The Greatest Upset In Sports History?

Working on the Tennis Channel's Wimbledon Primetime show, I have not had too many chances to watch any sports, let alone write about them (besides tennis), so it has been a quiet week on this site. But for anyone who has checked in to see if there were updates, at least you got to see a picture of Marisa Miller on the top of the page each time.

Last weekend Turkey beat Croatia in one of the more excruciating endings I have seen in a long time, and this game highlights many of the reasons that soccer is the stupidest sport on the planet. Croatia led 1-0 in this European Championship Soccer Tourney and in gave up a slop goal with no time left on the clock...or in overtime. You see, the clock in soccer is really only a suggestion. They play 90 minutes and the freaking clock counts up, and the goal was scored at about 90:30 or so. The game was later won in penalty kicks.

Let us count the ways in which soccer is stupid: While it provides some spectacular highlights each game, these account for approximately 5-15 seconds of the game. The other 89 minutes and 55 seconds are painfully dreary, uneventful, and annoying, full of flopping and whining and even the goal celebrations are obnoxious. The clock is an approximation of what the referees keep on the field. Really? We can land people on the moon, but we can't figure out a way to have the ref's clock send a signal to the stadium clock? Penalty kicks decide games, which is the equivalent of a basketball game being decided by dueling half-court shots rather than actual game play.

Steve Hartman was screaming in his normal radio voice today about how dreamy Dodger Stadium is, particularly the parking situation. I will give you that the parking is better than last year as the new policies seem to be finally taking hold (because they repainted the traffic lane lines to match the new system instead of last year: new system - old lanes). However, it still stinks. Hartman's example was last night's game against the White Sox. He said he stayed for the whole game, and when they left he expected a madhouse, but instead was pleasantly surprised.

Has he ever been to a Los Angeles sporting event before? Everyone knows that in order to miss the traffic you leave when it's over! The only time LA fans have stayed till the end consistently is when Eric Gagne was on his hot streak (and I am not only referring to the streaks on his forearms at the time). Not to mention that the game last night was a blowout loss so there were probably 5000 fans left at the stadium at the end.

While Hartman was blathering on about this, Vic the Brick Jacobs was screaming "If there is a problem, the McCourts fix it," "they fix it" like he had some form of non-obscene Tourettes syndrome. Apparently Vic was not referring to the roster.

Marat Safin decided to show up this morning at Wimbledon and absolutely destroyed the world's #3 Novak Djovovic. If Safin plays the rest of the tourney like he played today, that semi vs. Roger Federer will be wonderful. Speaking of Federer, perhaps Djokovic should have thought twice before offending the tennis gods by saying last week that Federer's six losses in 2008 prove he is ripe for a downfall.

You should have heard the director and producers of Wimbledon Primetime on the headsets as #1 Ana Ivanovic faced two match points against her. Let's just say that the general consensus is that Ivanovic is good for ratings. Her reaction after her shot hit the net and dribbled over on the second match point and then her kiss of the net after she won the match an hour and a half later made my crush on her deepen considerably. How nice to have the best player in the world also smile and laugh and seem to enjoy herself, but also handle herself with class! We've been spoiled with Federer, Justine Henin and now Ivanovich. I hope another Serena Williams doesn't rise through the ranks.

With the NBA draft coming up tomorrow, the sports talk radio shows in L.A. are all buzzing about the Clippers trading Elton Brand and the#7 to the Heat for Shawn Marion, Shawn Marion's contract, and the #2. I hope they don't because I'd rather have a good guy who is a great player and a possibly great pick than a jerk who is a great player and a possibly great pick. I can't imagine that the Clippers are really looking into a trade with Miami (unless Brand is not involved or Dwyane Wade is), but they have done dumb things in the past so I won't rule it out.

The other big talk is of the Lakers trading up to get Miami's pick (or someone else's). Supposedly they would unload Lamar Odom. Right, I am sure there are a lot of G.M.'s calling the Lakers clamouring to get their hands on Odom after his NBA Finals series. No doubt Miami wants him back, right?

