The Lakers are on a fast track to the finals and finally the championship.  I am not aware of any team that can come close to beating them.  The Rockets actually have the best chance of anyone beating the Lakers because they have two of the best one on one defenders in the NBA that they can rotate on Kobe Bryant.  Having said that nobody in the league can really guard “the Black Mamba,” so the Rockets better hope and pray that he is having several off nights or this could get ugly.

Yao Ming is going to be effectively shut down.  Portland was not a very tough team and they shut him down in the playoffs with the exception of game one.  With Bynum and Gasol putting a body of great wall of china I would say that Yao may get 17 pts a couple games.  No more than that and he is going to be laden with foul trouble for at least two games.  Just watch and see.

This game was over before it started.  The NBA finals are going to include a match up between the Cavaliers and the Lakers.  That is the destiny of the NBA this year.  Its like the 80s when everyone knew the Bird and Magic were going to be seeing each other  in the finals.  This is no different.  All the other 28 teams are just a practice session for the two main champs.  Who will win?  It depends on the refs I am afraid to say.  Who they let go to the line more times LeBron or Kobe will make all the difference.  They gave Dwyane Wade a tittle back in 2006 when they put him on the foul line 25 times a game.  I think Stern wants Lebron to win.  Its would be good for the league and very good for business and his bottom line.  So I say the Cavs win it in seven games and LeBron James is going to be crowned the King.

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Can Lakers Be Challeneged By Anyone?

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The National Football League owns are planning to take a vote in May on plans to lengthen the regular season though it is unlikely that the new longer season would start until 2011.  They are planning to increase the NFL football season by 17 or possibly even 18 games.

It would also include reducing preseason games by at least one.  All this is an effort explained NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to “[increase] value” in this challenging economic climate the county finds itself in.  Regardless of what happens there is little chance that the football season will remain at its current 16 regular season games.

I for one do not have a problem with this.  I love football and one or two more meaningful regular season games is good news.  I hate the preseason.  It means nothing.  Its just a way for teams to evaluate their new talent and see where they stand.  I feel that they can have scrimmage games for this.  Its also a quick way for owners to make a little money off fans who are so football starved after not seeing any games since January that they are still willing to pay good money to see a meaningless game rationalizing that at least they get to see that pigskin flying again.

But thinking about the players point of view I can see how they would be against it.  Its a brutal sport that ranks number one is physicality among all the top pro sports in the United States.  Guys are usually beat up and bruised after 16 games and while one or two more games may be exciting or no big deal to us we are not the ones actually having to play it.   This presents more opportunities more players to get injured and everyone not going to into the postseason 100% healthy.

And even though the idea of more football is obviously appealing to most fans, if we really think hard about it, at the end of week 17, has anyone ever thought, “That really needed to be longer”? Sixteen games is plenty to determine who’s the best team out there.  There is only so many Sunday and Monday night football games we need in a year.  We have to make room for the NBA and MBL season too (just playing).

One can see the good and the bad in this.  Players do not want to be paid less and owners need to make some changes to keep their revenue intact. Fans are going not to get a choice,surprise, surprise, because anything that the owners would approve that would make them more money and sell more NFL tickets, the owners are going to approve. Records are going to fall. Careers are going to get a little shorter. The regular season’s going to get longer, whether it’s a good idea or not. Coors and Budweiser stand to sell more beer as well.  I would start buying stock in them today.  How many extra million cans of beer are going to be sold as a result of this?

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NFL Season Will Get A Little Longer

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Comcast customers in Tuscon got an eye-popping 30 seconds of pornographic material during the Super Bowl last night. Shortly after Arizona Cardinal Larry Fitzgerald caught a toss from quarterback Kurt Warner to take the lead against Pittsburgh, the Super Bowl feed paused and dissolved into a scene featuring full frontal male nudity from the adult channel Club Jenna.

Comcast says it is investigating the incident, and its engineers worked through the night to find out what went wrong. According to preliminary reports, standard broadcast/analog customers were the only ones to see the Club Jenna segment — digital and high-definition subscribers were not affected. It is unclear how many homes were experienced the interruption.

