Throwing Like a Girl- World Cup Preview

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I did some purging of the DVR recordings tonight.

Why, you ask? Because the World Cup is starting.

I think it's safe to say that I enjoy watching the World Cup more than the Olympics. Bold claim? Maybe- but I stand by it.

No matter where in the world you live, the chances are that one of the many televisions you will pass in the next month will be broadcasting one of many World Cup games. Though not every game is an elimination game, each one, each goal even, is still critical.

The World Cup only comes around once every four years. This time four years ago I was taking finance in College Station. In preparing for the second half of my summer, to be spent in Europe, I decided to embrace a huge part of their culture: soccer. Or football, depending on which side of the Atlantic you grew up on. Fast forward a month and a half to mid-July 2006 and I watched in the most crowded bar of all time in Caen, France with one large screen showing the game, as France lost to Italy in the finals. It was one of the most heated sports-viewing environments I had ever experienced, and I knew I would forever be hooked.

Daily Candy sent out a great little snippet of a video the other day with a skimming overview of things to know and players to watch. It would be wise to heed their advice and not ask if one team or another is off-sides.

Personally, my loyalty is to the U.S., but I'll have a close eye on Christiano Ronaldo (see below- shirtless...) and basically all of the players from Argentina and Brazil (see above.)

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This is the first World Cup that does not include any teams that are qualifying for the first time (all of these teams have competed in the World Cup before.)

Teams from 32 nations will be competing.

This will be the first time that the tournament has been hosted by an African nation. (South Africa)

The team of the country hosting the World Cup automatically qualifies for the tournament.

Until 2006, the defending champion from the previous tournament also received automatic qualification, but the rules were changed and that team has to qualify as well.

The defending champion from 2006 is Italy.

Brazil has won more World Cup titles than any other country.

The much-anticipated first-round match-up of the U.S. vs. England is this Saturday!

Feel free to read more on Wikipedia about how the actual tournament works- they explain the round-robin and the single-elimination better that I can (and I must credit them for some of these facts, but some of them I also knew on my own, thankyouverymuch.)

If you are first you are first. If you are second, you are nothing.

-Bill Shankly

Throwing Like A Girl- Championship Party

I've successfully turned my friends into basketball-watching enthusiasts and trash-talkers.

I couldn't be more pleased about it, either.

Much to my delight, my Ladies-Only bracket pool leaders are neck-in-neck leading up to the final game. Husbands and boyfriends have complimented me on the idea, and another friend in Ft. Worth even copied it with some friends who live scattered throughout the country.

I myself am currently sitting at No. 17 out of 18 ladies which is pretty typical at this point. The one person I'm ahead of is MK, who threw caution to the wind like she always does and picked Xavier to win it all. I'm ashamed to face facts and admit that Xavier made it further in the tournament than my winner-pick, which was Kansas.

Let's not talk about it. MK is also primed to win the last-place participation award.

I'll be weekend-ing at my parents' home this weekend to celebrate Easter and let someone else decide how to entertain me for two days, but that will also give me time watch the Saturday night basketball games and menu plan. You might not know me at all but those are basically two of my favorite things to do: watch sports and cook for people.

My immediate thoughts turn to things that keep well and taste better after a day, like pulled pork or brisket (for sliders) and sangria wine, which sounds like something a ladies-only party would enjoy.

If you would like to brush up on your statistics for each team leading into the games this weekend, I would recommend checking out ESPN. The great thing is that the explanation of each statistic is provided at the bottom of the screen. Gordon Hayward for example, who plays for Butler, is an 82.7% free-throw shooter on average for this season. (FT% = Free Throw Percentage; .827 = 82.7%).

Hope everyone has a great weekend cheering on whichever teams you need to save face in their respective bracket pools!

And, of course, Happy Easter.

Everybody pulls for David, nobody roots for Goliath.
-Wilt Chamberlain

Throwing Like a Girl- March Madness Begins

You might live under a rock, in which case you could be pardoned, but I hope everyone else is aware that the March Madness games started today.

I'm pleased to say that there are 18 ladies participating in my bracket tournament idea from two weeks ago and I have successfully made gamblers and college basketball-watchers out of all of them.

