ESPN’s Page 2 is running another one of its hottest athlete polls.  I have no problem with these polls; I find them entertaining.  I can even appreciate the majority of the picks in the women’s top 10, which you can see for yourself here.  In fact, I find it refreshing when guys focus on healthy-looking athletic girls like Tanith Belbin rather than your typical anorexic-looking actresses.

But my friends and I agreed that the men’s list, which you can check out here, is in need of some editing.  Who selected the finalists?  We thought we shoudl chime in.  So without further ado, and in no particular order, our picks for the hottest male athletes …

Jeremy Bloom (Freestyle Skier/NFL Prospect) – The reigning World Cup champion failed to medal in Torino but his dating life isn’t likely to be impacted with abs like that.

Jason Taylor (DE, Miami Dolphins) – MMMMMMMMmmmmmmmm, sorry, we lost our train of thought just staring at him.

Henrik Lundqvist (Goalie, NY Rangers) – What is it with Swedish hockey players?  There must be something in the water up there.  Swats away 100 mph pucks like they’re flies and plays in a rock band in his spare time. 

Brady Quinn (QB, University of Notre Dame) – Adorable, Irish and can throw for over 330 yards per game.   Makes us wish we were undergrads again.

Kelly Slater (Pro surfer) – The undisputed king of the waves.  Only gets better with age … just ask Giselle Bundchen.

Hines Ward (WR, Pittsburgh Steelers) – Best smile in professional sports, hands down.  And yes gentleman, a great smile goes a long way.

Michael Owen (Striker, Newcastle United) – Keep your David Beckhams, give us clean cut good looks over Mohawks and peroxide any day.

Dhani Jones (LB, Philadelphia Eagles) – He writes poetry, he paints, he designs bowties and, oh yeah, crushes quarterbacks.  What girl doesn’t love that?

Jim Jackson (Guard/Forward, Phoenix Suns) – This 6’6” swingman can do it all; smooth moves and amazing arms.

Giorgio Rocca (Alpine Skiier) – What woman can resist a rugged Italian man who likes life in the fast lane?

This represents the opinions of just a few of us girls.  Anyone else have thoughts?

Much thanks to my girls – Katy, Chrissy, Nga, Rachel and Laura – for their input.

Forget the fact that the “big name” teams are no longer left in the NFL playoffs.  This year’s playoffs are producing the kind of heart-stopping “will they or won’t they?” moments usually reserved for March Madness.  I, for one, can’t wait to see what happens on Sunday.  My money is on the Steelers and Seattle.  The Steelers have the “Win one for the Bus” thing going for them, and Polamalu should feast on Plummer’s mistakes if the blitz works like it did in Indy.  In the other game, the loss of Foster may be too much for Carolina to overcome, despite the un-human play of Steve Smith …

Paris Hilton never ceases to amaze.  From her deposition this week:  “I meet so many people. I don't even know some of my friends' names.”  She also apparently doesn’t know that London is in the U.K. and thinks all of Europe speaks French …

The NFL is also full of surprises.  By all accounts Joey Porter was headed for the mother of all fines for saying he thought the referees in last week’s game were trying to hand the win over to the Colts.  Instead, they chose to do nothing and made no comment.  How very unlike them …

Is it just me, or does Bode Miller seem like a good time? …

I’m so glad my tennis career never panned out.  Jelena Dokic, who lost her opening match this week at the Australian Open, was the target of kidnapping threats by her estranged father.  He also threatened to detonate a nuclear bomb in Sydney.  It used to be tennis dads were just overbearing …

Only eight months until college football season starts.  Notre Dame has signed some of the best talent in the nation on the offensive line; one kid is 360 lbs.  Three hundred and sixty pounds, people!!!  But what I love most is that they’ve signed a TE named Paddy Mullen.  I’ll drink a Guinness to that …

I said it months ago, and now, thanks to the shot seen around the world, everyone can finally see it, Alex Ovechkin is the next big thing in the NHL.  The scary thing is the kid’s only getting better every game …

If Peyton Manning was “trying to be a good teammate” when calling out his linemen, I would never want to play with him, or live with him for that matter.  Can you imagine?  “Well I’m not trying to name names, but someone didn’t replace the toilet paper”…

And in all sincerity, congratulations to Pat Summitt on her 900^th career win.  She’s 900-172 over 32 seasons at Tennessee.  Think about that for a minute.  If she were a man, the hype around this would be unbelievable.

My favorite football memory didn’t take place in a stadium in front of thousands of screaming fans, and it certainly wasn’t televised.  In fact, it went largely unnoticed. 

