Moments of Grace: High School Basketball Player Passes Ball to Mentally Challenged Player on Other Team

Doctors: Junior Seau's Brain Had CTE

ESPN has the story regarding NFL great Junior Seau's autopsy, showing that he was suffering from CTE brain damage at the time of his suicide. Yet another shoe drops. See the story and video here. And in a follow up story, a teammate describes the damage done during practices: click here for the ESPN story.

NFL Quarterbacks as Facebook Friends

Funny stuff from totalprosports: Here's Part I Part II

Oliver Wang on the Lin-Sanity of Jeremy Lin

A great guest post by scholar and DJ Oliver Wang at T.N. Coates' blog at the Atlantic. Coates' page is also recommended for its great commentary. check it out.

Fung Brothers: Stuff Peple Say About Jeremy Lin

Zooey Deschanel's Performance of the National Anthem at the World Series10/23/11

I was traveling and didn't see it live, but I was surprised that certain right-wing pundits were criticizing her performance as being not "triumphant" enough. When there are too many melismas people criticize the anthem, and now this very moving and understated version apparently isn't the musical equivalent of a big foam "We're #1" hand. I think it is nice and really gets to the ethos of the song while putting the emphasis on the anthem's subject matter more than the performer. Link from MLB with an ad up front:

Sustainable Eco-Friendly Surfboards

For as wonderful a sport surfing is, and how surfers are devoted to the sea, their surfboards are very unfriendly to the environment. Well, here comes a eco-friendly surfboard:

Surfer magazine

Moss Research Announces “Industry-First” Sustainable Surfboards
Eco-Flex™ Technologies Gain Sustainability Endorsement
By SURFER/ Posted on January 25, 2011

SOLANA BEACH, CA Master surfboard shaper Jake Moss, 15 year manufacturer of Moss Research Surfboards announces the availability of a new collection of surfboards, which define the industry standard in meeting sustainability criteria relating to human, environmental, economic, and social impacts.

Up until now, Surfboard making has arguably been one of the least “eco-friendly” crafts around. The traditional surfboard manufacturing process is toxic and emits gases known to be hazardous to shapers; the process depletes the ozone layer, and contributes to global warming. Previously, alternatives have not resulted in performance improvements for surfers. “The few people making ‘green’ boards have run in to two problems; the performance is never as good as a conventional surfboard, and they haven’t been able to demonstrate them as eco-friendly,” says Jake Moss. “Our Eco-boards, refined over the past 4 years, are better to surf than conventional boards. And we’ve worked hard to establish that our construction processes and materials are, in fact, more environmentally friendly.”

The customizable line of Moss Research boards utilizes “Eco-Flex” technology, which gets its name from a construction process using plant fibers, a 100% recycled core and an ultra strong and elastic plant-based, non-VOC (volatile organic compound) resin.

According to Moss, “The performance surfboard never had a sustainable beginning.” In the late 1950’s the lightweight surfboard, using a polyurethane core reinforced with fiberglass and polyester resin was introduced. It was a performance breakthrough, however, at a time where there were few surfers and little consideration to the waste streams produced. To date, a majority of boards are still made of the same materials, toxic and non-recyclable plastics, containing diisocyanates (MDI, TDI) and VOCs.

Now, with a world surfing population of over 10 million, with each surfer owning an average of 3 boards, there are over 30 million surfboards in use. These boards will eventually become garbage, with no way to down-cycle the resources. “Plastic recycling has never been a ‘closed loop’, with over 30% of all plastics having the potential to end up in the ocean, in the North Pacific Gyre. That’s a horrific version of the future that no surfer wants to help create”, Moss says.
Read the whole story in Surfer Magazine.

Vuvuzela bans in England

BBC
Page last updated at 16:57 GMT, Tuesday, 20 July 2010 17:57 UK

Premier League and Football League clubs ban vuvuzelas


Advertisement

Vuvuzela: The sound of the summer

A growing number of Premier League clubs are following Tottenham's lead and banning vuvuzelas from their grounds on match days this season.

Arsenal, Birmingham, Everton, Fulham and West Ham are the latest teams to have stated the plastic horns will not be allowed inside stadia.

Some Football League clubs have also banned the horns, which were popular at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Spurs made their decision after talks with police and local authorities.

The Londoners reacted upon suggestions the noise could pose risks to public safety, while Arsenal stated they wanted to "ensure the enjoyment and safety" of fans.

A Spurs statement on the club's official website. read: "We are concerned that the presence of the instruments within the stadium pose unnecessary risks and could impact on the ability of all supporters to hear any emergency safety announcements.

"We are very proud of the fantastic atmosphere that our supporters produce organically at White Hart Lane and we are all very much looking forward to this continuing into the forthcoming season."

The Premier League has refused to implement a widespread ban, stating that "such matters are dealt with at club level".

.........
Following their widespread use during the World Cup in South Africa, retailers across Britain have being selling vuvuzelas in anticipation of their popularity.

