Tyler – Page 2 – Crasstalk

English Premier League Week One Wrap-Up

It’s been just over three months since Manchester United secured their 19th Premier League title by drawing 1-1 at Blackburn, but for soccer fans in England and abroad the EPL off-season seems as long and gray as a London winter. American football’s off-season is over twice as long, but at least we have basketball, hockey, and baseball to keep us company.

The Premier League is like the NBA, NHL, MLB, and Real Housewives of Manchester all rolled up into an annual nine-month long soap opera. It has drama, skill, heartbreak and triumph all acted out by highly skilled and impeccably trained practitioners of the beautiful game. So stakes were high when the first balls were kicked on Saturday to uphold the long, proud tradition of 120+ years of professional English football. Continue reading →

Randy Moss Retires with Mixed Sentiments and a Clear Legacy

Randy Moss was loved and hated, awe-inspiring and lazy, respected and disrespectful, a great teammate and a locker room enemy. Sometimes he was all of these things at once, even within the same game.

He poured out his heart (and his wallet) for disadvantaged kids in Minnesota and back home in West Virginia, but once berated a Vikings caterer claiming he wouldn’t feed the, uh, stuff, to his dog.

He preached to his fellow teammates about the importance of film study, but would routinely take whole plays off during games sometimes barely moving out of his stance. Randy knew how to work the referees and get calls no other receiver could get, but he would blow up at them at a moment’s notice when a call didn’t go his way. Continue reading →

Fantasy Football 101: The Basics

Now that the lockout is finally over and players are reporting to training camps across the land, fans can start to think about what really matters this coming season – their team’s chances to win it all. It’s not uncommon to see football fans immersed in NFL Network programming while also researching players, schedules, and bye weeks on their laptop. But look carefully and you’ll notice how seemingly uninterested they may be in their favorite actual team. A diehard Giants fan looking up the Cowboys’ bye week? A Patriots fan combing over the Jets’ wide receiver depth chart? A Raiders fan reading, intently, a report of how Denver quarterback Tim Tebow has prepared this off season? These things 20 years ago would’ve been blasphemy, enough to warrant a CAT scan and possibly a permanent relocation out of the rabid fan section. These days, they’re musts for any fantasy football manager with a shot to bring home the title.

In preparation for fantasy football drafts, we’re going to do a quick course in all things fantasy. We’ll start off slowly, with the basics, before getting a bit more into team setup & draft strategy, and weekly transactions. Continue reading →

The NFL Lockout is (Probably) DONE!

Our (not so) long national nightmare is over. The world will continue to spin on fall Sundays – bars and stadiums will still be full, yards will still be left undone, and non-football fans will still need to find something to do with other non-football fans. Owners and the union formerly known as the NFL Players Association have tentatively reached an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement, ending the four and a half month lockout.
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A Male View on Wedding Planning

It was less than 48 hours after the proposal that the binder had already been constructed. I didn’t even really mean to see it, but as I was clearing off our cluttered counter I spotted the pink three-ring binder tucked away under some papers. At first I thought it may have been a work file, but the pale pink seemed an odd choice for a professional folio. I picked it up to examine the meaning of all this.

There was no cover (there would be one later), no binder label (that too) and no indication from the outside what it was for at all. When I opened to the first page and saw a list of links to every wedding website imaginable, I finally realized what I was holding. My fiancée is an incredibly well-organized person, but even for her this was a quick turnaround. My only explanation was that she’d been lying in wait; there had to be a secret cache of magazine clipouts, Internet printouts, and pricing lists that she’d constructed over the previous months. As it turns out, she had compiled all of this over the now 48 hour life of our engagement. The ideas, she said, had been stewing in her head since she was a little girl.

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Why I Fell in Love with Soccer

If you love soccer, or you love sports, or loves someone who loves either (or you just love shirtless pictures of Carlos Bocanegra, manmeat defender for Saint-Etienne and Team USA), do yourself a favor and go pick up Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch. The book details how a young Hornby first discovered soccer growing up in England and examines how the game has affected every part of his life. It’s my all-time favorite book, and I have a habit of reading it every summer when the European soccer season is gearing up. I also have a habit of buying used copies and sending them to people, always with the same quote transcribed on the inside cover:

“I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.”

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Who Should Take Over at Ohio State?

If there’s any question about the dominant sport in America, consider this: On the day the NBA Finals begin and the eve of Stanley Cup Finals game 1, sports pages are consumed with a college football head coaching position. On June 1. Almost three months before the 2011 season begins. Such is life in big-time college football, and Ohio State is about as big-time as it gets. Continue reading →

Liveblog of the UEFA Champions League Final

It’s live blog time! (Again!)

The finals of the UEFA Champions League between Manchester United and FC Barcelona starts this afternoon at 2:45ish. The English and Spanish domestic champions have 90 minutes to decide the best team in European football for the 2010-2011 UEFA season. Join me here as I opine on the game with gchat cameos from Botswana. Feel free to chime in with comments or questions, but not concerns.

The UEFA Champions League Final is sort of like our Super Bowl if we allowed other countries to play football. It’s like the World Series if it were truly a World Series. It’s like the BCS national Championship if we allowed teams from Idaho to play for the title. Continue reading →

Liveblog of Game 7 of the NHL Eastern Conference Finals

Live blog time!

Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Eastern Conference Finals between the Boston Bruins and the Tampa Bay Lightning starts tonight at 8ET. For some reason, I’ve been given clearance to liveblog the game. As I often say when making terrible calls in Euchre: “Let’s see how this goes.”

Game 7: it’s what separates the highly-paid men who will continue playing from the other highly-paid men who will retire to their deluxe mansions.

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The Hidden Bearers of Cycling’s Constant Danger

On a twisting, winding, downhill road, 50 miles per hour in a car would probably feel like a steerable roller coaster. The same road at 50 miles per hour on a bicycle would probably feel more like an out of control nightmare. For cyclists, speeds of even 70 mph and up are part of the job with only their helmet, bike, and superior instincts to buffer against the unforgiving combination of gravity and asphalt. Even world class cyclists can fall victim to any combination of bad luck, mechanical failure, and a momentary (read split-second) lapse in judgment. Continue reading →