It occurred on a RecSports field on a far-flung corner of the Notre Dame campus in front of a relatively small group of fans and bystanders.  It involved not Notre Dame’s storied football team, but Lyons Hall’s women’s flag football team, and all of the passion and intensity befitting an NCAA Division I football game.

It was late September, and we were nearly a month into our senior year, facing our first test of the season, a tough Walsh Hall team that had succeeded deep into the playoffs the year before.  We had not been as lucky.  After losing our quarterback and several other key offensive players, we had been forced to move talent around to keep any hope of making the playoffs alive.  The result was that Katy, our best running back/receiver, played quarterback.  This meant we ran the option more than Nebraska, and other defenses quickly figured us out.  We missed the playoffs by one win.  Now, we were looking for redemption. 

As freshmen, we had been part of a team that brought home Lyons Hall’s third straight interhall championship.  Anchored by a ferociously stingy defense, we went undefeated that year, allowing only seven points all season, off an interception returned for a touchdown no less.  Most of us had played bit roles in winning that title and wanted to claim one of our own.  We felt that we had a good chance.

With the previous year’s offensive problems seemingly under control (we had found ourselves a freshman who could throw the ball and outrun tacklers, thereby freeing Katy to resume her role as tailback), we were poised to make a strong showing in our opening game, proving we were once again a power to be reckoned with.  The only concern lay with the defense.  Although the new girls were performing well technically, they lacked the intensity of the upperclassmen.  Passion and intensity, which came to define our defense well before my time, were crucial if we were to contend for the championship.  The freshmen and new sophomores did not seem to grasp that yet.  Having never played a game, they didn’t understand why we practiced so long or spent so much time dissecting and discussing plays. Frankly, we worried that they thought we were crazy and might quit on us.

Afraid of really scaring the new recruits, we had held off on indoctrinating them into the most bizarre part of our defensive tradition.  Our basic defensive package had been christened “Mad Dog” many years before.  Some alcohol-fueled night, someone got the bright idea that the defense should drink from a dog bowl before the game as a show of solidarity.  It quickly took root and became our “thing.”  Ray Lewis has his dance; we had 15 girls clapping and growling and drinking from a dog bowl full of water.  Seeing as our own offense thought we were nuts, our captain Chrissy made the executive decision to keep the ritual a secret until right before kick off. 

As the referees signaled for warm ups to come to an end, we gathered the defense on our sideline, pulled out the bowl and held it reverently before the team like it was the Holy Grail.  We explained what would happen and got several uncertain stares in return.  However, due to the high number of seniors and the beauty of peer pressure, everyone took communion.  As the clapping and stamping and growling grew louder I looked up and Chrissy met my eyes; it was done.  They were one of us now and it was time to prove it on the field.  We broke the huddle and took the field with adrenaline coursing through our veins.

I honestly don’t remember much of the game that followed.  I recall that it was a shutout, I vaguely remember recording a sack, and I’m fairly sure there was an interception or two from our secondary, but the other details are lost to me. 

However, the look in the eyes of the new girls as time expired was unforgettable; they were hooked.  About two hours after the game ended I was back in my room studying when someone knocked on my door.  Five freshmen came spilling into my room, each talking at the top of her lungs.  A girl named Laura finally out shouted the others, explaining how she had spent the last hour on the phone with her dad telling him about the game, the dog bowl, and the “D” was so different, so intense, so much more fun than the offense.  She loved it.  The others quickly agreed and began asking questions about past exploits and talking about how much they couldn’t wait to practice the next day.  Listening to them talk, their eyes wild with excitement, I knew that, regardless of the outcome of the season, something more precious than a championship had already occurred.  Though they’d only played one game, these girls giggling on my floor got it.  They had caught the passion.  They were members of the Lyons Hall defense with our traditions safely instilled in them.  The spirit would live on.

With the college football season over and the NFL into the playoffs, I recently allowed myself to start thinking ahead to college basketball.  I admit I really don’t get into it until February; following football just consumes too much of my time.  But my mind started to wander as I flipped channels the other night and saw ND lose a heart-breaker to Syracuse, and it got me thinking about the granddaddy of all student athletic traditions at ND, the Bookstore Basketball Tournament. 

For those of you who are not ND alums or aren’t married to one and therefore don’t have to listen to us prattle on about all things Irish, Bookstore is commonly cited as the largest five-on-five, outdoor basketball tournament in the world.  Most of the student body, and a significant number of professors, coaches and university staff, participate.  It’s a classic, single-elimination, five-on-five tournament that rages on the outdoor asphalt courts that dot the ND campus for several weeks each April. 