However, the horns have been heavily criticised by players and fans alike with many suggesting they are tuneless and block out singing and chanting.

The All England Club banned the instrument from this summer's Wimbledon, amidst fears that they could spoil the event.

Similarly, a spokesman for Henley Royal Regatta stated that vuvuzelas were on a list of items which would not be allowed within the enclosures or the boat tent area.

The England and Wales Cricket Board has said that each Test venue would be able to decide its policy on which items could be admitted.

Read the full post and see video HERE.

If Basketball was like soccer

From Erlesque:

Vuvuzela: The Buzz of the World Cup

Vuvuzela: The Buzz of the World Cup

Smithsonian

Deafening to fans, broadcasters and players, the ubiquitous plastic horn is closely tied to South Africa’s soccer tradition

* By Jim Morrison
* Smithsonian.com, June 08, 2010

Players taking to the pitch for the World Cup games in South Africa may want to pack some extra equipment in addition to shinguards, cleats and jerseys: earplugs.

The earplugs will protect against the aural assault of vuvuzelas. The plastic horns are a South African cultural phenomenon that that when played by hundreds or thousands of fans, sounds like a giant, angry swarm of hornets amplified to a volume that would make Ozzy Osbourne flinch. South African fans play the horns to spur their favorite players into action on the field.

......

A study in the South African Medical Journal released earlier this year said fans subjected to the vuvuzela swarm were exposed to a deafening peak of more than 140 decibels, equivalent to standing near a jet engine. The South African Association of Audiologists has warned they can damage hearing.

Noisemakers at soccer matches have a long history....

Read the full post HERE.





and some opposing graphics from Facebook pages:




Techno!


and a little something extra:

Nike's epic Write the Future commercial

I can't believe I'm posting a commercial, but this one, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, is so good I cannot resist:

Slate on Brittney Griner, Femininity, and Women's Basketball Athletes

Slam Dunks and Nail Polish: Brittney Griner and the feminine dilemma of women's basketball.

By Hanna Rosin
Posted Tuesday, April 6, 2010, at 1:42 PM ET

SLATE

On Sunday before each of the women's NCAA Tournament semifinals, ESPN aired a let's-get-to-know-our-players clip. This makes sense given the relative obscurity of women's basketball players. The real agenda, however, seemed to be to convince viewers that these players are actually women. Each bio clip unfolds like fairy-tale dress-up: A player appears in her daytime clothes, and then—with the help of some presto twirl magic—in her basketball uniform. Stanford's Rosalyn Gold-Onwude is "something like a diva," she says, giggling and vamping in her flirty fuchsia dress. Her teammate Jeanette Pohlen says she "owns over 90 colors of nail polish," and Cardinal center Jayne Appel confesses that her favorite day at the sorority house is "sandwich day." Baylor's Morghan Medlock, dressed in a pink stripy tank top and headband, says she likes to shop. Once the women change into their basketball clothes, they shift their focus from the mall to the court. "I'm a nightmare on the glass," Medlock says.

The result is a confusing mishmash of girl-power messages, something like the sounds that emit from working-woman talking Barbie—"I have e-mail!" and then "I can't wait to go dancing with Ken!" Brittney Griner, the 6-foot-8 freshman from Baylor University, could never be excluded from these getting-to-know-you intros because she is, as the announcers declare, "the talk of the tournament." But she does not exactly fit the bill. She looks pretty much the same pre-twirl as post-twirl, in black pants and a black T-shirt. She smiles shyly and says in her deep voice, "I'm Brittney Griner, and I love bacon." (At least that's what it sounds like—it's hard to tell from the clip.) In the final parade of lady players, she flexes her muscles in the center as her shorter teammates pose around her.

In theory, the women's tournament should be a time to celebrate the vast array of women's talents and body types. True, these women do not play nearly as hard and fast as their male counterparts. Still, it is a genuine pleasure to watch these Amazons display the fierce concentration and physical fearlessness we are so used to seeing from men. This is the lofty spirit of Title IX—that even in spheres we have long considered the exclusive domain of macho, women can hold their own. I always try to make my daughter watch a few minutes of replay, and talk to her about the players as if they are civil rights heroes like Rosa Parks.

But women's college basketball, like many professional women's sports, often seems uncomfortable with its own unconventional version of femininity. In the WNBA, the Washington Mystics don't have a "Kiss Cam" during timeouts because some fans might get offended by lesbian smooching. "We got a lot of kids here. We just don't find it appropriate," Sheila Johnson, the team's managing partner, explained last year. The league's rookie orientation has included seminars on fashion, hair, and makeup. "It's all contributing to how to be a professional," WNBA president Donna Orender said about the beauty sessions. To grow its audience—and to avoid the perception that it's a sport exclusively played by and marketed to lesbians—women's basketball gets packaged as a wholesome family sport replete with all-American ladies. But that aspiration limits the range of possible feminine archetypes.