I saw a headline online for Chad Ford's NBA Mock Draft Version 6.0. Seriously? 6? How many times can you openly admit that you were totally wrong and still be considered publishable, let alone an expert?

Remember the loudmouthed trainer who guaranteed the Triple Crown and openly used steroids on that horse as well as many of his others? I won't bother writing his name because you won't remember him, but here's a shocker: he was just suspended because one of his horses tested positive for twice the legal limit of a blood doping drug. This makes eight consecutive years he has been fined or suspended for many, many violations. Here's hoping he gets another shot at glory. Everyone deserves a 20th chance.

Finally, Fresno State's comeback victory yesterday, facing elimination in the Final round of the College World Series against of the best teams in the country, could go down in history as the penultimate crowning achievement in the greatest upset story in Sports history. Yes, that was a lot of hyperbole, but think it through:

Putting their seed in college basketball terms (since most people are more familiar with that 64-team tourney than this one), they would likely be a 15 seed. They would not have made the tourney had they not won their conference (an upset, by the way). In the first round of the tournament, beat the #7 team in the country twice (my USD Toreros) as well as the #22 team on the road (Long Beach State). Then after losing game 1 in the second round, they beat the #4 team in the country on the road twice in a row to eliminate them. In the next round they beat the #6 and #2 team (twice). And now they face the #8 team for a final game to decide the whole thing (after having split with them in the last two games).

An unranked team has beaten nine top 25 teams in the NCAA Tournament. Villanova was an eight-seed when they beat Georgetown and probably faces 2 or three ranked schools in the tourney. North Carolina State over Phi Slamma Jamma was the same. At least the 1980 U.S. Hockey team was made up of the best players in their own country - Fresno State was not top 10 in their state. The Giants-Patriots or Jets-Colts are not remotely close to that. Miracle Mets? Fresno State doesn't have Tom Seaver. If the "Under-Dogs" win today, it is the greatest upset story in Sports History. Don't miss it - 4 p.m. Pacific time on ESPN.

This is all a reminder of how insane the BCS is. In what other league in any sport in the world are the two finalists selected at the end of the regular season?

Promises Are Like Babies: Easy To Make, Hard To Deliver

Predictions get tossed around in the sports world all the time. Guys guarantee their teams will win a game or a series. They guarantee that they will not be back with a certain team. They guarantee postseason appearances. The say that their team is the team to beat before the season starts.

You always hear announcers talk about how that makes great "bulletin board" material and occassionally a player will say that it was a motivating factor, but it seems like all the guarantees are so run-of-the-mill these days that few bat an eye at them.

When Jim Fassel angrily declared to the New York media that the 7-4 Giants were going to playoffs, it wasn't so much that it was a groundbreaking prediction; coaches and players say this type of thing all the time. What makes this moment memorable was that the normally mild-mannered Fassel blew up and essentially told the world famous New York sports media to sit down and shut up for the rest of the season...and then he backed it up.

Before this last Super Bowl, had Plaxico Burress given a run-of-the-mill "we're gonna win" prediction, no one would have cared...likely any player would have said the same thing. But Burress gave the score as 23-17, which was so far below the Patriots' average that it raised some eyebrows, but was still mostly laughed off as harmless fun. When the Giants wound up winning, holding the Pats to a lower score than Burress had predicted, and Burress himself scored the winning touchdown, that became an all-time great prediction.

Perhaps the three most famous sports predictions are Babe Ruth famously calling a home run by pointing to the bleachers right where he hit the ball on the next pitch (or maybe he just stretched his arm, no one is sure). Joe Namath called the Super Bowl upset in 1967. And of course Kramer's two-home run prediction on behalf of Paul O'Neil to a sick boy.

