http://bhamweekly.com/birmingham/articles.sec-13-1-sports-leisure.html Surely, there was plenty that went wrong in the Alabama Crimson Tide's loss to Texas A&M.  Enough to write a book, starting with the failure to run the ball with first and goal at the five i]]> It was Karl Marx who coined the term “opiate of the people” back in 1843 as a slight against organized religion. But the father of socialism could have just as easily spun the term to describe college football in the modern day.]]> My father never watched a soccer game in his life, but all during Sunday’s women’s World Cup final I kept thinking of him. When I was a kid, he thrilled me with his accounts of what it was like to sit in front of a radio and listen to Joe Louis’ knockout of Max Schmeling in 1938.]]> To call this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship “madness” would be something of an understatement. I feel a strong desire to quote Jerry Garcia and say, “what a long, strange trip it’s been,” but rest assured I’ll resist the temptation. ]]> Why a win for the players is a win for everyone So what just happened? For months, the sports media has been telling us that the National Football League Players Association was about to be crushed in their contract negotiations with the league owners. ]]> Why is brominated vegetable oil in Mountain Dew? I can understand the high fructose corn syrup (number two on the ingredient list behind carbonated water) and the various chemicals to preserve flavor and freshness, but I’m not sure about oil. ]]> “One kid, six dads.” That’s Scott Walton’s enduring memory of his son’s first T-ball game. As the batter knocked the ball into play, the first base coach, third base coach, batting coach and three other fathers in the dugout got into their high-volume act. As Walton recalls it, “Here was this four-year-old kid with a crowd of guys five times his size yelling at him to do different things.”]]> THE TOP FIVE WORST SUPER BOWLS IN REVERSE ORDER OF SUCKINESS]]> It’s been really getting under my skin this season, the way people are down on the strength of the SEC. Folks all over the media and across the country are pointing to the fact that Florida, Tennessee and Georgia are all struggling this year as evidence of the SEC’s waning dominance.]]> Cameron Newton, the quarterback for the No. 2 ranked Auburn Tigers, has been making headlines all season for his dynamic play on the field. So much so, that he is widely considered to be the front-runner for the coveted Heisman Trophy. Now it seems Cam is making a little noise away from the field, and not in a good way.]]> “What should I do? What should I do?” asks a pensive LeBron James, the world’s greatest basketball player, in his new Nike ad. Don Draper would have called it “confessional advertising”—an ad designed to offset a client’s tarnished image.]]> I was struck this weekend, whilst enjoying a fabulous Saturday of college football goodness, at the ridiculous nature of this thing we call sports. College football is the king of the ridiculous these days.]]> With a non-BCS team in the top five, and two in the top six, it seems the dominance of the current conference heavyweights may be over. The conferences themselves don’t seem as stalwart, getting some pretty serious makeovers. Plastic surgery seems more apropos.]]> Each year, the conference donates books to schools or libraries to encourage reading and research about the legacy of the Negro Leagues, raises funds to purchase headstones for unmarked graves of players and awards $2500 college scholarships in an essay writing competition.]]> I’m a baseball fan. Let me clarify. I’m a baseball fanatic. I root for the Yankees, a quality which endears me to few, but not because I like to win. I really like to win, actually, but I root for the Yankees because I rediscovered my love for baseball in Yankee stadium after a long and bitter divorce with the sport. I grew up a Phillies fan, listening to games on the radio with my dad and travelling to old Veterans Stadium once a year to get a first-hand look at the grass. When Major League Baseball struck in August of 1994 I was so angry I stopped following it. Until, that is, I made the happy mistake of moving to New York. New York is a baseball town, and I couldn’t live there long without absorbing a little of the old game in some way. ]]> Amateur boxing, chock full of drama and passion, is one of the most unfairly overlooked sports in America, relegated by most daily newspapers to the sports sections of their neighborhood editions—you ]]> The piece that follows has been circulating around the internet for some time. As it supposedly debunks Alabama’s claim to 12 national championships. I’m going to take a wild guess and assume it was w]]> Just when I thought I had penned a perfectly prudent goodbye column (by the way, I'm leaving Jan. 15), Lane Kiffin up and did something stupid. Again. I warned you, Tennessee fans. I warned you. To]]>