Into this dilemma walks Griner, a freshman phenom who dunks, wears size 17 men's shoes, and has a wingspan of 86 inches. If anything can save women's basketball from obscurity, Griner is it. The University of Connecticut's team, which beat Baylor Sunday night, has a 77-game winning streak and great players in Maya Moore and Tina Charles. But Moore and Charles do not stand out like Brittney Griner. The Baylor star was universally ranked as the top recruit when she came out of her Texas high school last year. In her senior year, she dunked the ball 52 times in 32 games. In her first college season she's already set records for blocked shots, and her four dunks aren't far off from Candace Parker's career college record of seven. After Sunday night's game against UConn, Huskies head coach Geno Auriemma whispered his congratulations to Griner and said he hoped to coach her one day, maybe in the Olympics. After their conversation, Griner broke out into a big smile.

But Griner fits no one's idea of traditional femininity. In a close-up head shot her features look quite delicate. But this only makes it more shocking to hear her voice, which is deep and husky and outside what we register as a feminine range. Off the court, she dresses and walks in a way that would probably not be greeted with approval at a WNBA rookie orientation beauty seminar. .....

Read the full post, plus audio, images, and links HERE.

Op-ed argues for eliminating baseball skybox deductions.

NYT
Op-Ed Contributors
Throw Out Skybox Tax Subsidies

By RICHARD SCHMALBECK and JAY SOLED
Published: April 4, 2010

UNTIL the 1970s, Major League Baseball was a populist sport. Bleacher seats cost as little as a dollar, meaning middle- or even working-class fans could afford to take their families to a game a few times each season.

But in the years since, tickets to baseball games — along with other professional sports events — have skyrocketed in cost. Over the last two decades, the average ticket price for a Chicago Cubs game has increased 265 percent, more than four times the inflation rate. Add in parking, concessions and souvenirs, and a family trip to one of this week’s opening day games could easily cost a few hundred dollars.

There are many reasons for the price explosion, but a critical factor has been the ability of businesses to write off tickets as entertainment expenses — essentially a huge, and wholly unnecessary, government subsidy.

These deductions have led to higher ticket prices in two ways. On the demand side, they have fueled competition for scarce seats, with business taxpayers bidding in part with dollars they save through the deductions.

On the supply side, the large number of businesses bidding for expensive seats has driven the expansion of luxury skyboxes and a reduction in overall seats in new ballparks.

While baseball parks built in the 1960s and before held as many as 56,000 seats, the modern trend is toward smaller-capacity parks, with a higher percentage of total space dedicated to skyboxes. The new Yankee Stadium, the only major-league park built since 2000 with more than 44,000 seats, has 3,000 fewer seats than its 1923 predecessor but almost three times as many skybox suites.

Congress has occasionally expressed concern about deductions for business entertainment, including tickets to sporting events. In 1962, it placed limits on the deductibility of business entertainment generally. In 1986 it restricted the deductibility of luxury skybox tickets to the face value of non-luxury premium tickets, like center-court seats at a basketball game or behind-the-plate seats at a baseball game. For example, if a ticket to a skybox suite cost $500 and a seat behind the plate cost $100, a business could deduct only $100, subject to other limitations on deductibility.

That made sense when there was still a substantial price disparity between skybox seats and tickets for even the choicest non-luxury seats. But the price for non-luxury premium tickets has grown significantly in recent years — thanks in part to endless demand from businesses and the use of more sophisticated, Web-based pricing tools by the teams — rendering the skybox rule meaningless.

Ideally, Congress would get rid of business-entertainment deductions altogether — after all, they are little more than an excuse for corporate executives to consume luxury items at a discount, distorting markets and cheating the public out of substantial tax revenue.

Given corporate America’s passionate attachment to sports-related perks, a blanket elimination may be unrealistic, though. A more feasible but still effective approach would be to limit deductions for luxury skybox tickets to a low, fixed amount — say, $50 per seat, per game.

Such a limit would be fair, unambiguous and easy to enforce. But above all, it would help baseball return to its roots, when average folks — not corporate entertainers — were the ones filling the seats.

Richard Schmalbeck is a law professor at Duke. Jay Soled is a professor at the Rutgers Business School.

Slate on the Baseball Card Bubble

SLATE

sports nut
The Great Baseball Card Bubble
Before tech stocks and McMansions, there was cardboard.
By Dave Jamieson
Posted Wednesday, March 24, 2010, at 12:01 PM ET

How come that Frank Thomas rookie card you stowed away in 1990 is now worth less than a Happy Meal? Chalk it up to the baseball card bubble of the late 1980s and early 1990s. In a new book, Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession, Dave Jamieson tells the story of how baseball cards evolved from a tobacco marketing gimmick in the 19th century into a massive, big-money industry of their own by the late 20th century. In this excerpt, Jamieson explains how baseball cards first became seen as promising investments, setting the stage for a decade of speculation and overproduction.

