For those of you out there who don’t know Tim Tebow, he is the Florida Gators star quarterback and one of the biggest names in college football. He has earned such accolades as 2 time All-American, AP Player of the year, a couple of ESPYs and last but not least, the Heisman Trophy.

The thing that really makes Tim Tebow unique is the fact that he is a devout Christian, and I don’t mean like how George W was a devout Christian - Tim Tebow is the real deal. Here is a guy who was born to missionary parents in the Philippines and was home schooled all his life. Talk about living a sheltered life!

So here starts my theory about the impending downfall of Tim Tebow. He is projected to go very high in the 2010 NFL draft, and as we all know: as soon as a kid goes pro, the world is his oyster.

I think as soon as he gets a taste of the gold plated Escalades and the abundant amount of strippers in whatever losing football city he goes to, he will find it harder and harder to quote John 3:16 and keep his pants on - I mean really, do you honestly expect someone who will have access to a private jet from Nike, or literally bags of cash from Gatorade to keep his humble life path following Jesus? Yeah neither do I.

So much of sports (from a fans perspective, at least) is about predictions, so rather than predicting tomorrows football scores, I’m going to be so bold as to predict the different aspects of the downward trajectory that will be the life of Tim Tebow, and I’m taking bets.

1. He will go high in the first round of the 2010 NFL draft and then proceed to lead a loser team to another losing season. Before word sets in that he can’t win at the professional level, he will milk the hype to find him a bevy of loose women to establish secret relationships with. (50 to 1)
2. He starts wearing dark sunglasses and far too much Ed Hardy apparel, and starts to alienate himself from his teammates on the Lions on his eventual team. (30 to 1)
3. He develops a coke habit. (20 to 1)
4. His career continues to suffer, and finds himself playing one season for the Toronto Argonauts of the CFL before signing a bargain basement contract with the always awful Buffalo Bills. (10 to 1)
5. He retires a failure, and makes money participating in celebrity boxing matches, facing both Jose Canseco and Danny Bonaduce. (60 to 1)
6. He fades into non-existence only to be resurrected when sports shows do their “Biggest Sports Busts” episodes. (100 to 1)

I don’t mean to be so bleak with my predictions. But if you have been suppressed from all the fun stuff you are supposed to get out of your system in high school and college and then suddenly given the world (namely gold plated cars and ladies), you are sure to be on a path to the bottom… As for Tiger Woods, I don’t know what happened there.

According to Anderson and Pierce, refs tend to try and keep the foul count even, regardless of which team is actually more aggressive. They are also more likely to favor the home team, although the probability of a foul being called on the home team is 6 percent higher when the home team is ahead than when they are behind. These findings were even stronger when the games were televised.

So what does this mean? Well, refs in the NCAA try to seem fair. They try to even out the foul count so that it does not appear that they are favoring any one team. Of course, if one team is significantly more aggressive, than keeping the foul counts even isn’t fair. And a home-town bias doesn’t help either.
So are the games rigged? Hardly. But next time you’re watching the game, check the fouls. It’s a safe bet they’ll be about the same.

Does studying sports sound like a great major? Check out these schools with programs in sports science.

However, several years of Sunday afternoons spent in front of my sweetie’s folks’ 52″, always-on TV have developed in me a certain appreciation for the skills these athletes possess. What I love is the overwhelming feeling of being impressed. For example, I am impressed when Tiger can take aim at a tiny ball and send it flying 300 yards and get it within feet of the hole, I am impressed. I mean, I’m no expert but even I know that’s 3 football fields. It takes 15 300 lbs guys 4 hours to get a watermelon sized ball to the other side and Tiger can do it with laser precision over trees and sand. Impressive.

But today’s column is a tribute to Roger Federer and one of the most impressive moments in sports I have ever witnessed. So here’s our man Roj up at the net, and Djokovic sends the ball way past him. No matter, Roger spins around, turns his back to his opponent and the net, chases down the ball flying at god knows what speed, overtakes the ball by running over it, hits the racket between his legs, and makes the shot. Djokovic is so stunned he can’t even move. If you missed it, here’s a replay with two angles. The expression on their faces is the best part: between Federer’s, Djokovic’s, and the fans, NO ONE can believe it actually worked!

A shot like that could convert even a sports-watching skeptic like me that there is grace, beauty and skill in the world. Well, maybe that’s the kind of skill that comes with incredible natural talent plus the experience gained from over 61 titles and 15 Grand Slams. In an interview after winning the match, Federer says he actually practices that shot, but it “never works out”.

