I'm sure that each of us prefer one or the other, depending on whether we have a team that we're rooting for, whether we know someone involved with the team and, most importantly, whether our team wins or loses the game. Clearly, you want your team, your friends, your kids, your kids' friends and your friends' kids to give a good effort and to win. That's why...

Madson's agent, Scott Boras, says that the Phillies and Madson had a deal and then the Phillies decided to sign someone else.Ruben Amaro, Jr., the Phillies' GM, sharply disagrees but doesn't want to get into a public dispute with Boras.Whom do you believe?The story I heard was that Madson and the Phillies had agreed in principle on a four-year, $44 million deal and then...

Penn State alums have nothing to complain about insofar as who the powers that be chose to follow Joe Paterno as head football coach. The powers that be so screwed up any meaningful succession process because of the alums idolatry about Paterno that they just need to embrace who they got, period, and move on. They resisted any meaningful call for a decent succession plan, going...

His press conference was a mixed bag, but listening closely, one concept keeps coming back to me -- he's the best coach for us to win a championship next year. That's what Lurie said, so let's consider the comment.First, if you agree with the premise that this team can win a championship next year, then logically it might follow that Reid knows the personnel the best...

They cannot fire owner Jeffrey Lurie, but they can try to make him look bad, not buy the team's merchandise, and so forth. Lurie's announcement today that he will bring back head coach Andy Reid means that the owner has the following thoughts -- he thinks with his heart and not his head. Reid has been with the Eagles for 13 years, and Lurie is loyal to him, even though...

When they announced that Philadelphia would be hosting the Winter Classic, my sixth grader offered that it might be neat to go. Well, have a partial season ticket plan to the Phillies, and, presto, I got a chance to enter a lottery to buy two tickets to the event, "won" the lottery, got two tickets underneath the cover on the third-base line that gave me an obscured view...

Lately I have found myself saying the following: "If you set the bar low, many people will figure out ways to fall beneath it. If you set the bar high, you'll be amazed and how much people can accomplish." Perhaps that derives from John Wooden's, "If you aim for perfection, you'll achieve excellence," but I think that there's some truth to it....

Questions abound:1. Will owner Jeffrey Lurie fire Andy Reid?2. If the answer to question 1 is no, will Jeffrey Lurie make Reid choose between being the GM and the head coach?3. If the answer to question 1 is no, will Andy Reid fire or demote defensive coordinator Juan Castillo?4. If the answer to question 3 is yes, will perhaps soon-to-be-former Rams head coach, former Giants...

Several decades ago (give or take one, perhaps), I had a conversation with a friend who was a very good Ivy League basketball player. He had mentioned that his high school, a basketball powerhouse, had a player who had succeeded him at his position and who was drawing national attention. North Carolina, Kentucky, UCLA, to name a few, were hot after this player. My friend also offered...

I once spoke at a professional seminar, and the topic of creating balance in one's live and having diversions came up. It was a very driven group, so I got their attention by talking about how you can always figure out how to achieve goals on a given day -- even when everything can go haywire at the office. I told the group that after a long day I would go home into the kid/man...

You can read the story here.My friend Jeff from Philadelphia (not to be confused with Jeff from Manhattan) and I used to wonder over beers whether what some people were telling us about their backgrounds was true. Among the questions were "did this guy really play there?" and "was he all-league?" Some of the boasting we dealt with was before the age of the internet...

Princeton beat Northeastern in Boston 71-62.938 people attended.My guess is that the Northeastern coach makes north of $250,000 a year, perhaps significantly so. Why?Because men's basketball is a revenue sport?Really?Could it be that ticket sales and revenues from the concession stands didn't pay for the cost of running the game? I would bet that's the case. So the...

I've coached my son's team in the rec league for going on five years now, and we've won many more than we've lost. I can joke that it's because of superior coaching, but truth be told we get a bunch of kids who come eager to learn and to play hard. We also have gotten "older" kids who encourage the younger ones, and, yes, I'm sure that the friend...

It's pretty simple, really.Urban Meyer? To Ohio State.Philadelphia-area native Dan Mullen, the Mississippi State coach (and former Meyer assistant)?Not interested.Al Golden?Signed a longer-term deal at Miami, perhaps opting to stay with a more manageable crisis situation.Truth be told, Penn State needs a Mr. Clean. Or so that's the perception. Well, DI football, as currently constituted...

Remember when the days were longAnd rolled beneath a deep blue skyDidn't have a care in the worldWith mommy and daddy standing' byBut "happily ever after" failsAnd we've been poisoned by these fairly talesThe lawyers dwell on small details. . .-- from Don Henley's "The End of the Innocence."I've waited for a while to comment on the Penn State...

You have to either subscribe to ESPN the Insider or ESPN the Magazine to get the article about Harvard's recruiting efforts, which amount to trying to lure 3- and 4-star recruits to Cambridge. It's pretty amazing as to how a) Coach Tommy Amaker (who still hasn't convinced me that he is a good technical coach, as opposed to a good recruiter) can lure these kids to Cambridge...

A top recruit from the Philadelphia suburbs, who once gave an oral commitment to the Nittany Lions, is going to Wisconsin. The reason offered up is that Wisconsin is Offensive Linemen U., and the recent article in Sports Illustrated -- an elegy to the Badgers' development of offensive linemen -- had to help. Look, if a kid wants to go into a profession (and especially where there...

There have been some wonderful testimonials about Kent Hull.We all should aspire to have similar things said about us.

Required Reading: Michael Wilbon's post on ESPN.com yesterday.I am not an economist, but in a world saturated with alternatives -- whether in music, theater, movies or sports -- I do wonder how many discretionary dollars are out there for the average person to spend. Tickets are not cheap, and we all go through scaling back when funds become more scarce or, alternatively, when...

Most Phillies' fans would have told you two things -- that failing to reach the World Series would be a disappointment and that they had their doubts that the team would get there. As to the former, well, the Phillies and the media pumped out that expectation ever since the team signed Cliff Lee in the off-season. As to the latter, forget the ghosts of Chico Ruiz stealing home...

My pessimistic cousin -- who despaired mid-season before the Phils were en route to winning 102 games -- says the game's a lock for the Phillies. The reason?The steam patters from the red rocks in his sauna somewhere in the desert foretell a Phillies' victory. It's the calmest he's been about the Phillies since the beginning of the season. He said he might not even...

Observations:1. I did learn from the Weather Channel that when they say there's a 50% chance of rain what they mean is that with the weather patterns presented, it has rained 50 times out of 100. Thankfully, we were on the favorable side of that prediction last night.2. We sat in the second deck in right field, about 10 feet on the "foul" side of the foul pole. Good...

The Eagles have blown second half leads in the past three weeks.They are 1-3. Some dream team, perhaps a "nightmare" team.Just because you add all the parts that you did in the off-season doesn't ensure that you have chemistry. The Phillies, who play across the street, have both the big names and the chemistry. The Eagles have the big names, but they lack leadership...

Because every dad seems to know something about baseball, the dads flock to it, and so do their kids. In our town, the dads are all over the sport. They coach it as if each game were a Major League contest, despite the fact that while a Major League GM and a AAA manager live in the area, the area itself hasn't turned out a Major Leaguer in at least 25 years (the town probably...

Metta World Peace was the first person voted off Dancing with the Stars. He used to be known as Ron Artest, who plays in a league that's called the National Basketball Association. That is, when it's functioning.