Around the mid-1970s, a small cabal of serious baseball card collectors grew wise to the fact that their cards had become valuable. Cards had almost always had prices attached to them, even when prolific collector and cataloger Jefferson Burdick began sending out his Card Collectors Bulletin in the 1930s. But cards that had been worth a few cents were now worth a few bucks, and some of the rarer specimens, such as the T206 Honus Wagner, were commanding hundreds and occasionally thousands of dollars apiece. The number of trade shows sprouting up in the East and the Midwest testified to a growing market.

By this time, the most aggressive card collectors had started crisscrossing the country in search of private hoards of cardboard that could be snatched up at bargain prices. Unlike school kids, these men were well-aware of baseball cards' status as a commodity—albeit an undervalued one—and many of these enthusiasts could credit their early transactions with turning them into wealthy men later in life.

"We'd pick an area of the country—say, Ohio—and take about a 10- or 15-day road trip," recalls Kit Young, who today owns a massive mail-order business in San Diego. "You'd take eight or 10 grand for a four-city hit. We'd rent a car, go around the towns, and we'd have ads in the local papers saying, 'Old Baseball Cards Wanted. … We'll be at the Holiday Inn.' You'd get one crack at them, and you paid by cash."

One of Young's old colleagues, dealer Gar Miller of Wenonah, N.J., says the excitement was in wondering what would walk through the door: "You might find some beautiful collection that had unopened packs of cards. It was just thrilling." For the itinerant and well-informed hobbyist, it wasn't difficult to get a good deal from the noncollectors who showed up at the Holiday Inn, considering there were no price guides to govern transactions in those days. "You didn't know what anything was worth," explains Miller.

This loophole in the hobby would soon be closed by a statistics professor from Bowling Green University named James Beckett III. Beckett had grown up on Topps cards in the 1950s, and after lapsing in high school and college, he got back into collecting while pursuing a Ph.D. in statistics. Like Young and Miller, Beckett started checking into motels around the country during the '70s. The more dealings he had, the more he could see that no one had any firm notion of the market value of baseball cards.

In 1976, he launched a poll in the hobby newspapers, asking dealers and collectors how much particular cards had been selling for in recent months. Because collectors were inclined to juice the value of cards they had in hand, Beckett sought several hundred respondents so that egregiously high or low numbers would cancel one another out. The following year, he published a rudimentary price list whose valuations seem positively rock-bottom compared with today's: The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, now fetching hundreds of thousands of dollars in fine condition, was listed at $50. In 1979, Beckett and a partner, Dennis Eckes, released the Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide, which they started updating annually.
.....
Dave Jamieson is the author of Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession.

Read the full story HERE.

Slate defends Lindsey Vonn's bikini photo shoot vis-a-vis the preferred olympic beauties (figure skaters)

Interesting article in SLATE comparing Olympic ski champion Lindsey Vonn's bikini photo shoot for Sports Illustrated to the usual female athlete darlings of the olympics: figure skaters. This was written before Vonn's breathtaking victory in the downhill, as was this good background story in the NYT.

SLATE
five-ring circus
Bunny Slope
Think Lindsey Vonn's bikini photos are exploitative? At least she's not an ice princess in a short skirt.
By Hanna Rosin
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010, at 12:24 PM ET

It's safe to say that Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn, who's scheduled to make her Vancouver debut on Wednesday, has upped her male viewership with her extensive spread in Sports Illustrated's latest swimsuit issue. [Update, Feb. 17: In her first race of the Winter Games, Vonn took the gold medal in the women's downhill.] In the 45 photos posted on SI.com, Vonn offers up the fantasy of Vail mistress by vamping her way through all the bikini clichés: bikini in the snow, bikini in bed, bikini next to big whirring machine, bikini (whoops!) slipping down, bikini in the sauna, legs slightly spread, etc. It's appalling, really, that the poster girl for the U.S. Olympics team, a woman whose promise is compared to Michael Phelps', should behave for all the world like a Playboy bunny. Or at least it's appalling until we consider the alternative for a female Winter Olympian: a role as a pixie whose notion of sexy involves sparkly outfits and blue eye shadow.

For the last few Winter Games the figure skaters have served as the darlings of American Olympics coverage. In the last decade, much of the publicity has gone to Michelle Kwan, who attended her first Olympics at the vulnerable age of 13. During the mid-1990s, Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan sucked up all the attention with their on the rink, off the rink hysterical dramas. Watching pairs skating these last few nights has reminded me of what the figure skating narrative is all about: tender young fawns gliding to maudlin music, getting thrown around, and landing on frail ankles. The vibe is more Virgin Suicides than professional sports and is thus, from the teach-your-daughters point of view, problematic.

This year, for various reasons, the United States does not have a figure skating star who has captured the media's heart. The Japanese and South Koreans dominate the competition, with the Chinese and Russians not far behind. Instead, the American media have settled for Vonn, a 25-year-old hearty blonde whose legs—in the nonbikini photo shoots—look like they could easily shove a truck down a hill. Vonn, too, has shown some vulnerability in her pre-Olympics media opportunities. She went on the Today show last week to confess she had a "deep muscle bruise" that made it difficult even to put on her ski boot. But this was not the bury-your-head-in-your-partner's-chest-and–manage-a-brave-smile operatic vulnerability that the skaters are so good at. Instead, it was the kind of honest emotionalism you might hear from professional football players if they were free to talk about their injuries. The end result was just to increase the legend of Vonn as a tough broad who will ski through any amount of pain. (She has since said she is OK to compete.)