Ok, OK, so I guess we can’t all be ranked #1 in the world in tennis and be the all-time leader in earnings, raking a career total of over $50M. For the rest of us duds who need to get a desk job, here are some great schools where you can play tennis while earning your degree:

P.S. And Roger, Good luck from all of us at CampusCompare in today’s final game in the U.S. Open!

Recently, I’ve come to realize that these games do have value however, and those who play them are not all useless. In fact, it seems to require some skill, or at minimum superior hand-eye coordination. I guess what inspired this change of perception was the realization that it could be a lot worse. If video games and online Texas hold ‘em weren’t already driving forces behind the declining birth rate, we now have a new source of birth control: College National Paintball.

With apparently not enough Simpsons episodes to re-run, FOX College Sports has announced plans to air the 2009 College National Paintball Tournament. The National Collegiate Paintball Association hosted the 2009 National Championships at Central Florida Paintball in April. Believe it or not, teams from all over the US flew across the country, paid for by their colleges to play for free.

Paintball may just be the only televised sport where you can neither see the tiny balls or people being hit. And the commentary irreplaceable: describing play-by-plays for the 50 virgin college students who actually know paintball regulations. Favorite commentator comment from the clip: “Its gonna come down to raw talent”. What else is it coming down to when you’re hiding behind a giant blow-up pyramid that those in the sport refer to as a Dorito? Athletic endurance? Check out the first point in the 2009 NCPA College Paintball Championship matchup between Purdue and Ohio State.

Either Fox College Sports needs to stop existing or they need to find something better to put on TV. Is it really more fun to watch this than women’s sports? How bad is women’s softball that college paintball- utterly incomprehensible -can usurp its TV spot?

Paintball’s really fun to play. You know that saying, that some things are way more fun to play, and just plain boring to watch?(It’s a quote that I just said). Anyways, paintball is one those things. Like video games and watching people play video games. It’s just one of those things that way more fun to participate in than to watch. Anyway, shout out to Fox for giving me another reason to cancel my cable.

Getting into the college of your choice by levering you athletic skills requires some self-marketing. Yes, there are recruiters, but you may not be on their radar. Yet. There are also thousands of sports scholarships out there to help you pay for college. Here are a few tips for college sports  that you can get started on right now, if you haven’t already.

Put together a highlights tape. You should do this after your junior year. Good highlight tapes display your versatility during play and at practice. There’s probably someone at school who’s offered his services in putting these videos together. Whether you outsource or cut and edit the video yourself, you should be integrally involved in its creation. You want the tape to show your most impressive plays but not you doing the exact same thing over and over. Make it compelling to watch. Include stats, or any pertinent and impressive information that you think colleges should know. Show it to your coaches for feedback. He might have some good insight. Post it on your Takkle account and on YouTube. You can’t have too much exposure.

Another reason why you should show this tape to your coach is that he is going to be very important for connecting you with college recruiters. Start talking to your coaches now. Make sure your on good grounds with them. If there are new coaches coming in for this season, make the extra effort to get to know them. Hopefully in the last few years of play you have established a relationship with your coaches so when it comes to asking them for help applying to college and getting scholarships they’ll be more than willing to.

Do scholarship research. Find out when the applications for all the scholarships you may be eligible for are due and put them in your calendar. Once you have your highlight DVD, start preparing packages for the college coaches and for scholarships (if applicable). Having all of these things prepared will allow you to pursue the more important tasks of establishing connections with coaches at different universities.

One last piece of advice: keep your marks up. Off the field is just as important. College coaches and recruiters look for individuals who are well-rounded. Show that you’re good for something other than scoring goals, or whatever it is that you do. You can lose NCAA eligibility if your college marks are no good. Recruiters don’t want to waste space and scholarship funds on someone who won’t even be able to play. Your job is to be amazing. Now you just have to market yourself so that everyone knows you are.

So, both the NBA and the NFL have a requirement that an athlete needs to be out of high school for a certain number of years before they can be drafted and turn pro. For the NBA this minimum is one, although some people in the NCAA are trying to make it 2. For the NFL, this minimum is three. The other two major North American team sports (in terms of revenue) are hockey and baseball. The NHL and MLB respectively do not have any such requirements on years out of high school for the athletes they draft. As a result very few players and managers and coaches (since most of them started their careers as players) have a college degree.