Granted, $360 in gift cards is also good motivation, but I received many nail-biting messages all afternoon regarding the close games and we had a full house over to watch more of the action this evening.

If you didn't watch basketball today, you missed out. I don't recall such an exciting opening round in recent years. Out of the first four games this morning, two of the games went into overtime (one game had two overtime periods) and the other two games were decided by one point each.

The Villanova vs. Robert Morris took a few years off my life- thankfully Villanova survived by three because I have them in my Final Four.

Georgetown, on the other hand, lost by quite a margin to Ohio. I had Georgetown in my Elite Eight, so I don't really want to talk about it.

Other upsets today include Old Dominion over Notre Dame, Washington over Marquette, Murray State over Vanderbilt, St. Mary's over Richmond and Northern Iowa over UNLV.

And this is just day one!

I'm sitting on a couch perpendicular to MG right now, who keeps picking up her laptop periodically to check her picks and her rankings in our tournament as each game wraps up. This is unprecedented behavior.

Also: Wake Forest and Texas just went into overtime, making this the third overtime game of the day.

Did I mention how much I love March?

MG: "I can't believe I'm watching this."

Me: "You can't believe you're watching basketball?"

MG: "...and caring."

Throwing Like a Girl- Conference Tournaments

Conference basketball tournaments are going on this weekend- which actually started on Wednesday if you are okay with letting the end of your work week blur into your weekend.

I'm okay with this, for the record.

The conference tournaments can help escalate a few teams that may have been on the "bubble," so to speak, but for the good teams it can only slightly affect your seeding in the NCAA tournament. The Big East, for example, had upsets in three of their four games tonight, so it might put a little dent in the seeding for some of them.

You want your team to play well in their respective conference tournament not just for bragging rights, though that's a nice bonus and recognition of a great season, but you also want your players geared up, full of adrenaline and confidence for March Madness, which starts next week.

Since the field for the March Madness tournament is 65 teams (including the play-in game), there is a good chance there will be a few teams that you haven't seen play this season.

Well... okay. The chance is better than good. But you have the opportunity to brush up before making any "I wrote it in pen already" decisions.

If you are planning to fill out a bracket this year to enter a pool of some sort, then make Sunday a day where you pick up multiple newspapers. Grab a local paper, (for me it would be The Dallas Morning News,) and a copy of USA Today. Spend some time reading about the teams in the tournament you are unfamiliar with, consult ESPN.com which has a wealth of statistics on teams and individuals. Pay attention to the teams in the middle- the 5-8 seeded teams especially, because that is where brackets start busting a few weeks down the road.

Happy Bracketeering!

I've tried to handle winning well, so that maybe we'll win again, but I've also tried to handle failure well. If those serve as good examples for teachers and kids, then I hope that would be a contribution I've made to sport. Not just basketball, but to sport.

-Coach Mike Krzyzewski

Throwing Like a Girl- March Madness Edition

You may or may not have participated in a March Madness pool before.

You may not even know what March Madness IS, bless your heart.

If you are American and work in a 9-5 office that has even the smallest percentage of male employees, chances are you've at least seen the flurry that happens when the first games of the men's college basketball tournament begin. With football season well-over and baseball season only just beginning, the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship is the perfect opportunity to greet spring by sitting indoors, glued to flat-screens of Dick Vitale yelling about bracket-busters and Cinderella stories.

This year, I want to get my friends involved in the fun. I want all the ladies (not just the single ones, either) to see that March Madness can be a good time for everyone.

So this is what I'm thinking:

1. Email female friends and solicit their participation in my March Madness pool.

2. The buy-in to participate in said pool is a $20 gift card* to any retail store or restaurant of your choosing. Popular choices might include: Anthropologie, J. Crew, Starbucks, Mi Cocina, Zoe's, Amazon, etc.

3. Ask everyone to fill out their brackets and submit their gift cards before the start of the first game, which will be played March 16, 2010.

4. Enjoy all-girls college-basketball banter via reply-all emails over the course of the tournament.

5. Host a championship-watching party for the final game (there will be food involved, which should be implied), crowning a winner** with lots of great cards to use to eat out and go shopping. (Also do something fun for the second-place winner and the girl in last place.)