No doubt, female figure skaters train with just as much grit and determination as skiers. But the Olympics—particularly the Olympics as covered by network television—allows for a limited number of tropes, and the one assigned to skiers (female gladiator) is far preferable to the one assigned to skaters (tragic nymph). Feminist academics have long agonized over what little girls learn by idolizing figure skaters, as Ellyn Kestnbaum explains in Culture on Ice: Figure Skating and Cultural Meaning. The sport, they argue, rates femininity over talent, so Harding lost to Kerrigan, and then Kerrigan succumbed to the daintier Oksana Baiul. They are weepy heroines, trapped in a fairy tale—ice princesses spinning for gold. They dress like music box ballerinas, in outfits that suggest both prude and tart. Skating rules forbid bare midriffs and require "skirts and pants covering the hips and posterior." Skaters have played with this rule by interpreting "pants" as nude tights and by wearing skirts that cover the posterior when the skater is standing still but fly up when they jump.

....

There have been other Olympians in the Lindsey Vonn mold. Picabo Street, a friend of Vonn's, won a gold medal in the 1998 Winter Olympics. Speed skater Bonnie Blair is tied with Apolo Ohno as the American with the most medals in the Winter Olympics. Hannah Kearney, who won the gold in moguls this week, seemed deeply appealing, showing up for her post-race interview swinging her sneakers. But their fame does not tend to stick. The skaters hog all the glory, performing in shows, appearing in commercials into a ripe old age. Dorothy Hamill is still a household name and was just hired by Vaseline to shill their new face cream. Bonnie Blair, despite her record, is mostly unknown. Street is retired and raising her children.

......

One of the reasons skaters have enduring appeal is that they get to show their bodies. The camera lingers on their theatrical expressions, their arched backs, their perfect calves. We watch them as they wait to receive their scores, smiling and weeping on camera for minutes on end. Skiers, meanwhile, charge down the mountain so fast you can barely see them. They're also covered up from head to toe, with even their expressions hidden behind goggles. Unless NBC makes her the subject of a soft-focus feature, you might not get to see a skier's face until she's standing at the podium receiving her medal. For those still offended by Vonn's photo shoot, think of it this way: By posing in a bikini, she has just evened the playing field.

Read the whole story (plus discussion and lots of links) HERE.

Geaux Saints!

A big shout out for the Saints football team of New Orleans, my previous city. Four-and-a-half years after the Superdome was a refuge of misery, sheltering people from the flooding of Hurricane Katrina, tonight that same building hosted a tremendous Conference championship victory. I am so happy for New Orleans. Geaux Saints!

Aborigines offended by ice dance routine

I have to include the photo with this one:



SI

Posted: Sunday January 24, 2010 1:58PM; Updated: Sunday January 24, 2010 2:10PM
Aborigines offended by ice dance

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- An Aboriginal-themed routine by two Russian ice dancers has stirred up a pre-Olympic controversy, with some indigenous Australians blasting the "rip off" of their culture and Canadian native leaders worrying about the insensitivity of the skaters.

World champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin are doing an Aboriginal routine for their original dance -- complete with brown-toned costumes adorned with leaves and white Aboriginal-style markings. Their music includes a didgeridoo riff.

In the original dance, couples can create any kind of dance that falls within an assigned theme. This year's theme is country/folk, and skaters are doing routines to everything from Indian music to country western to Moldovian folk songs.

"It's appalling," Bev Manton, chairperson of the Aboriginal Land Council in New South Wales state, said of Domnina and Shabalin's choice. "The whole thing was a poor effort. They could have provided more respect to our culture by doing more research."

Domnina, who won the European dance title with Shabalin last week, has said that they researched their dance by watching online videos of Aboriginal dances.

Read the full story HERE.

Former NBA star/bassist Wayman Tisdale dies at age 44

SI

Former NBA veteran Tisdale dies at age 44



Wherever Wayman Tisdale went, whatever he was doing, chances were he was smiling.

Tisdale was a three-time All-American at Oklahoma in the mid-1980s before playing a dozen years in the NBA and later becoming an accomplished jazz musician.

But those who knew Tisdale, who died Friday at a hospital in his hometown of Tulsa, Okla., recalled not only his professional gifts but a perpetually sunny outlook, even in the face of a two-year battle with cancer that took his life at 44.

"I don't know of any athlete at Oklahoma or any place else who was more loved by the fans who knew him than Wayman Tisdale," said Billy Tubbs, who coached Tisdale with the Sooners. "He was obviously, a great, great player, but Wayman as a person overshadowed that. He just lit up a room and was so positive."