On the surface, the reasoning behind the requirements in the NBA and NFL is that its a good thing because it forces athletes to get an education. Second, it lets the players get better and play in a more competitive environment so that a pro team drafting them will feel better about investing millions in a rookie. If the college- drafted player can’t cut it at the pro level, at the very least, he can fall back on a college degree.

This hints at the real reason for minimum requirements for drafting into these two sports. College athletes, poised from the start to turn pro are essentially celebrities. Their skills can give the team an entirely different competitive edge. Some of these guys are as close as it gets to celebrities, with the eyes of national sports fans avidly watching where they might end up (especially in basketball). Having these stars on their teams brings in millions of dollars for the institutions involved and the coach. Think of all the merchandise sold for USC with OJ Mayo’s name emboldened on back. The players don’t make a dime. Entering here is the whiny response, that at least they get a free education. Besides the fact that restricting players from turning pro violates a slew of anti-trust laws about fair competition, these policies really speak to mechanics of professional sports, which, for those in charge, is driven by money (not that we blame them, this has been the prevailing ideology of our society).

People take up a lot of blog and print space discussing if and how to change the one-and-done system for college sports in football and basketball. Many are against the idea of paying the players while they’re in college because that would even further remove the traditional idea of a college athlete (by the way, what exactly is the typical traditional college athlete? Just out of curiosity?).

One blog writer Clay Travis at Fanhouse.com suggests that the reason for the draft age requirements in the NBA and the NFL have to do with the deep rooted racial paternalism. Where 65 to 80% of players in both sports are black, compared to about 2% in hockey, his argument goes that the rules were put in place due to a paternalistic view that black athletes should go to college first because they weren’t prepared enough to make career decisions yet. Of course this ties in nicely with the whole indentured labor concept of NCAA athletes for soon-to-be pros. I think this argument is spurious, however thought provoking it may be.

This is an issue with no obvious solution. And the beast that has become football and basketball college drafting has proven to be a tough one to tame. Even when the NCAA decides to involve itself in various scandals and schools suffer penalties, those receiving the penalties are the other team members. Without looking too deeply into it though, I’m inclined to say, let’s keep the status quo. It’s hard to feel bad for unpaid college athletes who essentially get a free ride and unparalleled career opportunities. Either way, we’d love to hear what you think.

Next up, we’ll discuss the bowl championship series. This serious issue was recently brought up at a senate hearing. It’s just not fair that the financial crisis should take away from this defected championship system.

For some, Title IX is at its best a dictation of resource spending to guarantee fair access to sports to half the population who tend to be denied athletic opportunities. Others says its an idiotic law that deprives deserving male athletes, specifically minorities. Or, is it a righteous civil liberty that should be honored at all costs? Well, which one is it? You know, I’m not sure.

Sports were integral to me growing up. Seeing Gloria Steinem speak when I was ten, in addition to a Nike poster that lingered in my bedroom for years about letting girls play sports, I can’t deny my leaning. A law that codifies the concept of fair and equal access to athletic opportunities seems pretty legit to me. Title IX of the Civil Rights Act’s contribution to women’s athletics in the last 30 plus years has been significant.

According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, females have 1.3 million fewer high school and 56,110 fewer college sports participation opportunities than males and receive $148 million less in athletic scholarship funds each year. Women’s sports accounts for only 8% of all print and television sports media coverage (just exceeding horses, dogs and fishing). Why? Well according the Yahoo Answers, it’s because women’s sports suck and the outfits aren’t sexy enough (except tennis and volleyball). I raise this stat because generally only popular sports get funding and support; hence the need for gender parity collegiate athletic spending.

But many opponents see Title IX as an affirmative action program that robs deserving male athletes. Somewhat ironically, the argument is that where affirmative action favors women, it hurts other minorities, like black male athletes, in greater proportions. The growing gender disparity between male and female enrollment in college, most prominent among the black population, could be remedied by offering more sports opportunities to men. An oft cited example of Title IX’s irrationality was Howard University’s, a Historically Black College, addition of women’s bowling at the expense of the men’s baseball and wrestling teams. As a former coach at Howard University put it, “The impact of Title IX’s proportionality standard has been disastrous because . . . far more males than females are seeking to take part in athletics.” When colleges need to arbitrarily create sports teams and cut more popular ones to avoid a lawsuit from rabid women’s groups, something is whack.