I figure that first and foremost: everyone likes to win. Close behind winning, women enjoy shopping and eating, so this would combine all of those things AND college basketball. Obviously some girls would have the help of husbands/boyfriends/brothers should they so choose, but in all reality, the chances of picking the perfect bracket are something like one in 9,000,000***, so I doubt there would be much of a competitive edge.

All-in-all, I think it seems like a great way to get my predominantly female friends interested in March Madness. I may be luring them in with food and prizes but I think they'll actually enjoy the games as well.

There are really only two plays: Romeo + Juliet, and put the darn ball in the basket.

-Abe Lemons

(Please let the record show that I tried looking for a cute picture of my friends and I from a basketball game in college to no avail, but I found plenty of hilarious shots of us from date parties (which all had themes.) Call me conservative, but I just couldn't bring myself to post anything from pirate, hippie, cowboy or gangsta-themed events. It wasn't THAT long ago, after all.)

*Another option for the buy-in would be for everyone to submit a bottle of wine, so the winner would take home 10? 20? 30? bottles of wine. Is that a better idea?

**In the event of an unlikely tie, I would motion for a 100-yard dash between the winners to determine the tie-breaker. Pure entertainment.

***Completely bogus statistic, but something like that. You get the idea.

Throwing Like a Girl

I hope you didn't think I totally forgot about this Thursday thing I've got going. Though I suppose two weeks on, one week off is hardly a solid pattern at this point, is it?

UPDATE: The Dallas Mavericks

The Mavericks are looking revived after the trade they made at the All-Star break. Seeing them go 2-5 before the break and bounce back to 5-1 after the break is a big swing, with what was probably their most difficult win last night against the Lakers.

In the trade, the most significant players that were traded away from Dallas were Josh Howard and Drew Gooden. Gooden played well for Dallas, in his short time here, but Howard was increasingly seen as a liability, both for his injuries and his unpredictable behavior off the court.

In exchange, we got notable additions Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood and DeShawn Stevenson. Haywood is getting a lot of playing time and press because he's a 7'0 center and he is a presence near the basket. Butler, who did not play in the game against the Lakers due to an averse reaction, is already looking like a great small forward who can score. Stevenson did a great job guarding Kobe Bryant last night, holding him to 20 points.

Twenty points is no small feat, don't misunderstand me. I don't think I scored 20 points in my entire 5th grade Boys & Girls Club basketball career. But this is Kobe we're talking about- and 20 points constitutes a less than stellar night for Kobe.

The great thing is that playing with the new guys has revived Nowitzki, Kidd, Terry and Marion, whose skills are looking even better alongside their new teammates.

Hopefully the rest of the season will be this fun to watch.

They tell you that nobody is perfect, then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds.

-Wilt Chamberlain

Throwing Like a Girl

I'm a sports-enthusiast who happens to be a woman. I am thrilled when my teams win and get frustrated when they lose. I have a hard time understanding why there is such a disconnect between women and sports and I aim to help, by providing once-a-week posts on the goings-on in the world of sports. I throw like a girl.

This is a big weekend.

The Winter Olympics are upon us; "us" being the world.

The NBA All-Star game is upon us; "us" being Dallas.

Things to know about the Vancouver Olympics...

There are 15 sports in the Winter Olympics, including crowd-favorites like Freestyle Skiing and Figure Skating, but also some lesser known but still notable events like Skeleton and Curling. Skeleton sounds terrifying, racing head-first, downhill on a sled-looking contraption called a "sledge" and Curling is like an oversized game of shuffleboard.

If you find yourself watching the Olympics and are curious for more detailed information on each sport, the dates they will be aired or the athletes competing, ESPN has a thorough break-down of everything.

The All-Star Game...

The NBA All-Star game is being hosted in Dallas this weekend, and following it, an influx of 250,000 people are expected to show up. I'm just going to go ahead and tell you to prepare yourself for the fact that the All-Star game itself coincides with Valentine's Day, if in fact your are celebrating this day and if in fact the person you celebrate with happens to like basketball. I think that the Saturday events are fun to watch but the game itself depends on who is injured and who will be able to play.

