The Whole Delivery

The Thread's Top Topic  Despite me having good colleagues at Sports Illustrated, I have to say their choice of Peyton Manning as "Sportsman of the Year" is a poor one. Moreover, they are suffering the same problem that their "brother-in-law" magazine Time used to have when that periodical named its year-end award "Man of the Year" in the past before thankfully changing it. They have to change the name to "Sportsperson of the Year" to make sure gender bias is out. Especially when the last solo female (Mary Decker) to win the award was 30 years ago in 1983. (The last non-man to win it was the US Women's Soccer team in 1999, while Pat Summit won it with Mike Krzyzewski two years ago.) In a year in which Serena Williams and even the likes of Abby Wambach, Alex Morgan or Christine Sinclair (the most deserving of those three) could have won the award, it's going to take a year even better from Serena or Inbee Park to win that aw...

Photo from google.com Add Stewart Mandel of Sports Illustrated to the list of people not seeing the big picture with why bowl games, in the total whole scheme of things, are antiquated and assisted in the shameless money making corporations of college presidents and the NCAA. Mandel's lets compulsive nostalgia from his Northwestern days fuel his argument of why bowl games matter : In 1995, I was a sophomore at Northwestern when the Wildcats, which hadn't posted a winning record in 25 years, inexplicably rose up to go 10-1 and earn their first Rose Bowl berth in 47 years. Those of you old enough to remember it don't need me to rehash the details. For those of you who weren't, I would describe the shock level as akin to Appalachian State beating Michigan -- if Appalachian State had completely stunk the year before and also gone on to beat Notre Dame, Penn State and Wisconsin. Obviously, the excitement level on our previously apathetic campus soared with each mounting win,...