Competition Time. Win $30 worth of Amazon.com Goodness! Free to enter!!

That's right, you can win a $30 Amazon.com gift voucher just by entering our free competition. It's open to anybody 18 or over who has an email account, so check out the rules below and join in!

To enter all you have to do is tell me why you love your favorite sport. In three words or less. It doesn't matter what sport you love or why you love it but the reason must be no more than three words in length. For example:

I love football and my reason (one of them anyway) is "Unnecessary Roughness". Having a foul for 'Unnecessary Roughness' implies that, in order to play the game, there is necessary roughness. Which is brilliant and humorous at the same time.

You can choose a facet of the sport, a player that you love to watch, or whatever you like, as long as it's three words or less, it's all gravy.  You can leave an explanation of your choice if you want. The winner will be the one that I like the best and my decision is final bitch.

The competition will run from right now to the 1st of July. Entries can be made by comment or by email to shottonothing[/at/]gmail.com and you can enter as many times as your heart desires. The winner will be announced on Monday the 2nd of July and will be notified by email (so remember to send me your email address if you're answering via a comment!)


Good luck and thanks for taking part!

Spurs Win. When Does Football Start?

There is a good thing about the Spurs sweep of the cavs; at-least it'll do my heart good to know that she's getting banged...

29 of the last 30 is all you need to know...

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Px-jPm_TU"]

A lot has been written about Lebron in game 5 but a couple of standout posts can be found at:

[The Extrapolater]

and

[Signal To Noise]

Tried and Tested. (and falied btw, Mark)

Mark Cuban has to be a sucker for punishment. I mean really, we all know that we would love more pro football, but nothing will ever compete with the NFL. You can call it whatever you want Mark; "Hey, pick a letter that isn't N" "How 'bout U" "UFL baby! U.F.L!" ...It's not going to work.

But instead of straight up dissin' you Mr. Cuban, allow me to proffer a new sporting direction for you to throw your money at. Recently the head of US Rugby Nigel Melville, set out his vision of a U.S. Rugby Union League. Now there is something that could work.

Every year after the Superbowl, when I'm all hopped up on a whole season of aggression and excitement, I turn to Rugby to tide me over until the next football season. Rugby fills the void left by the close season perfectly; It's tough, fast paced, dynamic and is similar to Football in many unexpected ways (more on that in a later post). There are 15,000 college football players who never make it to the NFL and believe me, the cross over from football to rugby is an easy one to make (It's basically the same skill set).

This could be the perfect alternative, not only for you Mark Cuban, but also for all of us meat eating football junkies. Heck, call it the NRL if you want, but a U.S. Rugby league whose season starts around mid-February would be a fantastic addition to the sporting calender.


[Deadspin]

[Scrum.com]

Well that's a damned shame...

I have a friend who says he hates jazz music because "It makes my head go all flakey and I end up wanting to kick something."

And I have to admit that I felt much the same way last night. It would be fair to say that I've never really liked the Utah Jazz at all, which may be because they keep winning when I have money on the other guys or may be because I just can't stand their name - the Jazz. Either way it doesn't really matter, Utah are through and Golden State are over in what was a pretty surprising (at-least to me) 4-1 series.

In the headline that nobody outside of Chicago will be thinking about today, The Bulls have pulled it back to 3-2 with a 108-92 victory which saw Ben Gordon score 28 points and Luol Deng, who is British no less, score 20 points. Now you see, if Chicago were called the bulldogs, I would have an excellent newsline (British Bulldog blah blah), but they aren't so I'll just slip it in here quickly to show off my genius and then exit stage left before anyone notices.

[SI - Bulls - Jazz]

[Luol Deng wiki]

Global Update

As you can see by the picture to your right, the Leicester Tigers won the Guinness Rugby Union Premiership yesterday. and they did it in spectacular form, smashing Gloucester by 44-16. The best description of the Tigers performance came from one of the commentators who likened it to "Watching a tank being driven like a sports car"

This was the tigers third attempt at the Premiership title and having finally won it they are now on course to win the treble.

Btw, the whole Ricky Williams testing positive whilst trying to re-enter the NFL thing has not passed me by. It's just that my seething disbelieve at the mans stupidity is requiring me to right a full post on the matter at a later date.

Raphael Nadal has shown how outrageously good he is on clay by taking his 76th victory on the surface and simultaneously breaking John McEnroe's previous record for most wins on one surface. It's good to see someone with a bit of passion and character taking centre stage in the Tennis world. I like Federer as much as the next guy, but he's not all that exhilarating personality wise is he?

