Archive for May, 2009

Walker delivers a second knockout punch for the Canes

Friday, May 15th, 2009

Unlike the Canes-Devils series, which was full of tight games, the Canes-Bruins series was marked by uneven play; the closest game was an overtime victory by Carolina in the middle of the series. It took a Game 7 to get a truly memorable contest out of these two teams, but it delivered.

Play us out, Brass Bonanza.

Pic of the Day – 05.14.09 – Evolution of the Hockey Player

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Happy Gilmore was on to something . . .

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Sports Science, the popular sports television show which separates athletic fact from fiction, recently did a segment on the Happy Gilmore swing. For this experiement they brought in Padraig Harrington , the 2008 PGA player of the year. While running up to the ball and taking a swing at the tee is legal in the PGA, no golfer would ever use this swing in the game. It’s a 4 inch sweet spot making contact with a 3/4 inch target on a 4 foot stick going 100+ mph. 

However, this video shows some surprising findings:

Super High Def Slow Mo Surfing is Awesome

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

Ed Hochuli is more than Biceps?

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

While I have referreed myself in several games of my life for elementary basketball, I will admit that it was a tough job. I could not imagine being an NBA or NFL official, which is why I found this piece on Ed Hochuli that much more interesting. Not only is he an officiating machine on the NFL field, but he’s also a legal machine in real life. This is a little excerpt describing the day in his office following the widely disputed Denver – San Diego call made at the end of the game last year:

 

An exceedingly polite woman sits at the reception desk in the offices of Jones, Skelton & Hochuli, a Phoenix firm that touts itself as one of the most experienced litigation groups in Arizona. It is unknown whether she’s the same brave soul who worked the morning of Sept. 15, the day after the disaster in Denver, when the e-mails poured in from angry Chargers fans and bettors, and the firm’s phone lines had to be shut down.

That’s one of the drawbacks to being a lawyer-slash-NFL official in the Internet age. When something goes wrong, an industrious man’s contact info is only a few clicks away.

It was clear from a fairly young age that Hochuli would be a lawyer, just like his father and two brothers. He loved the research, poring over depositions and precedents, having a box full of jurors look to him for the answers.

And almost always being right.

“As trial lawyers, one of the reasons we [like trying] cases is the adrenaline rush,” Hochuli says. “You love that challenge — the competition, if you will — of it. It’s a game. It’s obviously a very important game to people, and I don’t mean to diminish the importance of it. … You have to follow these rules, and there’s a win-or-lose outcome. You’re on a stage.”

Source: ESPN