Sparty Spoils a Harbaugh Win, Boxer Hospitalized, The Game’s new Documentaries

The Old Fashioned… 3-Point Play

Let me explain what’s going on here with TOF3PP. I’m just not creative enough to give something a slick title, and a lot of the obvious sports references have long been taken in this game. I guess The Foul Line Extended or The High Post were both acceptable, or The Skinny Post… yeah, that was definitely it!

Maybe I dropped the ball but The Old Fashioned… is the winner because 95% of my sports sensibilities are old-fashioned, and this series is going to typically feature my thoughts two sports topics (The Bucket) and one current event (The And 1) in good ol’ American pop culture. Somehow the word “pop” just isn’t sitting well with me, but it is after all a world of blurred lines. We are on the same page that The Bucket and an And 1 was the old-fashioned way to get three points on one shot attempt prior to the addition of the three-point arc, right?

The Bucket

My iPod has jokes.

I halfway committed to my spirited leap off my bar stool to celebrate Michigan’s two defenders knocking away Connor Cook’s final pass attempt to the ground in the closing moments of the October 17th (#7) MSU vs. (#12) UofM game at Michigan Stadium.

The female bartender reassuringly said, “You know, you could’ve felt free to let that out better than that.”

My restrained “Yeah” was even sadder, and barely audible to the small gathering in the bar that mostly consisted of Ohio State Buckeyes fans who were rooting on the Michigan State Spartans because of, you know, the whole OSU-UofM rivalry thing.

The game was coach Jim Harbaugh’s debut in the series that determines which program will hold onto the Paul Bunyan trophy for the next year. The Wolverines were 1-6 in the last seven meetings, the game had some early playoff implications, Blue only had 1:47 to protect a 23-21 lead, and since I live in Ohio I thought I’d keep things respectful – I wasn’t in my living room.

Something told me to leave as Jake Ruddock and the offense made their way to field.

I sat on the stool and held in my joy, internally, for my Wolverines once again being relevant in big time college football once again. However, after a couple of short gains on conservative two hands on the ball running plays things began to get uneasy. I briefly thought about how the 4th down should be handled, but let’s get serious, Jim Harbaugh was on the friggin’ sidelines! Well, with just ten seconds to go an ending to a football game I’ve never really witnessed for a home team played out terribly for Michigan.

The kicker failed to catch hike cleanly, he tried to pick up the ball (to seemingly attempt to kick it backwards over his head), the Spartans crashed down on him like a wave, and a player in a white and green uniform collected the ball and carried it 40-something yards into Sparty’s end zone. How the hell do I get out of this bar?

Over the last couple of weeks I had seen several links to stories regarding Amber Rose and slut shaming ,or slut walk, and I briefly imagined it had to be something akin to the uneasy stroll I was getting ready to take to get by the boisterous high-fiving Buckeye fans to exit the bar. I mean in a sports, fandom, people strongly supporting their team in the most juvenile kind of way… I mean no disrespect to any female that’s been physically assaulted in any way.

I quietly exited the bar, sauntered to my car without any comments being directed at me, and after what just happened I didn’t want to hear any sports talk so I linked up my iPod touch. The one with the jokes. I get a couple of miles down the highway heading home and my iPod disrespectfully shuffles to “The Whole Town’s Laughing at Me” ! The f#$%?!?!?!

Cook finished the game with 328 yards, connecting on 18 of his 39 passes to go 3-0 for his career versus Michigan. Spartan head coach Mark Dantonio extended his reign to seven wins in the last eight meetings.

The sweet science is on TV almost as much as Steve Harvey is nowadays. The Premier Boxing Champions, or PBC, is basically its own network spread across five regular networks. I’m happy, as a fight fan and all, but damn. It’s extremely hard to tune in for some of the Saturday afternoon fights because college football is underway, and not too many of the next five Saturdays won’t feature at least two rivalry games or one that will eliminate some program from the CFB Playoffs.

As the MSU-UofM game was airing the PBC was airing an interesting card featuring Lamont Peterson versus Felix Diaz. The night before Andrzej Fonfara won a thrilling, record-setting light heavy fight against a determined Nathan Cleverly. The opener for the Peterson-Diaz fight featured an up and coming Puerto Rican fighter named Prichard Colon (16-1, 13 KOs) versus Californian Terrel Williams (15-0, 12 KOs) in welterweight bout.

The fight was intriguing because Colon has good power, above average height for the weight class, and he’s a pretty handsome guy with a likable personality. I’m not putting the carriage ahead of the horses, but the kid could have possibly had some Oscar De La Hoya combination of tangibles going for him.