Still I can’t help but throw (and probably miss) something in that argument’s face. Far more males than females are interested in sports because they’ve had more opportunities and resources to be engaged in sports throughout their education. The older you get the fewer opportunities there are for girls to play sports, less women can participate in competitive athletics, making women’s professional sports a smaller industry than it could be. Coming full circle, there are fewer famous female athlete role models for young girls, who then decide to be stupid bimbos like Miley Cyrus. Basically, creating more opportunities for women in sports can only lead to more women participating in sports. Hopefully this doesn’t come at the cost of deserving men’s teams, because denying buff young athletes their skin tight baseball uniforms doesn’t just hurt them, its hurts all of us.

Chances are you haven’t heard much from the woman’s lacrosse world. It’s even less likely that you’re aware of the amazing accomplishments of the Northwestern Wildcats woman’s lacrosse team, winner of 5 National Championships in a row. This kind of a winning streak just doesn’t happen.  Many of the best players leave college to join to pros, or graduate. This means the composition of the team is constantly changing, making it hard to consistently win. A dynasty at the college level is a rare feat indeed.Well these girls aren’t playing for money, or their future: they play because they love the game.

North Carolina, Texas, Notre Dame, UCLA and Florida are well known for their top notch sports teams, but not Northwestern. That’s one reason why this championship winning streak comes as a surprise. Northwestern is typically the school renowned for its contributions to academia, science, politics, and law. The school has rigorous entrance requirements, with only 31% of applicants offered enrollment.
Northwestern’s sleeper athletics department is an unprecedented success. The Wildcats, with leadership of head coach Kelly Amonte Hiller, have broken record after record this year: the first non-eastern team to win the championship, the all-time record for most goals in a championship game, as well as the biggest margin of victory in a championship game (21-7).

Are you looking for a rigorous learning environment or a place with great team spirit? Thanks to the Northwestern Wildcats, there’s proof that you don’t have to belong to a big name sports college to win championships. You can have the best of both worlds.

How can someone determine what a college team is worth?  Well, figuring out the most valuable college basketball teams is based on the money that men’s basketball programs contribute to four important beneficiaries: their university (money generated by basketball that goes to the institution for academic purposes), the athletic department (the profit generated by the basketball program kept by the department), the conference (the distribution of post-season tournament revenue) and the surrounding communities (spending by visitors to the county that’s related to the team).

Based on those characteristics, North Carolina is valued at a whopping $25.9 million!!  And guess what, the ones that are generating all that money by playing well don’t receive any compensation whatsoever.  It’s outrageous that the star player, with his name on the back of the jerseys in the stands, won’t see a dime from those sales.  He’s the one putting the butts in the arena, selling tickets and, ultimately, generating revenue.

Because the Tar Heels have been to two of the last four national semi-finals, play in one of the most competitive conferences in college hoops, and have recognizable colors, they rake in the dough.  So shouldn’t the players, who actually  win the games, be entitled to at least a portion of the $26 million bucks?  Even if it’s just a few dollars a week for some pizza or a movie, these student-athletes work way too hard to be hassled with insanely strict NCAA rules and potential punishment.

I’m not saying the players should split $26 million bucks, I’m saying that they should get a stipend to live a regular college life; when they aren’t busy making millions for the university of course.

With some new applications, these companies are making not paying attention in class as inconspicuous as ever.  Now, basketball fans can track the March Madness tournament in a number of ways.  On personalized Google homepages,  people can check out everything from scores and seeds, to college rankings and live updates.  Just add the College Basketball 2009 iGadget, and get minute-by-minute news right on Google.  You can also use the application to receive emails of your teams latest search results and even find the best place to watch the game.

And if that’s not enough to satisfy your college sports cravings, check out the iPhone’s newest application, March Madness On Demand, available for $4.99 from iTunes.  Once downloaded, you can stream live games, check stats and even see updated brackets.  Now you can watch Syracuse take on Stephen F. Austin while checking the score of Arizona State and Temple – amazing.

If, however, you aren’t fortunate enough to own an iPhone, don’t fret — just tweet!  All tournament long, you can follow the tweets of faithful fans as they update you throughout every game.  So even if you’re cooped up in an office or classroom, you can still find out the scores with Twitter.

And to think — just a few years ago I had to watch TV to get my scores; so juvenile.