I Get Around...

I have ignored this URL long enough, busy focusing on my "Juice This" blog at thefootballjuice.com, the latest edition of which is coming later today (check it out). That's fun, but can't leave this one alone. My students are all over it, for God's sake, and it's getting linked, along with their blogs, to Beyond the Game, their self-produced, online magazine.

Besides, gotta' dis on the Bulls (yeah, I know they beat Miami, so?). Gotta' see who's gonna' be wrong again about MLB predictions. And one last shout out to an athlete who coulda' been a star but wound up outshining the rest of us anyway...

BULLS LOVE:

What is up with the all the love for the Chicago Bulls? Beat the Miami Heat. Ended the Heat's 27-game winning streak. Fan tried to steal LeBron's headband. Beat the crap out of the Heat physically and got away with a Flagrant Foul or two. Did it all without Joakim Noah, without Derrick Rose, without Marco Belinelli, without Rip Hamilton.

Let's see, lost to Sacramento earlier this month, 121-79. Got the crap beat out of them. With Joakim Noah. With Marco Belinelli. And the Kings without DeMarcus Cousins. Lost to Sacramento by 42. Same team that beat Miami.

The Bulls, despite all their injuries, are pretty good. When they feel like it.

RIGHTS OF WRONG:

They call March the rites of spring for Major League Baseball teams. Everyone has an opinion too on what team will finish where. Perform all the metrics and analytics you like, but mostly it's based on last year's finish and a key acquisition or two to patch a weak spot or shore up a pitching rotation.

So I'm reading predictions everywhere that the Detroit Tigers already have the AL Central wrapped up. That the St. Louis Cardinals will find a way in the NL Central. That the Los Angeles Dodgers have spent too much money to not make the playoffs. That the New York Yankees will spend their way through their hospital ward and make the postseason.

And the Boston Red Sox are back, the Washington Nationals will repeat and the Cincinnati Reds are the class of the NL Central.

Somewhere in all of that is the surprise team, the one that comes out of nowhere and wins everywhere, makes the playoffs despite itself and every pundit says, oh yeah, we knew all along they could do it.

Yeah, right.

Everyone who picked the Oakland A's last year, please stand up. They're the same people who had the Texas Rangers in the World Series a third straight year.

And still misses the days of smoking crack with the manager.

But Terry Francona is back and in Cleveland. Watch out.

FAREWELL TO ARMS, LEGS, BUT NOT SPIRIT:

Rob Komosa passed away. He wasn't the best football player, but he was the bravest. Paralyzed after a practice accident at Rolling Meadows High School, where he played, he carried on like no other, with enough spirit for us all.

No one deserves this. And I especially feel for the kids who hit him on the practice play on which he lost everything.

But his heart.

It beat strong for another 13 years.

So long, Rob. But not good-bye.

***

Howard Schlossberg is editor of the Journal of Sports Media. He's an associate professor of journalism at Columbia College Chicago, where creativity and learning are embraced hand-in-hand. And he still writes sports for the award-recognized Daily Herald in Chicago's northwest suburbs. @hschlossberg