The feed originated with NBC local affiliate KVOA in Tucson and traveled via a fiber optic line to the Cox Cable Company, which then relayed the feed through a separate line to Comcast. Both KVOA and Cox say the problem lies with Comcast, as the KVOA feed was porn-free when it left the station, and Cox did not receive any complaints from its customers.

Just hours after the football game finished, Comcast customers who caught the Super Bowl surprise on their digital video recorders were posting the incident all over the web. While we’re not linking to anyone who posted the event — hey, this is a family show — we can say that shots of the event can be found on everything from personal websites to video-sharing sites like Break.com.

So, how did this happen? Was it simply a computer or human error or perhaps a disgruntled employee or hacker? Digital pranks and sabotage have made headlines recently. Just last week, a disgruntled Fannie Mae employee was indicted for trying to crash the company’s computer systems, hackers recently posted a zombie alert on a road sign in Texas, and let’s not forget December’s Twitter hacks allegedly perpetrated by members of the online forum Digital Gangster.

While Comcast hasn’t uncovered the cause of the porn malfunction yet, the timing seems somewhat suspicious to me. The Cardinals had just taken the lead with about three minutes left in the fourth quarter. Perhaps with the NFL’s coveted trophy within reach, an Arizona fan felt the moment called for some extra celebration. As Cora King of Marana told the Arizona Star, “I just figured it was another commercial…then he did his little dance with everything hanging out.” Gives a whole new meaning to “we’re No. 1!” doesn’t it?

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Sports Highlights

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CALGARY — Five of Canada’s top female biathletes shed their lycra race suits to officially launch a nude calendar on Wednesday which they created to celebrate healthy, active women’s bodies, and also to generate money to fuel their quest for the international podium.

Zina Kocher, of Red Deer, Alta.; Sandra Keith, of Calgary; Rosanna Crawford, of Canmore, Alta.; Megan Imrie, of Falcon Lake, Man.; and Megan Tandy, of Prince, George, B.C., developed the plan to pose nude together in Bold Beautiful Biathlon, which is on sale now for $25 at www.boldbeautifulbiathlon.com on the Internet.

With a goal of targeting financial support from corporate Canada for their Olympic journey, the five Canadian women turned up the heat on a frigid Calgary morning when they roller skied through the downtown core during noon hour with nothing more than shorts, race bibs for tops, and their traditional biathlon rifles locked on their backs.

“We are extremely appreciative of the generous financial support given to our program by Sport Canada, and by Own the Podium to the athletes on our team that are projected to achieve excellence,” said Zina Kocher, a targeted athlete herself and the leader of the Canadian Biathlon Team, who in 2006 became the first Canadian to win a World Cup medal since Myriam Bedard did more than a decade ago. “But our sport remains significantly under-funded compared to our competitors, and one of the few winter sports in this country without a title sponsor or personal sponsors.”

Funding for an athlete’s annual budget comes from a variety of avenues. Personal sponsorships are a core component to covering the many annual expenses high-performance athletes face for both training and competition. Despite being one of the lone fully-funded athletes in the national biathlon program, Kocher and long-time World Cup and Olympic teammate Sandra Keith, took the lead in rallying their World Cup comrades to aggressively seek additional funding opportunities.

“We believe there is a tremendous opportunity for someone in corporate Canada to not only invest in this team and our drive to the Olympic podium, but also to invest in building a new image for young Canadian girls to look up to,” said Keith, who enjoyed a breakthrough season on the World Cup last year which included a career-best 11th-place result. “Contrary to a lot of images young girls are seeing on television and in magazines about the ideal woman’s body, it is a healthy athletic body that we should all be looking to maintain. You don’t need to be a high-performance athlete to be fit, and we are encouraging all women to be proud of their bodies.”

The photos of Keith, Kocher and their teammates were taken by Rachel Boekel and Adrian Marcoux in Canmore, Alta. Each athlete will be featured on two pages of the calendar, along with four group photos.

Nude calendars have become more common as fund-raising tools. Around the same time as the the “Nordic Nudes” calendar of 2001, the Australian Women’s Soccer team released a calendar of artistic photos featuring full-frontal nudity. High-jumper Amy Acuff organized Omni-Lite Millennium Calendar of Champions featuring Acuff and 11 other female track and field athletes in black-and-white photographs, mostly nude. Currently, a calendar titled “Women of Curling” is on sale, featuring nude curling athletes from around the world. The list goes on – golfers, rugby teams, and many more have created nude calendars to support their sport or cause.

