ESPN Tribute Stuart Scott

http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2015/1/4/7490087/espn-tribute-to-stuart-scott-video

Paul Beyer 12 for 12,s Seattle prepares to face Carolina in NFL Divisional Playoffs

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/doubleotradio/2015/01/07/12-for-12s-radio-wpaul-beyer-ep65-guest-keith-myers-of-12th-man-rising

Harvard Sports Analytics Julian Ryan Can Kentucky be Perfect NCAA MBB

http://harvardsportsanalysis.org/2015/01/can-kentucky-be-perfect/

Clash of the Titans The Breeze Mark Janisch Vol 2 Number 7

Over the recently completed Christmas  Holiday I happened to run into a sports movie from  the year 2000 with Denzel Washington. Mr. Washington played a football coach hired to replace a white football coach in Virginia circa 1971. Just as the busing and integration  laws in the U.S. were being implemented. Amidst the pressure to win and forge some kind of racial harmony. Washington some how found a way to take his team to a state championship and thus change the culture of his community. 44 years later despite much progress on the sporting front and yes the election of a biracial president. The United States seems to be on a decline in terms of morality and what I would term lawlessness and  mayhem. I have established this site as a forum for positive and constructive dialogue for discussion on all things related to sports including the socio-economic and social impacts sports has on a people and a nation. Sports is a reflection on a society a snapshot if you will
of who we are as a nation. I am sad to say the quote sports  self portrait and its reflection on society
leaves a lot to be desired. The gladiators of sport in a bygone era were more conscientious pertaining to the impact they had . Cassius Clay, Jesse Owens, Bill Russell, Curt Flood and Jackie Robinson
seemed to carry with them a greater sense of social responsibility. The Sports stars of today love to be lauded and praised and rightly so. The landscape of sports has changed markedly in  my 38 years of observation. The addiction we have as a society  to be noticed , and have our moment in the spotlight
seems to be running rampant. The chronic need to be noticed in an increasingly divided world. The demonization of the prospered seems to work these days in an increasingly left of center view that indicates that we all must be equal on a level playing field. Another great sports movie Field of dreams with Kevin Costner from 1989 in  witch Costner builds a baseball diamond in the middle of an Iowa corn field is a reflection of faith. In my own case 4 years ago on December 20th 2010
because I had no opportunity to broadcast on a regional level. I chose to take a step of faith and build a couple of moving parts that work on my own Broadcast and publishing field of sports dreams .
The platform needs improvement and needs to grow but I can say a heartfelt thank you to my viewers via  Ustream and viewers of WWS. With over 83 thousand page Views and 170 plus twitter
followers I can say I have surpassed my own expectations. As the lone visionary for what digital media and Sports media in general can become as a great  unifier bringing multiple nations and generations together under the banner of sports as recent social unrest in the USA has shown we still a long way to go remember there is No I in the word team .

To Join the team you may follow on twitter @wideworldofspor
I am Mark Alan Janisch WWS Founder this is the only written column of WWS
Ustream  News Sports Analysis and Opinion

Grantland NBA Overnight Trades and more

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/nba-overnight-the-dubs-roll-the-thunder-dion-gets-traded-dirk-passes-moses-and-more/