Incidentally, Federer has unexpectedly split from his coach, Tony Roche. Both sides say the decision was mutual - yeah, sure it was. I guess if you're Roger Federer you're probably wondering if there's anything left to learn about Tennis.

The Spanish Grand Prix is the next race in the Formula 1 Calender and takes place in just over an hour from now. Felipe Massa has once again claimed pole position with a fairly ridiculous last second charge. Being a Ferrari fan, I would love to love Massa, if only he would get through a damned race without screwing the pooch several times and gifting the victory to the opposition. Ragnamit.

Other then that, The Spurs are helping the Suns to set, the Yankees have a losing record and everybody is pretty impressed with the Warriors. But then you knew that already didn't you?

That's it for your Sunday Global update, take it easy y'all.

[BBC Sport]

[SI]

It's the Heat that Drives them Crazy

There were not one, not two but three professional athletes arrested down in South Beach, Florida last night. But only one of them really deserves a full comment.

That one is none other than Florida Panthers *star* Ville Peltonen who was the first of the three to be arrested. The 33 year old Fin was arrested and charged with criminal mischief after he was seen using a metal pole to smash up the passenger side of a Fire-Rescue Truck. But wait, this gets even better: (From the Miami Herald)

"The report does not indicate a motive, but it did say he was smiling the entire time."

Now doesn't that just take the biscuit? Not only was he bashing away on a Miami Beach Fire Department vehicle but he was thoroughly enjoying himself too. The only reasoning I can take from this is that this was some deep seated revenge attack, spurred on by a horrible childhood memory and fueled by alcohol.

Man, that mental image of Mr. Peltonen bashing ten types of shit out of a fire truck, alone on South Beach at 1 am and with a fucking great grin on his face will keep me in stitches for many years to come. Thanks Ville, comedy moment of the year so far.

The other two sportsman/yahoos were Peltonen's teammate Ed Belfour who was charged with disorderly intoxication and the Heat's James Posey who was jailed on a DUI charge. But neither of them had a grin on their face so they don't get the full write up.

Sign of a Good Announcer

Ok, this has already featured over on Deadspin but it's just too good to miss if you haven't already heard it.

Some dude put together some GJ commentary and some bigass beats and produced an excellent little tune that reminded me (and everyone else who heard it) just how excellent Gus Johnson is at his job. Here's the clip.

The thing about good annoucing is that it's a bit like oldskool beat poetry. Just like an actor reading a monologue or a singer harmonising to a song, a good annoucers prose will flow with its own beat and with that of the game he's calling. It's not something we (or even they) notice consciously, but when it's done well, announcing can raise that hair on the back of your neck just like all of your favorite songs do.

That's the reason some announcing goes so well with music. You have to pick the right tracks but if the initial composition is good then you'll end up with something remarkable.

Please note: This is not liable to work with any amount of commentary performed by Phil Simms. Don't even bother trying.

Hat-tip: Deadspin, Putfile

Top Five Reasons why I'm not Blogging about March Madness

In reverse order...

5. Everyone and his Momma is blogging about March Madness

4. If I do, it will only turn into a rant about Billy Packer and Awful Announcing has that angle all sewn up.

3. I'm a gambling man; the more time I spend focused on the Madness, the more it hurts my wallet. Unless I win of-course, but this site ain't called 'Shot to Nothing' for er... nothing.

2. Didn't you hear?? This week is the World Figure Skating Championships!

1. Look, if it comes down to writing a big ass Madness post or doing a quick 'five reasons' list and getting a shot at some 'quality' time with a beautiful lady, well...

National Bigbucks Association

<-Five bucks if you can guess the year.

(NOTE: I do not know the answer so you have absoloutely no chance of winning. Bad Luck.)


You know what I don't like about the NBA?

I mean asside from the pansy ass fights and the big stars who don't want to play for the national team because "I don't want to play basketball all summer..." (Yeah, I mean who would want to play basketball ALL summer right?) ?

The thing that really grates me about the NBA is that over half the teams in the league make it to the damned playoffs. What exactly is the point of playing the regular season when16 teams out of 30 make it through to the playoffs? Any team worth a grain of salt makes it through and you can usually say who will and won't make it right from the beginning of the season.What's that all about for goodness sake?!

Well... money really. More teams in the playoffs means more playoff games = more fat pay cheques for the T.V. companies, the teams and the League. The obsession with the almighty buck tarnishes the whole NBA set up. Its like theres one too many people reaching their hands into one too many pies, if you know what I mean.

Why can't every sports league be more like the NFL?