Sunday, November 2, 2008

Bad (sports) weekend

From a sports perspective, this weekend was pretty freakin' bad. True, the Kansas Jayhawks won their football game, but they did it at the expense of my increasingly-hapless Kansas State Wildcats. So hardly an outcome I was delighted by.

Then last night, the KC Wizards hosted the Columbus Crew in game 1 of their MLS playoff series. The Wizards took a one goal lead early in the second half on a fabulous header. But then with about 20 minutes to go, the dreaded red card came out, sending one of our players to the showers early. They did their best to protect their precious lead, but as so often happens when one team is down a man, eventually the Crew simply wore us down and scored the equalizer in stoppage time. With time slipping away and everyone waiting for the ref to blow the whistle at any moment, a Crew player fouled a Wizard _just_ outside the box. The crowd was begging for a penalty kick, but we had to settle for a tantalizingly-close free kick. After much build-up in the crowd, the free kick bounced right off the wall and ricocheted harmlessly towards midfield. The whistle blew with the game tied. The crowd was utterly deflated. Instead of going to game 2 of the 2 game series with a one-goal lead, we go in tied having to win to advance.

Then today the damn Chiefs got out to a 3 touchdown lead and still found a way to lose. It doesn't help that once again the refs helped out with a bad decision on a pass interference call. No hall of fame receiver has ever gotten more undeserved penalties called on him than Tony Gonzalez. Aren't the future hall of famers supposed to have the calls go their way? Not Tony, who routinely gets called for offensive pass interference just for breathing on his defender. Seriously refs, you don't get to call a penalty on Tony just because he's that much bigger than his defender. But you did and so we had to punt and let the Bucs have way too much time left in which to tie the game, which they did. And then they won the stupid coin toss so they won the stupid game.

On weekends like this, it's hard to remember what exactly it is that I like about sports. Because I REALLY don't like losing.

2 comments:

Heather said...

But did you see the Texas-Texas Tech game? Holy cow, that was a good one. Only watched it because the guy that runs our tailgate is a Tech grad and was skipping the KU-K-State game to be down in TX for the Tech game. It was fantastic! So close! And with the fans storming the field twice before the game was even over?! I don't even like football and I was totally excited watching the game!

Good times, good times!

BellsforStacy said...

I was at that game! (The Texas Tech / Texas game that is!) And it was the best experience of my entire life!!

I'm sorry K State had a bad time, but oh my gosh the TTU game was so unbelievable. I will be telling my kids about how I was there when 20,000 students rushed the field 3 times and gave us two huge penalties that, in another reality, could have lost us the game had Texas been able to return the ball.

Such a great game!

From - Obviously - a Tech alum!!

 
Blog Designed by : NW Designs