Peter Gammons Colorado Conondrum and the MLB HOF Voting Cycle 2015

Peter Gammons: The Colorado Conundrum

January 3, 2015 by Peter Gammons 9 Comments

Some of us go into Hall of Fame Tuesday hoping that at least a half-dozen players are voted into Cooperstown, beginning with Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Mike Mussina and John Smoltz on down the line. This has been a month when there has been a great deal of thought given to the process, partly because on this year’s ballot there were at least a half-dozen players beyond the allowed ten.
Edgar Martinez, obviously, is one, in many ways a discussion bridging Paul Molitor and Frank Thomas to, in time, David Ortiz. How many appreciate what a fierce hitter Gary Sheffield was? That log-splitter swing produced 509 home runs, while walking 270 more times than he struck out, never reaching 90 strikeouts in a season. Heck, Jackie Bradley, Jr. struck out 121 times in 384 at-bats, and the Reds traded for a guy (Marlon Byrd) who had more strikeouts in 2014 than Sheffield had in his two worst seasons, combined. Jeff Kent hit 377 homers, played hard and tough and could really turn the double play.
But the player that has most confounded me the last two votes is Larry Walker. One former teammate, Brad Ausmus, fondly recalls “he did a lot of things really well,” and another, Jerry DiPoto, says “he was a great all-around player. He was a great right fielder who could throw. He was an instinctively great baserunner. He had power, he hit for average. He was one of the best all-around players I ever saw.”
OK, yes, we see the splits. .381 at Coors, .282 on the road. 1.172 OPS at Coors, .873 on the road. Thus Walker received 10.2 per cent of the vote last January, and Tuesday could find himself off the ballot with less than 5 per cent.
Yet, I am convinced that Walker is a far better player and complex study than a two-and-out guy. Growing up in British Columbia, he did not ask to play in Denver. He was never going to be fully appreciated playing in Montreal, even if that 1994 team was the best in the game before the lights went out on the season.
Walker is not alone. Todd Helton was a tremendous player whose career was lowercased by the Coors splits. The same goes as Troy Tulowitzki reaches baseball middle age. Take a look at Walker, Helton, Tulowitzki and the aggregate Rockies’ numbers over a 20-year period, then perhaps you’ll at least re-assess the careers of Walker and Helton and beg for Tulowitzki to be traded to the Reds, Cardinals, White Sox or some home city where his numbers are freed from the Coors Asterisk and his body can recover enough for him to play 145-150 games a year.
The numbers:



Walker won seven gold gloves. In a three year run he hit .366, .363 and .379. His 1997 slash line was .366/.452/.720 with 49 homers, a 1.172 OPS and 409 total bases, winning the MVP. He’s 12^th all-time in slugging, 15^th in OPS, ninth in double plays from right field.
But the career 1.172/.873 OPS and 209 points difference in slugging? Can’t be explained, or forgotten or overlooked.
DiPoto and Dan O’Dowd talk how different it is when players go on the road. “At Coors, with the altitude and the air pitches simply don’t run,” says DiPoto. “Breaking balls are not the same. The infield is hard, and balls shoot through the gaps, no matter what they try to do with the balls (and the thermidor). Hitters get used to very little movement. Then they get out on the road and it’s just the opposite. It seems like everyone’s pitches are running like they’re Kevin Brown. Breaking balls seem to break harder and deeper. Pitchers deal with the reverse.
“It’s as if you’re playing two very different games, which isn’t easy.”
If Walker, Helton and Tulowitzki had played in a normal hitters park like in Cincinnati, the south side of Chicago or Baltimore, how would their numbers look, and how would they be perceived?
One thing that has hurt Walker is that in his 17 year career, he played 145 games in a season once. He averaged 123 games. Granted, he opened his career in Montreal and wound down in St. Louis, but his peers and his general manager, O’Dowd, maintain a major factor in that games played —aside from his reckless, fearless style—is the recovery difficulties because of the altitude. “We tried everything to try to deal with it, but nothing worked for any length of time,” says O’Dowd. “Everyday players don’t bounce back. It takes a tremendous toll on pitchers (remember Mike Hampton’s hyperbaric chamber?).”
Helton was the most durable of the three, albeit playing first base; as he aged, he played as many as 124 games one of his final six years. The altitude has taken a toll on Tulowitzki, who is only 30 but has played more than 126 games once in the last five seasons. That he is recovering from hip surgery and may have to prove he’s back while playing in a home park where recovery is such an issue, has scared some teams interesting in his tremendous talent.
At this point, do we undervalue Walker because of his inflated Denver numbers? And fail to appreciate how hard it is to play what essentially is two different games, half at an elevation that makes recovery so difficult?
Do we truly appreciate Helton and Tulowitzki?
My sense is that Larry Walker was a Hall of Fame player who, in the end, won’t make it because he played at Coors Field; had he played in Baltimore he likely would have been a first ballot invitee to Cooperstown.
We’ll never know. What we do know is that the Rockies have never won a World Series game, much less a World Series, they’ve never finished first or won 93 games…and there are reasons most of us will never fully appreciate.

Harvard Sports Analysis Ben Zausmer Ponders If all Sports were like Boxing ?

http://harvardsportsanalysis.org/2015/01/what-if-all-sports-were-like-boxing/

UCSB MBB 63-50 Win Over FGCU UCSB 7-7 Overall

http://ucsbgauchos.com/sports/m-baskbl/2014-15/releases/2015010648wkoy

Vince Lombardi Jr Remembers Stuart Scott

http://outsidepitchmlb.com/2015/01/04/remembering-espn-personality-stuart-scott/