Golazooooooo!

Warning: English Premier League announcers save your voices. You'll be off the air in a couple of weeks if you celebrate goals like this guy
 

It's only matchweek 3, but this EPL season is pregnant with the promise of a year with great scoring (that's the first time all year someone has combined "English Premier League" and "pregnant" without mentioning Gabby Abonlahor. Wait, I mentioned Abonlahor, damn...)

The four 6-0 margins witnessed this year are FOUR OF THE TWENTY 6-0 games in the HISTORY of the Premier League. The next logical question is what does all this scoring mean? Well, for American sports fans with ADD/ADHD, this means that soccer is more watchable. And after the huge audience/ratings of the World Cup, maybe this is finally the year that soccer "arrives". Of course soccer has been trying to "arrive" in the U.S. since the 1970s, so don't hold your breath.

For more seasoned viewers, analysis of this recent goal binge breaks down into two competing views. The first view argues that this goal-fest is indicative of an approach where more teams are playing to win instead of playing not to lose. Sports Illustrated's Georgina Turner believes that teams are making it rain goals because their opponents are chasing the game at scores that they would normally change their strategy and pack it in and start playing hyper-defensively. In the old days, teams like Blackpool, West Brom and Wigan would play it more conservatively than a Tea Party candidate on Fox News when they fell behind 2-0. Now these same teams are playing with more reckless abandon than a drunk guy at Coachella and find themselves on the wrong side of some truly lopsided results.

Alternatively, the explosion in goals can be seen as evidence for the growing gulf between the EPL's haves and have-nots. Jonathan Wilson, also with Sports Illustrated, writes that these one-sided margins are part of a growing trend in the EPL that is decades old. In 1995, Blackburn was the first and last team to win the EPL that was not named Arsenal, Chelsea, or Manchester United. Let's take a look at some of the good statistical knowledge that Wilson drops to try to explain the widening gap between the EPL's elite sides and the rest:

• The gap between 1st  and 4th is growing
• "Between 1999 and 2003, the average gap between first and fourth in England was 16 points, and between first and fifth 20.4. In the following five seasons, those averages increased to 24 and 29.6, respectively, proof of an ever-stretching league"
• The gap between 4th and 4th from the bottom is also growing
• "In 2007-08, the team finishing fourth in the Premier League, Liverpool, averaged 1.05 points per game more than the side finishing fourth from the bottom, Fulham, the greatest such separation in Europe's major four leagues over the past decade"

As with most competing theories, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle (insert crude joke here)....although I think Wilson is closer to getting it right. What do y'all think?

Team USA's Coming Out Party

Madrid, Spain

The 1992 USA Team that dominated the Barcelona Olympics it was not. Long gone are the days where our international competition takes their 40+ point whupping and asks for autographs when the game is over. Instead, last Saturday and Sunday saw Team USA struggle before winning 2 exhibition games in the run up to this year's 2010 FIBA World Championship. This version of Team USA is missing some serious star power from the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. If you scan the roster you will not see some of the NBA's biggest names that played so well in Beijing like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, or Dwight Howard. In a youth-movement of sorts (I know Chauncey Billups is on this team and he started balling with Father Time), the "Darantula", Kevin Durant headlines a group of rising NBA superstars in Madrid. 


I'm not even going to talk about the first game against Lithuania. We'll get the cliff notes version from Rasheed Wallace . Ok, so maybe that didn't really fill you in as to what took place, but this game was so dismal that you're gonna thank me when you read these condensed bullet points

• Team USA opens up the first half shooting 3 for 26 and an anemic 7 point first quarter
• Halftime score: Lithuania 29, USA 26. I would have rather stapled my hand to a wall than watch this first half...
• Rudy Gay knocks down four free throws after a flagrant foul in the 3rd quarter and turns a 1 point 50-49 lead into a 5 point cushion
• Team USA wakes up and realizes that they're playing LITHUANIA(!!!!), hitting the cruise control en route to a 77-61 win.

The second game against Spain may reveal the character of this USA team going forward. After building a comfortable 69-58 lead after 3 quarters against the Spaniards, Team USA started to slack and let in the 4th quarter and let Spain back into the game. The hometown team took its first lead of the game (82-80) with an 8-0 run that was fueled by plain awful shot-selection and carelessness from American players (I'm talking about your air-balled 3 Lamar Odom...)

The last 30 seconds of the game were spectacular (USA-Spain Recap) 

Kevin Durant, the aforementioned "Darantula" used his obscene 7' 6" wingspan to deny Ricky Rubio (roll those rs) and Rudy Fernandez pm consecutive 3-point attempts with less than 7 seconds to go. This win demonstrated some real grit for the Americans and could be a harbinger of their FIBA play once the games start to count this Saturday. We'll probably see them take leads and then let teams back into the game with poor offensive continuity and bone-headed decisions. Hopefully, they'll continue to walk away on the right side of hotly contested games.

Onions!

Hey readers,

Our blog, "Gimme Some Onions!" is named after the famed college basketball announcer, Bill Raftery. Watch the first 10 seconds of this clip to see Raftery in action. We want to talk about all things sports as well as some cultural, social, and political issues that affect sports. We'll err on the humorous side of things, this is not the place to read lengthy diatribes about issues like how Tiger Woods' infidelity damages the institution of marriage (in fact, this is the place to find out why Tiger Woods' infidelity makes him awesome).
We’re a collection of college grads/current students scattered across both coasts and two continents and we’re excited to write about topics that will make you think/laugh/keep coming back for more. Let us know what you really think with your feedback (we have tough skin, and if we don't like what you have to say, we'll find you...) Hope this is the first post of many

gimme some onions staff

Check out this quick blurb on where Raftery came up with "onions!" and what it means:

(This is taken from an interview with Ian Eagle, Raftery's CBS broadcast partner. The whole podcast with Eagle can be found here)

Eagle: “I remember it vividly. It was my first year and the Nets were playing a game down in Miami. And Kevin Edwards hit a big three from the corner to give the Nets a one-point lead late in the game. I had the call: ‘Edwards from the corner, three is GOOD.’ And Raf goes, ‘OOOOH, ONIONS!!!!’
And I turn to him, and I knew Raf’s (Raftery) Raf-to-English translation like the back of my hand. I was able to provide listeners with the track that they needed to follow along. But I had no idea what he was talking about. So I turn to him during the break and say, ‘Bill, Raf, I don’t get that, what is that? Onions? What, it was so good that you cried?’ He said, ‘Hey Bird (Raf’s nickname for Eagle) ... BIG BALLS.’ And that was it. That’s when ONIONS was born.”