Worst Seat In The House: A sporting week

To say the least, last week was certainly filled with varying sports information and drama. It started off with the NCAA championship football game between the LSU Tigers and the Clemson Tigers. The Tigers from Baton Rouge, Louisiana overwhelmed the defending national champions with big plays and tough defense. LSU rallied in the first half overcoming an early 10 point deficit to go into halftime with an 11 point lead.

The final score was 42-25 LSU as the defenses tightened up in the second half. Clemson had no rally left in them after a second half opening drive for a touchdown that brought Clemson to within three points of LSU. The SEC champions scored one touchdown in the third and one in the fourth quarter to bring the trophy back to the Bayou.

LSU did it with a former interim head coach and a transfer QB from Ohio State. Coach Ed Orgeron and Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow were an unstoppable pair this season and definitely earned the national championship.

After the NCAA football season ended with that game the promotions for March Madness were a bit more noticeable. We also were being prepared to watch the Daytona 500 which will be held two weeks after the Super Bowl this year and the PGA Masters Golf tournament which will be the weekend following the NCAA basketball tournament. And Major League baseball will also be throwing out the first pitches on March 26. If you plan to go to a game in the northern part of the country opening weekend make sure to dress for the occasion.

Speaking of baseball, three managers were fired this week because of the now famous sign stealing that the Houston Astros were involved with during their run to a World Series championship in 2017. The scheme was to get the opposing catchers signals, relay them to the dugout and then have someone beat a garbage can to let them know if a certain pitch was going to be thrown or something like that anyway.

Astros’ Manager A.J. Hinch lost his job as the skipper of the team and was suspended from Major League baseball for a year. Former Astros’ bench coach and Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora was fired by the American League team for his part in the cheating scandal. Major League baseball hadn’t announced yet if Cora would also be suspended.

Carlos Beltran, who had been hired as the New York Mets manager was also fired before he was able to manage even one game. Beltran was a player on that Astros team and as of now is still the only player that has had to pay a penalty for the wrong doing.

Boston and New York figured they better fire these guys and not wait for the word that Cora and Beltran would be suspended in a few days or even a month from now. These teams are now scrambling to get a new manager in place as spring training is set to start in less than three weeks.

As techy as the Seattle area is you would think that they would be able to figure out a good way to get a leg up on the competition. But if they are cheating it certainly isn’t showing up in the box scores.

We’ve seen a lot of accusations concerning cheating in baseball and in the NFL. New England was accused of videotaping the sidelines to get play calls of a future opponent. It’s funny that you never hear about sign stealing in the NBA. With all of the scouting reports most teams know what the other teams are running anyway. You can know what another team is doing but these athletes are so good they can ad lib in a tenth of a second and score on you from anywhere on the court. Scouting reports only go so far. Which means that the more you slow a game down the more sign stealing can help.

Finishing off the week was the NFC and AFC championship football games. Kansas City rallied from an early deficit to drop the upstart Tennessee Titans 35-24. The previous week the Titans dropped the overall favorite team to win it all the Baltimore Ravens. The Chiefs will be returning to the Super Bowl for the first time in 50 years when they won the fourth ever championship game between the AFL and the NFL. Their opponent will be the San Francisco 49ers which defeated Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers 37-20 in Santa Clara.

And that is just some of what happened in this past week of sports.