Saturday, August 28, 2010

Kevin Durant of the United States dunks during a friendly basketball game against Spain in Madrid on Sunday, Aug. 22, 2010. Durant will lead the USA against Croatia in the opening round of the FIBA World Championship Saturday (AP Photo/Arturo Rodriguez).

The Pittsburgh Pirates haven’t had a winning season since 1992, but recently-leaked financial documents show that hasn’t stopped the team from turning their cut from the MLB’s revenue sharing system into profits. Bill talks to USA Today baseball writer Gabe Lacques to analyze the impact the revelation will have on baseball’s finances.

The USA men’s basketball team will begin play in the World Championships this weekend. As this year’s batch of players try to take their place beside legendary American teams of the past, Only A Game’s Doug Tribou visits a new exhibit at the Basketball Hall of Fame and talks to some all-time greats to look back at iconic moments in USA basketball history.

Mixed Martial Arts was once a fringe sport that promised “no rules” fights. Now, UFC matches sell out arenas all over the world and bring in hundreds of thousands of pay-per-view subscribers. Bill speaks with Ron Borges of the Boston Herald about the sport’s astonishing transformation.

Think running a 5K road race is difficult? Try finishing it while jumping over flames and crawling under barbed wire…in a tutu. It may sound crazy, but hundreds of costumed contestants across the country accept the challenge to take on the Warrior Dash. Only A Game’s Kim Green reports from the Dash’s southeast race in the mountains of Georgia. Click here to check out Kim’s photo gallery from the race. Click here to check out Kim’s photo gallery from the event.

Bill responds to questions and comments from listeners in Only A Game’s electronic mailbag.

Bengals Wide Receiver Chad Ochocinco was fined for tweeting during a game last week. While Roger Goodell may think Ochocinco’s actions were inappropriate, Charlie Pierce believes the NFL missed a golden opportunity to modernize the game. He’ll discuss this and the rest of the week’s sports news with Bill.

Bill speaks with Professor Charles Martin, author of Benching Jim Crow. In the book, Martin describes how northern colleges chose to comply with the “gentlemen’s agreement” that maintained segregated conditions in southern college sports.

Tags: basketball, international, MLB, MMA, NBA, Olympics, Pittsburgh Pirates, sports history, UFC, wacky sports

Brian Welch

The Warrior Dash was hilarious. The only other time I’ve laughed this hard during your show is when Bill found out that Littlefield in Japanese would be translated as Ono.
Richard Hubbard

The segment with the author of “Benching Jim Crow”, Charles Martin, reminded me of one exception to northern college’s compliance with the “gentleman’s agreement”.

The University of Buffalo was invited to the Tangerine Bowl in 1958, years before the Civil Rights Act. The team was asked to leave their African American players in Buffalo in order to play the game.

The University of Buffalo had never been invited to a bowl before, and in hindsight, would not be invited to another bowl for almost 50 years. The obviously, this would be a team who would leave their two black players behind for this chance of a lifetime.

Instead, the the team raised their middle finger to the Tangerine Bowl and Jim Crow and unanimously refused to accept the invitation.

The good news? It only took the organizers of the Tangerine (now the Citrus bowl) 50 years to figure out that maybe they may have been in the wrong.
Bill Littlefield

Richard,
The story certainly reflects well on those involved at the University of Buffalo. Thanks for bringing it up. As you can imagine, we never have the space to run everything that comes up in the interviews with authors, but I’m glad you’ve brought up this particular story.
Bill