The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

Not long ago, Louisville's 2013 national championship in the college basketball world got vacated because of NCAA violations. In the record books, next to 2013 national champion, reads "Louisville (vacated)." This has also occurred with USC's 2004 college football title. I'm sorry, but this is stupid. It's documented that these games took place. The players played them. The coaches coached them. We watched them. To say otherwise is to call the world crazy. If the NCAA wants to place asterisks next to such violators in the record books, fine, but to pretend the games never took place is crazy in and of itself. Regardless, the winning coaches and players still have their championship rings and, most importantly, their memories of the title runs, and the NCAA can never take that away from them.

I read an ESPN article this morning, entitled, "Kobe Bryant sets mark for misses." When first reading the headline, I thought to myself, "Wow, did Kobe have the worst game of his career or something? Here I thought things couldn't get any worse for the Lakers." But, no, that wasn't the case. In the Lakers 107-102 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies, Bryant scored 28 points, collected 7 rebounds, had 6 assists, and 4 steals. No, the headline was with regard to Bryant's career. In his 10-26 shooting night, Kobe Bryant eclipsed John Havlicek atop the leaderboard for most missed shots over a career, which is now at 13,421. Since this is Bryant's 19th season, he's collected: Five championship rings, one MVP award, two Finals MVP awards, he's been a member of the All-NBA team 15 times (1st, 2nd, or 3rd team), has been a member of the All-Defensive team 11 times (1st or 2nd team), has been named Player of the Week on 33 occasions and Player of the Month...

I'm sorry to ruin sports analysts' and commentators' fun, but let's put this LeBron James. vs. Michael Jordan debate to rest for the time being. Based on the two players' resumes, there's really no comparison to be made. While LeBron James has always been a very exciting player, who has improved from good to great status the past couple years, he's not even in the same ballpark (well, court) as Michael Jordan right now. In the seven NBA seasons between 1990-91 and 1997-98, Michael Jordan led his Chicago Bulls to six championships, where he won the MVP Award in each. For his career, Jordan's Bulls were 6-0 in the NBA Finals. LeBron James, meanwhile, has led his teams (Cleveland and Miami) to a 2-2 record in the NBA Finals, where he was awarded the MVP Award twice. James is still young, so it's possible he could win multiple more championships and be the face of the NBA for years to come, where at career's end, a legitimate argument could be ...

Following Alabama's dominating 42-14 victory over Notre Dame last night to win their 3rd national championship in the past 4 seasons, many of my Nebraska friends started making comments on Facebook stating that the Nebraska teams that won three titles in a four year span in the '90s were superior to the Alabama teams from these past four years. I find these comparisons to be silly. There's absolutely no possible way we'll ever know who would win between two teams from two different decades. It's impossible. We can look at as many numbers as we'd like; we'll never know who would win if the two teams faced one another when they were at their best. We can compare two teams as far as their dominance goes for a season. However, even then, it'll be difficult to compare the two teams, because once again, they played in different times, against different kinds of competition. Nebraska was dominant in the mid-90s. They were a great football team, however do I t...