Here are the basketball events:

Friday, February 12 at 7 PM ET- Celebrity Game

Friday, February 12 at 9 PM ET- Rookie Challenge

Saturday, February 13 at 8:30 PM ET- Skills Challenge, 3-Point Shootout, Slam Dunk Contest

Sunday, February 14 at 8 PM ET- NBA All-Star Game

The NBA is on the All-Star break until this weekend is over, the will resume play as normal. The trade-deadline is quickly approaching, meaning any changes that coaches want to make to their rosters have to be done by February 18. The Mavericks have had a bad streak running into this weekend, including their worst loss of the season to the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday.

Have a great weekend!

The first thing is to love your sport. Never do it to please someone else, it has to be yours.

-Peggy Fleming, American Figure-Skater

Throwing Like a Girl

I have a hard time understanding why there is such a disconnect between women and sports. Some of the best outings to me have been attending live sporting events and getting to watch players duke it out with a crowded sea of thousands roaring alongside them- the energy is infectious.

I am thrilled when my teams win and get frustrated when they lose.

I'm a sports-enthusiast who happens to be a woman.

The night of my 25th birthday I was about to leave to meet my friends for dinner and was yelling at my basketball team- heels and dress on, hair curled and all- while I watched them lose in overtime on T.V. I often check score-updates on my iPhone, I listen to sports talk-radio and I always choose one of the treadmills in front of ESPN at the gym. I'm also not a retired female coach sitting in a booth giving commentary and I'm not a swimsuit model who moonlights as a sideline reporter, who are the typical women seen in sports-news. I am not an athlete and I do not keep up with sports to please a significant other- I genuinely enjoy it.

I have actually been mulling over the idea of talking about sports on here for a while because I feel like someone needs to make sports more relatable for women. With all of the statistics and analysis provided for any game on any given day, I realize that it's challenging to even know where to begin. What I aim to do is to provide the knowledge in a relatable way so that you know what is going on in the world of sports (specifically the Dallas/Texas/Big 12 world of sports but also overall information), basics about how different games are played and who you should know about.

The thing you will have to remember is that I am a girl and I throw like one. I have never been a tomboy a day in my life, I get lost even with a GPS and I don't know a fraction of what the nearest male in your current vicinity probably knows about sports. But I still love it. I plan to keep educating myself so that I can better equip you to, for example, walk into a crowded living room during the Super Bowl and not ask: Who is winning?

Please don't do that.

So this week, we will briefly touch on the Super Bowl, in which the Indianapolis Colts will face off against the New Orleans Saints this Sunday afternoon. Wherever you go will probably have greasy food, beer and hang out around the focal point of the afternoon- that football game on T.V.

The Saints have never made it to the Super Bowl and getting this far in the season is a great accomplishment for them. The Saints went 13-3 in the regular season (pre-playoff games) led by quarterback Drew Brees, and their three losses during that time were consecutive; all at the very end. New Orleans since bounced back for a big win against the Arizona Cardinals and then beat Brett Favre and the Vikings in overtime to become the NFC Champions (National Football Conference) advance to the Super Bowl.

The Colts are looking for another Super Bowl win with their quarterback Peyton Manning, who is arguably one of the best quarterbacks of all time. They went 14-2 in the regular season with both of their losses also coming at the very end of their schedule. They defeated the Baltimore Ravens and the New York Jets in the playoffs to advance as the AFC Champions (American Football Conference) and go on to the Super Bowl.

(Side-note: the AFC and the NFC are the two conferences in the National Football League {NFL}. There are 16 teams in each conference and the teams play each other within their conference until the Super Bowl, which faces the AFC Champion against the NFC Champion. Many other sports operate under a similar system.)

I am much more familiar with the NFC because that is the conference the Dallas Cowboys fall into and therefore I have watched the Saints play more than the Colts and I have a better idea of the strength of teams they have played. That said, I also know how good Peyton Manning is, and if his team plays up to his level then I think the Colts will have a great chance to win, even if it's by a small margin. The Saints can put points on the board so I think everyone is hoping for a good game.

I'll stop there for today. Hope you learned something!

The reason women don't play football is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public.

-Phyllis Diller