Jeff Capel, the current Oklahoma coach, noted Tisdale's "incredible gift of making the people who came in contact with him feel incredibly special."

After three years at Oklahoma, Tisdale played in the NBA with the Indiana Pacers, Sacramento Kings and Phoenix Suns. The 6-foot-9 forward, with a soft left-handed touch on the court, averaged 15.3 points for his career. He was on the U.S. team that won the gold medal in the 1984 Olympics.

Gov. Brad Henry attended Oklahoma at the same time Tisdale did and later appointed him to the state's Tourism Commission.

"Oklahoma has lost one of its most beloved sons," Henry said. "Wayman Tisdale was a hero both on and off the basketball court. ... Even in the most challenging of times, he had a smile for people, and he had the rare ability to make everyone around him smile. He was one of the most inspirational people I have ever known."

State senators paused and prayed Friday morning after learning of his death.

Tisdale learned he had cancerous cyst below his right knee after breaking his leg in a fall at his home in Los Angeles on Feb. 8, 2007. He said then he was fortunate to have discovered the cancer early.

"Nothing can change me," Tisdale told The Associated Press last June. "You go through things. You don't change because things come in your life. You get better because things come in your life."

His leg was amputated last August and a prosthetic leg that he wore was crimson, one of Oklahoma's colors. He attended an Oklahoma City Thunder game April 7 and later that month was honored at the Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa. During the ceremony, he spoke about his cancer, saying "In my mind, I've beaten it."

He recently told Tulsa television station KTUL he had acute esophagitis, which prevented him from eating for about five weeks and led to significant weight loss. Among the causes of that condition are infections, medications, radiation therapy and systemic disease.

Last month, Tisdale was chosen for induction into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.

He was the first freshman to be a first-team All-American since freshmen were allowed to play again in the 1971-72 season. He was also one of 10 three-time All-Americans. Patrick Ewing and Tisdale were the last to accomplish the feat, from 1983-85.

"On the court, he was an offensive machine that could score with the best of them," said Dallas Mavericks president Donnie Nelson, an assistant on Tisdale's Suns teams. "Off the court, he was grounded in faith and family."

Tisdale played on an Olympic team that sailed to the gold medal in Los Angeles. The squad was coached by Bob Knight and featured the likes of Ewing, Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins and Chris Mullin.

"Wayman was kind of a catalyst for people accepting roles," said C.M. Newton, the manager of the '84 team and now chairman of the NIT selection committee. "Michael was the leader of the team but Wayman was special in that way."

Perkins and Tisdale shared a love of music and became friends during the Olympics. Perkins later was the best man at Tisdale's wedding.

"That's a real friend who's got your back and would do just about anything for you," Perkins said. "That smile just gets you."

As a musician, Tisdale recorded eight albums. A bass guitarist who often wrote his own material, his most recent album, "Rebound," was inspired by his fight with cancer and included guest appearances by several artists, including saxophonist Dave Koz and country star and fellow Oklahoma native Toby Keith.

His "Way Up!" release debuted in July 2006 and spent four weeks as the No. 1 contemporary jazz album. His hits included "Ain't No Stopping Us Now," "Can't Hide Love" and "Don't Take Your Love Away."

"He was truly an inspiration to me, paving the way for an athlete like myself to pursue a passion for writing and performing music," said Bernie Williams, the former New York Yankees star turned jazz musician. "I had the honor and privilege of having Wayman perform on the title track of my new album, and was looking forward to collaborating with him again."

Tisdale averaged 25.6 points and 10.1 rebounds during his three seasons with the Sooners, earning Big Eight Conference player of the year each season.

He still holds Oklahoma's career records for points and rebounds. Tisdale also owns the school's single-game scoring mark -- 61 points against Texas-San Antonio as a sophomore -- and career marks for points per game, field goals and free throws made and attempts.

In 1997, Tisdale became the first Oklahoma player in any sport to have his jersey number retired. Two years ago, then-freshman Blake Griffin asked Tisdale for permission to wear No. 23, which Tisdale granted. Griffin went on to become the consensus national player of the year this past season as a sophomore.

"I spoke with him pretty frequently this past season and he helped me in ways he probably doesn't even know," Griffin said.

Tisdale is survived by his wife, Regina, and four children.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Volcano Boarding in Nicaragua

NYT

April 19, 2009
Heads Up
A Sport Erupts on a Live Volcano in Nicaragua
By LAURA SICILIANO-ROSEN

THERE’S nothing quite like the sudden silence one experiences midway through the descent down a roughly 1,600-foot volcanic slope, having just somersaulted out of the pebble-scraping, air-rushing trajectory previously occupied by you and your volcano board.

Squinting in the Nicaraguan sun, I found the goggles that had flown off my head during my tumble and shimmied over to my board, slowly slipping downhill all the while. I somehow regained my seated position on the board and immediately submitted again to gravity, zooming down, down, down, until I slid to a gentle stop amid applause from fellow boarders.