At the time of the “Nordic Nudes” calendar, the practice was far from accepted, and both the Canadian women’s cross-country effort and the Australian women’s issue generated significant controversy, often from activists who claimed that the calendars were demeaning to women, both as people and as athletes. Critics pointed out that one rarely, if ever, saw male athletes producing nude calendars. But the calendars sell well, inspiring others to follow suit, and it appears that the practice has become generally accepted.

The Canadian biathletes were inspired to take on the project when thinking back to the success two of their Olympic heroes in cross-country skiing, Sara Renner and Beckie Scott, had in raising funds after producing a similar calendar in 2001. Renner and Scott, along with three other teammates, tastefully took their clothes off to also raise the profile of their sport while showing the world cross-country skiers were fit and healthy people.

“An athlete’s livelihood depends on their bodies and I believe athletes should be proud of their bodies. This calendar celebrates strong, athletic women,” said Sara Renner, who will compete in her fourth and final Olympic Winter Games in 2010. “As the mother of a daughter, I would be proud to see pictures of these role models on my child’s wall as opposed to a synthetically enhanced Hollywood star.”

Sales of the calendar took off for Canada’s cross-country ski women, which helped finance their preparations for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City where Beckie Scott became the first North American woman to win an Olympic medal when she won gold in the pursuit race. Scott and Renner later joined forces to win a silver medal in the team relay at the 2006 Olympics.

“A healthy, female body is a beautiful thing and if these girls choose to celebrate it with a calendar, then all the power to them,” said Scott, who also became a mother after retiring in 2006 with 17 World Cup and two Olympic medals. “The unique thing was we created this calendar right on the cusp of our team making huge strides in the sport internationally, and I hope this marks the same trend for the biathlon women. I wish them the very best and give them my full support.”

Nude calendars have become more common as fund-raising tools. Around the same time as the the “Nordic Nudes” calendar of 2001, the Australian Women’s Soccer team released a calendar of artistic photos featuring full-frontal nudity. High-jumper Amy Acuff organized Omni-Lite Millennium Calendar of Champions featuring Acuff and 11 other female track and field athletes in black-and-white photographs, mostly nude. Currently, a calendar titled “Women of Curling” is on sale, featuring nude curling athletes from around the world. The list goes on – golfers, rugby teams, and many more have created nude calendars to support their sport or cause.

At the time of the “Nordic Nudes” calendar, the practice was far from accepted, and both the Canadian women’s cross-country effort and the Australian women’s issue generated significant controversy, often from activists who claimed that the calendars were demeaning to women, both as people and as athletes. Critics pointed out that one rarely, if ever, saw male athletes producing nude calendars. But the calendars sell well and bring mainstream attention to fringe sports, inspiring others to follow suit, and it appears that the practice has become generally accepted.

Canada’s biathletes will be hoping history repeats itself as well – both with sales of the calendar and on the biathlon course. The calendar will begin selling across the country immediately, while the team will hit the start line for their first World cup race of the season one month later in Sweden.

To purchase a Bold Beautiful Biathlon calendar, or for more information on the project, please visit www.boldbeautifulbiathlon.com on the Internet.

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Five Canadian Biathlon Women Launch Nude Calendar With Hopes Of Raising Funds To Fuel Quest For International Podium

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What are the social and cultural costs and benefits of an individual (male or female) entering a non-traditional sport for their gender/sex (e.g. women enter body building, power lifting, boxing; men enter synchronized swimming or field hockey)?

The biggest thing that creates a social and cultural cost in the world of sports is change. People have a hard time coping with a change in the norm, especially when people are not welcome still to this day that women play sports. So as soon as a man/woman wants to do something different, there will always be controversy that will include harassment of the individual from sexual orientation to class, or simply what this change could do to the particular sport in the long run. A man entering a “women’s” sport is very different than a woman entering a “man’s” sport. There is more praise given to a woman entering a male-dominated sport and more disapproval given to a man entering a female-dominated sport. For example, when the ABL and WNBA, particularly when the WNBA, started up, many people questioned whether women could play professionally and handle the pressure of living up to the NBA. As soon as commercial ads came out for the WNBA league, it was done in a fashion to show that the WNBA did consist of straight women and it was not a league for lesbians. Even though basketball is not a traditional sport, the idea of women playing a men’s game at the professional level was a big deal. So even before the league started, someone felt that he/she had to prove that not all aggressive female athletes are gay. It’s funny, but in a sad way, that women have to prove their sexual identity, but the men’s are never questioned.

