FanNation - The Republic of Sport

"school is out and it's a sort of a buzz
a back then I didn't really know what it was
but now I see what have of this
the way that people respond to summer madness...."

O Will Smith where are when we need you. The NBA draft is over, Training camp hasn't began and I already drafted my fantesy football team. With the Simpson Movie being not coming out till late July and baseball just finishing hiting the halfway point I'm begging for something to hold me over for the next few weeks.

Since I have been watching sportscenter daily for Kobegate, I notice them doing some sort of tournament to find out who "in" athlete of today. At first I paid it no mind, simply because thier was so much draft hype between the Lakers getting KG or the Suns getting Sk or the Lakers getting JO. But now since that passed I decided to give it a shot. If you don't know how it goes ESPN has made a Bracket of the 32 most "In" atheletes today to find out which one is the most "Now" athlete today. The 32 Athletes are broken down in to 4 brackets which are call the Michael Jordan Bracket, Muhammed Ali Bracket, Babe Ruth Bracket, and the Billie Jean King Bracket. I found it funny how they included Billie Jean King since A). about 2% of sports fans under the age of 20 know who she is and B) it shows how bad ESPN wants to make a ESPNWomans network. The exact Bracket looks like the following

MICHAEL JORDAN BRACKET
July 1: (1) Tiger Woods vs (8) Matt Leinart
July 2: (4) Dwyane Wade vs (5) Shaun White
July 3: (2) LaDainian Tomlinson vs (7) David Beckham
July 4: (3) Steve Nash vs (6) Serena Williams

MUHAMMAD ALI BRACKET
July 5: (1) Peyton Manning vs (8) Amanda Beard
July 6: (4) Dale Earnhardt Jr vs (5) Chuck Liddell
July 7: (2) Alex Rodriguez vs (7) Terrell Owens
July 8: (3) Kobe Bryant vs (6) Ronaldinho

BILLIE JEAN KING BRACKET
July 9: (1) LeBron James vs (8) Kelly Slater
July 10: (4) Jeff Gordon vs (5) Barry Bonds
July 11: (2) Derek Jeter vs (7) Sidney Crosby
July 12: (3) Reggie Bush vs (6) Danica Patrick

BABE RUTH BRACKET
July 13: (1) Tom Brady vs (8) David Ortiz
July 14: (4) Maria Sharapova vs (5) Vince Young
July 15: (2) Roger Federer vs (7) Tony Parker
July 16: (3) Shaquille O'Neal vs (6) Michael Phelps

The dates symbolize when they will announce the winners on "Sportscenter". Let me start off by saying the following: This list Explains everything wrong in sports. Apparently winning does not matter anymore. It is officially all about the Benjamins at this point. Look at the fact that LeBron James is a 1 seed and Steve Nash is a 3 seed. Now look at Tony Parker as a 7 seed and Dwyane Wade as a 4 seed. Um didn't those two guys win the Finals MVP back-2-back? Has Steve Nash Played in an NBA Finals? Has Lebron James shown up in the NBA Finals? The saddest thing about the whole list is the ommission of Tim Duncan. He is the greatest power forward to ever throw on a NBA uniform but time and time again ESPN $hits on him and never talks about him simply because he doesn't make news. But yet they crush guys who always get in trouble or are always in the spotlight for bad attention. Say if Allen Iverson and Tim Duncan switched personalities. Wouldn't he be number 1 in the "Billie King" Bracket simply because he had tattoes and screamed after his bank shot? All he does is win but yet he gets no Publicy for being the best in his sport.

Thier are bigger problems than that with this list:

-TO is 33 years old and didn't even make the Probowl last season while Chad Johnson is one of the most entertaining guys in the NFL. What about Steve Smith who has the best playoff stats of any active Wide reciever. Calvin Johnson Maybe?

-Sure people know who A-rod is but didn't Albert Pujous win a World Series? Didn't he actually perform in the playoffs. And why is Barry Bonds even close to this list? Does anyone outside of San Fransico like him? Ichiro should have tooken his spot easily. Or at least Ken Griffey Jr.

- Lets look at sports popularity as a whole. Their NFL, then NBA/MLB depending on who you are. Then what? College Sports. In fact some can argue that college football and basketball are more popular than MLB and NBA. So it makes no sense to me why the Greatest College Freshman Basketball player doesn't make the list but a swimmer, a x-games athlete, and some girl named Kelly Slater do.

- Lets see, you win a national championship in dramatic fashion, you have 4 comebacks on the NFL level and make a terrible team actually contend for the playoffs and you are on the cover of one of the most popular video games....but your a five seed to two tennis players that don't speak english as a first languange.

- Shaq is 35 years old and just got swept out of the playoffs. Meanwhile Amare Stoudemire Just made All-NBA 1st team, Yao Ming was 3rd in all-star voting, Tim Duncan won his 4th ring, and Greg Oden just went number 1 in the draft. I'm just saying they had better people to choose than a center that played 40 games this season.

- Lets be honest. I'm trying my hard to not sound like a pig or anything but seriously do we really have to add some of the females athletes. Seriously If Danica Patrick wasn't a woman would we know who she was? Has she even won a race yet? I mean I'm not trying to be mean but do the likes of Carson Palmer, Dirk Nowitski, Tracy Mcgrady, Jason Taylor, Donovan Mcnabb, Ryan Howard and Johan Santana have to suffer. And who is Kelly Slater?

Other than that the list looks fine. I must say it is a popularity contest so i can't complain anyway my picks for the Michael Jordan Bracket look something like this:Tiger over Lienart by 35%(Lienart should be replace by Carson Palmer), Dwayne Wade over Shaun White by 30%(NBA>Xgames), LT over Beckam by 4%(NFL nation overcomes Posh Spice and Beckam barely), and Nash over Williams by 20% (two-time MVP vs. a female tennis player)

When does Training camp start again????