This was my introduction to volcano boarding, a young adventure activity that has popped up, most notably at Cerro Negro, an ominous charcoal-black volcano in western Nicaragua. Boarders hurtle down the active volcano’s bald, steep slope atop a sledlike piece of plywood, at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour. It’s hot, dusty, a little scary — and crazy enough to be fun.

Cerro Negro is accessible from León, a colonial city historically known as a center of left-wing intellectualism that is about 15 miles southwest of the roughly 2,388-foot mountain (the height can vary from eruption to eruption, experts say). The city was once a Sandinista stronghold occupied by poets, revolutionaries and university students. But today, aside from its magnificent churches, bright-hued colonial architecture and sprawling anti-corruption murals, León is becoming synonymous, at least among backpacking adventure-seekers, with volcano boarding.

In February, my husband, Scott, and I decided it was too unusual to pass up. Climbing a volcano was one thing, but sledding down its slope? That’s a story for the grandkids.

I had heard of a tour offered by Bigfoot Hostel, which Darryn Webb, a tour guide from Australia, founded in 2005, when he was developing the sport on Cerro Negro. He’d grown up sandboarding in Queensland, and once he visited the volcano, he realized its boarding potential. Here was a dunelike slope, only bigger and blacker, and with the added thrill of a potential eruption.

After a lot of trial and error with sledding vessels — he tried boogie boards, mattresses and even a minibar fridge — he settled on plywood reinforced with metal and augmented with Formica under the seat. “Once we figured out the sit-down boards, it became a lot more fun for people,” Mr. Webb told me by phone from Perth, where he now lives.

When we got to the hostel, two tours that week were already sold out, but we were able to join one the next day. (Bigfoot, which Mr. Webb sold in 2008, averages about 15 people a tour, but has handled as many as 34 — numbers even Mr. Webb never anticipated.) Nowadays, Gemma Cope, the manager of Bigfoot, runs the tours. With nary a waiver in sight, our group of 17 piled into pickup trucks for the 40-minute drive to Cerro Negro National Park. The dusty rural roads are still largely blanketed by dark ash spewed by the last eruption, in 1999.

Cerro Negro is the youngest volcano in Central America, and like a rambunctious youth, it’s active. Born in 1850, it has erupted over 20 times.

At the volcano’s base, we were handed boards and a cloth bag containing a jumpsuit and goggles. The steep 45-minute climb up the cone’s rocky backside, for which we carried a 5- to 10-pound board, was moderately difficult.

Dropping our stuff near our push-off point, we continued up to the main crater’s exposed rim. The views proved sublime: on one side, the gaping black craters splotched with egg-yolk yellow and burnt sienna; on the other, Cerro Negro’s hulking neighbors in the Maribios chain and León under a haze.

All too soon it was go time. We clumsily pulled on the oversize orange jumpsuits and gathered for Ms. Cope’s brief, cheeky lesson on boarding techniques — how to balance, steer and control speed on the slope, which is 41 degrees at its steepest, she said. Then, she informed us that the women would go first, so that they could sit back and giggle at their male counterparts, who were likely to “crash and burn” while recklessly trying to set speed records.

Two women reluctantly volunteered to go first. They were soon lava-colored streaks speeding down the hill. One made a smooth, controlled slide all the way down. I was encouraged.

Then I watched the other boarder take a spill. And then another.

After two more descents, I couldn’t take the suspense any longer. I slid over to the starting point, got into the ready position, and took off.

Immediately, I realized that letting out a shout was a bad idea: pebbles and dust flew everywhere, including into my mouth. Unlike a smooth, soft sandboarding descent, the ride was bumpy, the noise deafening.

I hunkered down and began tapping my feet in the slope along the board’s sides — a technique to slow speed — but I evidently dug in too hard. The result was like braking too suddenly on a bicycle: crash and burn.

At the bottom, Bigfoot’s radar gun registered my end speed at a respectable 46 kilometers an hour — over 28 miles per hour. The whole run had taken just a few minutes, even with my fall.

I stumbled over to the group, suddenly aware of a scratched hand and aching knee. Everyone was dazed but grinning, faces blackened by dust. Some of us bore scrapes on skin left exposed by the suits; volcanic pebbles aren’t as forgiving as sand.

Volcano boarding, it was agreed, isn’t easy to master, but you can’t help but want to try. It’s a cheap adventure and a novel challenge, with actual technique required and speeds recorded. The post-boarding mojito Bigfoot throws in didn’t hurt either.

“I didn’t like flipping three times,” one boarder from Germany said, laughing, “but I want to do it again.”

See story for lodging recommendations.

Saudis break taboo of opposing royals after soccer row

CSM
Saudis break taboo of opposing royals after soccer row

The incident highlights a shift from unquestioned deference toward the royal family.
By Caryle Murphy | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the February 20, 2009 edition

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - It had been a bad day for the kingdom, and three soccer commentators were trying to make sense of the national tragedy on a live TV talk show.

Saudi Arabia's national team had lost the 19th Arabian Gulf Cup to Oman, 6-5, because the players were underperforming. There was discord on the team. The coach had made bad moves. Their complaints went on and on. And no one could say that the three – a coach and two former national team players – were unqualified to assess the damage.

