The folks at ESPN are currently running a "contest" to find which city should be called "Titletown". This is ridiculous. How is there even a contest for this "honor" that Boston so clearly deserves. There are 20 finalists and Boston is one of them (they got that right at least), but there are 19 other ridiculous candidates that I find insulting to even have compared to our amazing city. First off ESPN gives basically no airtime to high school sports, so I don't know why there would be towns on the list based on their high school sports teams (Parkersburg WV and Massillion OH). There are plenty of college towns on the list (Lawrence KS, Knoxville TN, Chapel Hill NC, Palo Alto CA, Louisville KY, Gainesville FL, Valdosta GA, Ann Arbor MI and Colombus OH). Do you think of any of these towns and think "Titletown"? If ESPN really cares about all of the soccer, volleyball, tennis, golf and baseball championships these schools have won, why don't they ever show these college sports on SportsCenter? And Williamsport PA? Is this based strictly on the Little League World Series? If so, what a horrible candidate. Green Bay? Wow, talk about a one-trick pony with a pretty average trick. The other major cities to be finalists are Pittsburgh (no NBA team), Los Angeles (no NFL team), San Francisco (no NHL team), New York (no major college football teams), Chicago (no major college sports) and Detroit (colleges + Lions = risk). My point is this...Boston is currently the home of the NBA Champions (for the 17th time), the World Series Champions (for the 2nd time in 4 years), the AFC Champions (16-0 and 3 SB titles this decade), the 3-consecutive time MLS finalists, multiple major college teams (including the NCAA hockey champs and football team with longest consecutive bowl win streak) and the Boston Bruins, an Original 6 NHL team. To consider any other option an adequate choice for "Titletown, USA" is an insult to sports fans everywhere and especially RBSF. Boston vs. Valdosta GA? C'mon.
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Just to acknowledge credit where it's due...Walpole Joe brought this up in the "Mid-Week Miscellaneous". It's ridiculously obvious that if it's based on current position in the sports world Boston wins hands down. So is this for now or all-time? And if it is all-time, who wins? Still us?
...upon review it was GMAC, not Walpole Joe, who brought this up. Just making sure credit goes where it belongs...
It's okay, I get those two mixed up all the time myself.
It's called--Summer is relatively slow for sports and Espn needed something to fill the time. I feel like the do something stupid like this every year...clearly Boston tops the list...
it really is a snooze-a-thon. They are so forcing some of these towns in their coverage. They went back to Rumeal Robinson's free throws for Michigan's legacy. Way too long ago. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I saw some random 49er (Brent Jones maybe) saying that SF is better than Boston because the Pats don't play in Boston and if you include Foxboro with Boston you have to include Oakland with SF.
You could include Oakland, SF, Sacramento, Portland, Seattle and annex Vancouver into the US and I still don't see that they have a chance in hell against Boston.
Based on the segment on sportscenter it appears to be an all time thing.
Most of the places i've seen dont have 4 major sports teams that have all won a championship to go along w/ college teams to win national titles. Boston has all of the above.
Boston is the City of Champions we know it and everyone that is not from Boston hates to hear it but facts are facts, the current decade there has not been a more dominant region in pro sports.
And the last couple of decades there hasn't been such domination by anywhere (apart from us) across the board.
Well if they are going by all-time it's pretty hard not to pick the town with the most titles (henceforth the name)...which if you go by titles I care about would have to be New York (that almost hurt to type).
Agree about the slow-summer mode for ESPN. Last year they had some horribly stupit "Who's Hot?" (or something like that) tournament that had some of the lamest results one could ever imagine. I'm not sure who won because I stopped paying attention when Brady lost, which was like the 2nd week.
I, personally put an asterisk by the latest 4 Yankee titles.
Now that it is official that multiple members of their top rotation and the meat of the order were definitely on it.
No one else seems to care, or do this, though they didn't have a problem throwing one right on the ball for Bonds.
Good point Luke, but still hard to ignore the other 32....not to mention 2 for the Mets, 3 for the Giants, 1 for the Jets, a few for the Knicks and Rangers and 4 for the Islanders (do they count?). Although with that many teams even when they win it they are usually 1-for-2 in the sport, meaning they need basically twice as many titles as anyone else to make it legit.
I dont think Bonds should have and asterisk. I really dont care that anyone used steroids. And to put an asterisk next to anyone or any team during an error where so many players were using it seems silly. MLB should thank steroids as the steroid era started baseball was headed down the same road the NHL is trying to turn off of. Thanks to a few years of massive HR numbers baseball was put back on the map.
People were talking like the Pats should have SB victories taken away because of spygate. There has been no discussion of the same for the NYY last few WS titles even though a number of their players have admitted to using performance enhancing drugs.
The reason there has been no discussion of the NYY losing any of their titles is that there were so many players in MLB and in the farm systems using these substances. The Patriots were the only team to get caught. I feel slightly sick to my stomach defending the evil empire.
The asterisk (*) is such a simple character. And yet like the bodies many athletes steroids is destroying its reputation.
The point you make about steroids bringing back the MLB is obvious. Gmac, this is actually the reason they protected steriod users. The MLB was going to come back though, anyway. They were just impatient and wanted it expedited. I was one of those kids who in '94 (when the strike interrupted baseball in August) was saying I'd never watch baseball again. Many of my friends' abandoned ship, and were right back into it in '95. McGwire and Sosa really added to that in '98, but it would've eventually comeback regardless. Justifying the steroid use is bull.
It is totally different than the Pats "Spygate," There is, and will be a debate, as to whether this "extra" video footage helped anything out. The use of steroids unequivocally alters the game. It is like what Donaghy did to the NBA - no matter what you do to try and keep it impartial at that point it is altered. The videotapes, which many coached could've accumulated the same info. is much more subjective.
What the Yankees did is cheating, no question. The Patriots, though not in compliance in the rulebook, is much more debatable what true gain they got out of it.
(Luke)
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