But every year some guy you haven't really heard of says his crappy NBA East team will beat some other crappy NBA East team and no one cares. So what makes a great prediction? What makes it memorable? Why was Joe Namath's Super Bowl III prediction a seminal moment in sports history but so many other guys have done the exact same thing and been forgotten?

First: the stage has to be big. Boldly declaring that your 7-year-old son will score in a YMCA league basketball game is not exactly the stuff of legends.

Second: the odds have to be against you. If a first place team's manager declares his team will make the postseason when they have a 10 game lead with 11 to go, no one will really take notice.

Third: you get points for originality. Hundreds of coaches have probably told writers at some point that their struggling teams would put it all together and make the playoffs, but Fassel did it with fire, with (apparently real) anger, and most importantly with style.

Fourth: the predictor needs to have first-hand impact on the game. No one cares what the owner's dog walker says will happen. But if the shortstop guarantees a World Series sweep, that's getting in the papers. Abe Lincoln once said, "We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot."

Fifth: it has to come true. If you make a bold enough prediction and use bold enough words and fail, you will perhaps be remembered, but not how you want to be. Had the Patriots beaten the Giants 41-17, do you think there would be any stories on Super Bowl Monday about how Burress' relatively mundane prediction had been wrong, or would the press have written about the 19-0 story?

Sixth: there has to be an intangible endearing quality to it. If Roger Clemens came back and predicted that he would lead the Mariners to the World Series this year, it would come off as arrogance from a world-class jerk - not a prediction. If he pulled it off, history would find a way to cheapen it (steroids, etc.) so we wouldn't have to appreciate it like we do the Jets in Super Bowl III or Base Ruth's possible shot-calling.

Recently Big Brown's trainer, Rick Dutrow, Jr., has been proclaiming that his horse winning the Belmont Stakes is a "foregone conclusion." He boldly stated, "Forget about it. There's no way in the world there's any horse that's doing any better than Big Brown. It's impossible...I don't even care about the post position...We don't need to worry. He will handle things."

So how will this prediction be remembered? This passes the first three tests with flying colors: it is the biggest stage in his sport, and one of the biggest in all of Sport. While his horse will be the odds-on favorite, the odds are against him that he'll win - no one has done it in 30 years and there have been odds-on favorites many, many times. Originality! Even Bob Baffert never mouthed off like this.

Where Dutrow's prediction gets hurt starts with #4- he doesn't have enough to do with the prediction coming true. Sure, he knows better than anyone what his horse can do. He knows better than anyone how much steroids have been pumped in him. But he won't be the one running, nor the one riding. If the jockey made this kind of prediction, that would be interesting. If the horse did, it would be astounding! If he doesn't win, Dutrow will likely be a laughing stock (for a day or two until we all forget about him) for being too bold. And if Big Brown does win, because the prediction is just so sleazy and self-righteous, and the guy keeps yelling it into any microphone he can find, we won't remember this fondly. We will blame it on a weak field and overt steroid use, and we will likely remember this more clearly as the last of the old-fashioned, inhumane Triple Crown seasons.

Now Petr Sykora's prediction in Monday's Stanley Cup Finals should be remembered as one of the all-time greats, and may be the best ever depending on the series plays out. Sykora played his shot-calling down later, saying he was just trying to loosen up his teammates, but regardless this is a classic:

The Red Wings were 35 seconds away from a Stanley Cup win. The Cup was polished and in the tunnel leading to the ice. The champagne was chilled in the home locker room. But the Penguins spoiled the party by pulling their goalie and scoring to tie it up with the extra attacker. Midway through the first overtime period, NBC's sideline reporter Pierre McGuire announced that Sykora had told him that he was going to "get the next one." Two overtimes later, he did and the Penguins won, sending the series back to Pittsburgh for Game 6.

Now this is a fantastic story, but if the Penguins go on to come back and win at home and then go back to Detroit and steal the Cup, it will be immortalized in sports legend. Stay tuned.