Suddenly, word came that a VIP was calling in, demanding to talk with the critics. Prince Sultan bin Fahd, son of the late king, and head of the Saudi Arabian Football Federation, had vowed to bring this year's Cup back from Oman.

What happened over the next few minutes, and in the days that followed, became a chart-topper when Saudis gathered to chat. For the episode is one of those moments when a nation instantly recognizes how it has changed. And in this case, that involves the slipping away of unconditional deference to royals.

Most royal family members are still held in high esteem. But economic, political, and demographic forces, as well as new forms of communication, are contributing to changing perceptions about how much unquestioning submission is due the royal sector.

Not least among these forces of change are those issuing from the head of the royal family itself, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz. Just days ago, the king announced an overhaul of the country's religious and political leadership aimed at speeding up implementation of reforms, particularly in education and the legal system. The king's agenda also includes a slow expansion of responsibilities for the Shura Council, an appointed advisory body.

As the reforms proceed, they will affect the relationship between rulers and ruled, forcing royal family members to increasingly contend with the verdicts of public opinion – as last month's soccer commentary show demonstrated.

Prince Sultan started out calmly, but grew increasingly agitated. Addressing each of the three commentators in turn, he chastised them for being disrespectful and not knowing what they were talking about. "You are all ignorant!" he shouted.

He accused former coach Jassim al-Harbi of saying "awful things" about the team manager, asking sarcastically: "You're evaluating managerial competencies now too, Jasim, you and your likes?"

Unable to get a word in edgewise, the three squirmed in their chairs – a scene viewed thousands of times on YouTube.

Then the prince turned to former player Faisal Abu Thnain. "We work day and night and you just sit here blabbering away on television ... I do not want to hear this talk again. I have tolerated you long enough. You must exercise self-restraint. And you must behave... If you have not been raised properly, we can certainly raise you ourselves."

It was this last sentence that shocked the viewing audience, for to accuse someone of not being well brought up is a deep insult in Saudi culture, on par with shoe-throwing in Iraq.

Mr. Abu Thnain did not let the prince's comment pass. "No, thank God, we have all been raised well and we know our limits and the repercussions of our actions," he retorted before the prince hung up.

Now, the audience was cheering – or at least it would a few days later.

"Faisal Abu Thnain made history by being the first Saudi citizen to talk back to a prince ... live and on the air and for this, we celebrate him," reads a Facebook page honoring the player. Created shortly after the Jan. 17 incident, it has collected 2,927 fans.

Someone else started a Facebook group – with 2,085 members so far – calling for the prince's dismissal. His picture is prominently displayed with the international 'No' sign over it.

Then the Saudi newspaper Al Medinah ran a cartoon showing the prince telling a microphone to "ignore these 'babbling' guys talking about things they know nothing about." The bubble over the silenced men reads: "Criticism. Opinions. The Truth. Points of View. Demands. Logical Analysis."

One long-time foreign resident here called the affair "unprecedented."

And Saudi sports columnist Abdulaziz A. Alghiama said that it underscored new attitudes toward a top official who belongs to the ruling family.

"It's completely changed because 10 years back, people were not doing that," says Mr. Alghiama, who writes for the Asharq al Awsat newspaper. While Alghiama conceded that Prince Sultan, who also serves as the country's sports minister, should not have used "insulting" words, he stood up for him.

"It was the first time that Saudi lost to Oman and for this reason, he was so devastated," he says. "Everyone makes mistakes and so there was so much pressure around. He's just a human being."

Abu Thnain said that he realized the prince was disappointed. But he was still "surprised" at his language, which "hurt my feelings, and my mother and father's feelings. They are very angry about that."

But "people are talking about this incident [because] sometimes there are not people who can say to a prince, 'you are wrong.' We are in 2009 and everyone has to accept the other's opinions," he adds. "Now, most of the population in Saudi are under 20 years and each one has a different opinion. If you don't accept them you will have problems in the future."

Some royals want to be more accessible to the public, even if this may dilute the deference once accorded the family.

For example, Princess Loulwa al-Faisal, daughter of late King Faisal, broke the taboo that princesses are not seen with uncovered faces in public and do not appear on television or in newspapers when she was interviewed on "Good Morning America" in 2007. She covered her hair, but not her face.

Another princess recently created an even bigger stir. Amira al-Taweel, wife of Prince Waleed bin Talal, one of the family's most progressive members, was photographed without face veil, headscarf, or abaya – the black cloak worn by women in public – by Al Watan newspaper, which carried an extensive interview with the princess about all aspects of her life.

Unlike in the past, the paper was not sanctioned by the government.

Prince Sultan did not respond to questions and a request for comment faxed to his office. He did talk about the incident four days after it happened on the privately owned Saudi news channel Al Arabiya. He was in a calm mood, but did not apologize, saying that everyone makes mistakes and "may Allah guide us all."