going to put the steroid issues that have been plastered all over the media for the last 6 months “behind” baseball, not even a little, and
2. Even if it did cause millions of otherwise reasonably informed Americans to suddenly forget about a story that has been covered with more nauseating detail and intensity than the war in Iraq, that forgetfulness would only be the result of the fact that increasingly fewer people in this country give two shits about Major League Baseball anymore anyway.

I think baseball has a very tough road ahead of it…

Read the rest of this entry »

It was just announced that Green Bay Packers’ Quarterback Brett Favre is retiring, and will not return for another season.

This comes only hours after Randy Moss re-signed with the New England Patriots. It was well documented that Favre had asked the Packers’ front-office for more receivers and playmakers, and had specifically asked that Moss be brought to Green Bay.

Thus, I guess Brett will simply go back to wearing his Wranglers, and rolling around in the dirt…

– Go Figure …

Image Courtesy of: FanNation