The social and cultural costs of this intermingling of sexes starts with the genders that are tied to each sport, which then puts the individual’s sexuality at question. If a woman enters a “male” sport she will be considered a lesbian and if a male entered a “woman” sport then he would be tagged with a gay identity. The player now has two jobs, succeed at the game and prove their sexuality, just like what the commercials were doing for the WNBA, proving the maternity of the players. Also, if an individual is of a different race or social class, then people tend to attack that side of the person. For example, some might say that the only reason why a person is good is because of their color or the only reason why someone has the opportunity is because he/she came from a wealthy background. Many people in today’s society will find anything about someone to attack them and prove that what that individual is doing is wrong and bad for society and/or for the sport and apply labels to them. These labels lead to harassment and when it is not dealt with appropriately it can contribute to many social crises’. It may interfere with and affect an individual’s physical and emotional health, which will lead to a low self-esteem, which will lead to poor performance. It won’t just end with the individual, but continue to the organization, which could increase the turnover of staff and volunteers and diminish the reputation and image of the organization in the community.

The benefits of playing sport, no matter what one’s gender or sport, are varied ranging from enhanced self-esteem and quality of life for individuals though to lower health costs and the reduction of anti-social behavior for the community. If the player is accepted, it does wonders for the sport and the community. It makes others on the outside realize that sport has rules, but these rules do not constrict the intermingling of sexes. There have been many organizations that have created a men’s league (i.e. Georgia men’s field hockey league) or a women’s league (professional boxing) because of the interest in non-traditional sports for males and females. Since there is a high interest from individuals in a non-traditional sport, athletic directors or even coaches are willing to develop other leagues for the opposite sex. In doing this, it creates fair game for all and does not exclude anyone from participating. Even though these sports may have a slow start, over time society becomes acquainted with the fact that men play field hockey and women box, then more and more people become interested in the sport, which leads to the sport’s growth.

When an individual wants to or tries to play a non-traditional sport, there tends to be a load of controversy one must carry on his/her back. The individual not only takes the challenge of being ousted or treated differently by the community, but proving people wrong. I think this is one of the greatest things to see, when people overcome obstacles and prove others wrong. For example, in the movie Girlfight, Diana, who wanted to box like her brother, trained and achieved notable success and as a result made new trails for female boxers. At first, she had a hard time learning the skills of boxing and when she had her first match, there were sexual slurs said towards her. As the movie progressed, so did Diana’s skills and that’s when the harassment stopped. Her success not only gained acknowledgement for herself, but the fact that females could box. This is one of the greatest stories to read about because stories like this tend to pave the way for others to follow or even allow more change to occur. In today’s society, sport fans have noticed that the WNBA and other sports that have created controversy are not just a hoax and women can compete professionally like men do. Once the people see the accomplishments and success, they tend to drop some of their pre-conceived notions of non-traditional sports being played by the opposite sex.

Overall, the outcome of women playing men’s sports and vice versa is a change that both society and culture need. If society was not so concerned with people’s backgrounds or what they did behind closed doors, then athletics would have a whole different outlook for those playing or wanting to play. When people overcome obstacles, then the society seems to accept the change and with this happening it may help the society. In the short run there may be a slow start to the idea of the intermingling of sexes playing sports, but sport is such a moneymaking machine, sometimes change is what is needed in order to create ideas of marketing and in the long run it will be successful. The costs and benefits of this crossing over may vary from one society to another, but the biggest cost would be an unsuccessful emergence, which would just bring us back to the starting point. The biggest cultural and social benefit may be for that individual who succeeded in this non-traditional sport and will be used as a marketing tool. It may also create opportunities for the organization itself or society, like jobs in coaching, marketing or any other business in the area of change. It is also another way for an individual to have the chance to accomplish one’s desire for the American Dream.

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The Sex of Sports

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