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Deep Into Sports editor Nate Barlow details ten of his favorite sports moments from the last ten years.

Top Ten Sports Moments of the First Ten Years of 20xx

Since the first ten years of the two-oughts are drawing to completion, I figured I’d come up with a top-ten list of my favorite sports moments of the last decade.

These are completely subjective–and I won’t deny that some of my sports preferences have come into play selecting them–but I’m sure there are at least a couple in here with which everyone will agree. I have also placed limitations of no more than one per sport per level/league of play and no more than two per sport regardless of level/league of play.

So here they are, in no particular order:
Continue Reading Top Ten Sports Moments of 2000 – 2009

Gairzo makes his weekly football picks for Week 16 of the NFL season and delivers some more Christmas gifts for athletes.

MORE CHRISTMAS GIFTS FOR ATHLETES

To A-Rod & Barry Bonds:

Two Hackey-Sacks tied together… Just so you can feel like what it means to own a pair, since yours have shrunk to the size of peas.

Your stones–that’s what it’s about guys. You’ve been given leeway and your way since the day you started remembering, and deep down, where no voice but yours can speak and no one hears, you shiver with fear, huh? Rejection, inadequacy… you know you’re a cheater… Fondle as needed.
Continue Reading Week 16 Picks and Analysis – NFL Football

Forget the NFL, NCAA, NHL, NBA and MLB, Tough Guy of the Week Award goes to 82-year-old Pope Benedict XVI for taking a blind shot and still conducting midnight mass as if nothing happened. The pontiff could teach some quarterbacks a few things about taking a hit!

Baseball’s financial inequities have taken a new twist, allowing the Yankees and Red Sox potentially to buy top players at discount prices.

Underbidding by the Big-Spenders?

There was a great article today on Yahoo! Sports today about baseball’s economics, specifically in regards to how the two most monied teams could actually end up signing the two premiere position players (Matt Holliday and Jason Bay) on the current free agent market at relative bargain prices.

Now I am the first to bemoan the imbalance between baseball’s haves and have-nots, even though my team, the Red Sox, is the second most financially well-off in the sport after the Yankees. The fiscal inequities are not good for the game, period.
Continue Reading Matt Holliday & Jason Bay to the Yankees & Red Sox? – MLB Baseball

Breaking down why TCU’s Gary Patterson deserves his AP Coach of the Year Award… and why his most distinguishing move occurred off the field.

Well-Deserved Recognition

Another BCS-busting first for the Horned Frogs of TCU–Gary Patterson has been named the first non-BCS conference Coach of the Year by the Associated Press.

The irony of that being the case is that any extremely successful non-BCS conference coach has to workfar harder than his BCS counterparts. Regardless of their coaches’ recruiting skills, the big name schools will always draw in higher-ranked classes by virtue of the name of the university itself.

The coach of a less famous school needs to be twice as inspiring to potential recruits and do far more with less in the way of talent. Sure, the intra-conference competition may not measure up to that of the BCS leagues, but to receive national recognition, those coaches must schedule as many BCS schools for inter-conference play as possible, so it’s not as if they play nobody. And in the case of the Mountain West Conference, the powerful triumvirate of Utah, BYU and TCU negates even that argument.

Here are some of Patterson’s accomplishments this year:
Continue Reading TCU’s Gary Patterson AP Coach of the Year – NCAA College Football