Unfortunately for Colon, Williams was not in a rush to relinquish the 0 on his unblemished record either. According to all of the judges’ cards Colon got off to a quick start through the first four rounds, but I noticed that Williams’ left hook was consistently finding an opening around Colon’s guard, and it seemed to frustrate the Puerto Rican fighter. Williams, who stood around the same height as Colon, also quickly convinced Colon that his chin was solid enough to absorb some punishment without easily being discouraged.

Williams worked himself back into the before sustaining a low blow in the fifth round, for which Colon penalized two points by the ref. Subsequently, Williams went to work battering Colon with several heavy shots before landing a punch to the back of Colon’s head in the seventh. Colon was granted five minutes to recover, and once he was he was able to resume he briefly returned to his performance from the fight’s first three rounds.

The situation would get nasty in the ninth round. The 31-year old Williams regained control of the fight and dropped Colon after some exchanges along the ropes. After landing a solid uppercut to Colon’s body, Williams landed a second punch to the back of Colon’s head causing him to hit the canvas again. Colon would make it back to his feet, albeit in noticeably bad shape, and head back to his corner at the end of the round. Apparently the Colon corner became confused by the action that was no longer going in the favor of its fighter, and before the bell was rung for the bout final round Colon’s gloves were removed by a member of his corner. The 23-year old fighter was disqualified and the night was over. Unfortunately the worst part of the night was yet to come for Colon.

Once back in the dressing room the young prospect began to deal with dizziness and vomiting and he fainted, he was rushed to a local Virginia hospital where he eventually underwent emergency surgery due to bleeding on his brain. Several outlets including the Washington Post have reported that the fighter known as “Digget” is in a coma as of the morning of October 18th.

As a fight fan it’s been great to see boxing’s return to network TV, and its expansion onto four or five other channels besides ESPN’s defunct Friday Night Fights series. However, with the spotlight being a little brighter due to the increased exposure, it’s imperative that the safety of these fighters continue to be the utmost point of emphasis. Colon and Williams appeared to be a pretty evenly matched fight despite the fighters’ age gap, and a disparity in ring experience probably isn’t the culprit here; but, more than a couple of PBC bouts have been marred by questionable matchmaking and blatant foul play. Some of the action inside the ring has long been part of the sweet science, as players in all sports have a few tactics to resort to police themselves, but I hope boxing is able to quickly curtail any of recent controversial moments so that the #FREEBOXINGFORALL campaign isn’t short-lived.

Thoughts and hopes are with Prichard Colon and his family.

The And 1

In the last two weeks one of Los Angeles’ best rappers, The Game, has returned to the fold with his latest projects The Documentary 2 and The Documentary 2.5 – both releases obviously serving as odes to his 2005 breakthrough effort The Documentary. The albums are doing well on iTunes – TD2.5 sat two spots higher than TD2 at #5 the morning of 10/18 – and HitsDailyDouble reported TD2.5 reached sales of 94,529 (including streaming data) to close out its first week.

Everybody’s included between the combined the discs’ 36 songs – Ice Cube, Schoolboy Q, Kendrick, Nas, Q-Tip, Busta, Scarface and newcomer (if only to me) Anderson .Paak. Dr. Dre splits mic and production duties and DJ Premier is even involved.

So far, I’ve only listened to the snippets (mainly for the Nas feature on “The Ghetto”) and searched for a few tracks on YouTube. I can’t argue Jayceon Taylor’s ability and pen game. He came along just as lyrical content was losing its last bit of ground, he’s a 35-year old father, and I feel that feeds into him he still having plenty of valid points to with his music. With life being so busy I just don’t know how far I’ll ever be able to delve into TD2 and TD2.5.

Looking at the track listing for both albums left me with the thought that with ability to create stations (or artist stations) on today’s various streaming services, maybe rappers aren’t interested in making a track list (for an album) nowadays as much as they are determined to create their own playlist. One that includes a bunch of hot songs with their favorites and themselves.

At a quick glance the two albums contain 50+ features, some artists double dipped, for the 36 tracks, and this feature-heavy approach to album making is what’s kept me away from Dr. Dre’s recent Compton album thus far. I’ve heard all of the excitement and acclaim regarding these releases, but I’d just really prefer to hear the main artist’s main ideas. Us older, more seasoned hip hop listeners just don’t sort through all the clutter as well as we did in our teens and 20s.

Besides, I wholeheartedly believed that Kendrick and J. Cole showed us with TPAB and 2014FHD this past year that when you want something done right, you’ve still got to do it yourself.

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