Sports! (General Thread)

And we would prompty chuck him into the Allegheny so he can keep that giant rubber duck company.

Yes it is. They travel all over the world. That picture in particular was when it visited Pittsburgh in 2015.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_Duck_(sculpture)

Sadly, "Johnny Concussion" never did either...well, he did, but didn't remember!

So Virginia winning the Men's NCAA Basketball Tournament probably isn't a huge surprise (even with last year's shocking upset loss to a 16 seed in the first round) but who the actual hell thought they'd have played Texas Tech in the finals? Tech wasn't even that good when Bobby Knight was there! lol

I was kind of rooting for Auburn because they did so well in the SEC this year but I can't say that I'm bothered by the outcome. It's the first time in over a decade that a team/school has won its first National Title. It's been completely dominated by "blue bloods" and teams that returned to championship form after decades of relative irrelevance. That gets pretty boring for guys like me whose team is rarely in a position to even make the 64 (68) team field.

Probably two words in combination that will make people pass on this post, but I watched the IIHF Women's hockey semifinal featuring Canada vs. Finland in Espoo, Finland. Canada and the U.S. team have DOMINATED women's hockey for a very long time, the rivalry makes for some great olympic and tournament matches, real physical and skillful affairs, usually really emotionally charged (including the 2002 flag-gate thing where apparently the U.S. team had a Canadian flag on their dressing room floor and walked on it on the way to the ice. I still think it's BS because no one is that classless, but that was the rumour). As awesome as it is seeing those two teams beat the shit out of one another and exchange wins and losses, every other women's hockey program has stagnated for years. The only bright spots have been the Scandinavian teams, namely Sweden and Finland. Over the past five years or so, both of those teams have been getting better and can easily keep up with Canada and the U.S., so it has been fun watching them challenge the two giants. Today, Canada lost to Finland in Espoo. They looked amazing, and it wasn't just Canada having a bad game or looking past Finland, it was Finland playing as a team and just outplaying Canada. It was awesome watching how excited the crowd and the players were, it was like they won the world title, the "Suomi" chants were cool, and for the host country team to beat a giant like Canada, even as a Canadian, I was super excited for them. I've always been a Finland Hockey fan, Sweden too (always loved Sweden's all or none attitude about hockey, when Lias Andersson tossed his silver medal into the crowd at the medal presentation after losing to Canada I marked out hard! So competitive!), tons of my favourite NHL players are from those countries, so it's cool to see both Finland's women and mens teams getting more competitive every year as national sides! So the Finish team will face either the U.S. or the Russians, either of which will be a challenge, but it will likely be the U.S., I can't see Russia beating them, they're just too good.

I don't know how many hockey fans there are here, and I'll admit I'm not even an NHL fan even though we have a franchise in my city and reportedly the best player in the game, but the men's world junior tournaments held around Christmas and the other IIHF events are really good hockey, men's or women's games. Fast, skilled players who still love the game and haven't been turned into apathetic, Ferrari driving mercenaries by the NHL yet, and are still playing for national pride and love of the game. Check it out sometime!