Some teams are serious, most are not.  In fact, the vast majority of teams are just out there for the hell of it, complete with ridiculous costumes.  My all-time favorite was a team that dressed themselves completely in duct tape.  They looked like silver space-age mummies.  I can only imagine how long it took them to suit up and the pain that ensued when they de-robed.  Another favorite was my friend’s Braveheart-inspired team back in ’97.  They all wore kilts and blue war paint a la Mel Gibson.  Funny thing was, they actually had a couple guys who could play and made it deep into the tournament.  The highlight was that the few guys who couldn’t play would resort to giving a Highland Salute to opposing players as they charged the basket, and true to form, they wore nothing under their kilts.  All teams must have a name and countless hours are wasted trying to come up with clever epithets that will pass the review board.  Give Catholic kids rules and they will undoubtedly uncover a way around them.

After the first three or four rounds, when the joke teams have been eliminated, the real tournament kicks in.  The remaining teams are good, and although they usually consist of a couple of varsity athletes (rules state you can only have one varsity basketball player per team, he/she must have no remaining NCAA eligibility, and no more than three varsity athletes from any other sport), a team of “regular” guys will usually pull a Gonzaga and make a march for glory.  And when that happens, they quickly become the crowd favorite.

How big is Bookstore?  Let me put it this way; they #### stands around the outdoor courts for the semi-finals and finals.  The student paper covers it like it’s the NCAA tournament, famous alumni come back to play in an exhibition game before the final -- I’ll never forget watching Tony Rice play one year; the guy has an amazing vertical – and going to a game is a perfectly acceptable excuse to get out of, well, just about anything. 

But it transcends all that.  Bookstore draws the whole school together in a way only football season can match.  For a few short weeks when northern Indiana is just starting to wake up from its winter nap, we come alive again.  We clear out the cobwebs and get excited about sports and being Notre Dame again.  And it provides countless excuses for blowing off studying for finals a bit longer.

My roommates and I entered the tournament our senior year and it continues to be one of my favorite memories from college.  There is a separate women’s draw and it tends to be quite competitive, but we knew we had no chance of winning anything so we entered the main draw.  We drew a team of freshman guys in the first round.  Now, our average height was about 5’4,” at most.  Four of the five of us had played basketball, an all-star point guard among us, so we weren’t horrible, but we weren’t exactly good either.  In the end we put up a good fight, had a great time and bought the kids a case of beer after the game because they finally figured out what our team nickname meant. (For the record it was “Triple Stuffed Oreo”; we were three white girls, a Mexican-American and a Vietnamese-American.)  Fortunately we had more serious matters to attend to.  My roommate's boyfriend’s team, consisting of him, three varsity football players and a guy who turned down a chance to walk onto the basketball team, was projected to be a contender, and we had anointed ourselves their official cheerleaders/hecklers.  We had work to do.  I’d like to think our clever quips and exhortations to put some hustle in their game helped them into the final eight.  Granted, two of the guys now play in the NFL so they really didn’t need any athletic coaching from us.

So now I want to hear from you guys.  I can only speak from my own experience at Notre Dame, but I think Bookstore is hard to top.  I want to know, what’s the greatest collegiate athletic tradition out there? 

As I prepare to clear out for some much needed beach time in the Caribbean, here are a few random sports-related thoughts from 2005:

• Hockey’s back!  Hockey’s back!  Apparently no one in DC has noticed or cares.  Oh well, better seats for me.  
• Cowboys and Giants and Bears, oh my!  It’s nice to see some old familiar names reemerging in the NFC.
• Hines Ward is the best receiver in football, hands down.  The man does it all – he catches, he gets yards after the catch and he throws blocks like a halfback, all with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen on his face.  I love watching the guy play.  He knows he’s getting paid handsomely to play a boy’s game and is enjoying every minute of it.  If only everyone on the field thought and played the same way.
• Whoever designed the talking basketball hoop for kids and gave it #### Vitale’s voice is a sadistic ####.  On the other hand, he has definitely provided me with a valid reason to delay having kids for the foreseeable future.
• I know I’m in the minority here, but I really love the ESPN Sunday night football crew.  It’s like watching the game with my grandfather and a bunch of my crazy great-uncles.  I keep waiting for one of them to start swearing in Croatian.
• This one’s for my dad – what a great thing to see the University of Memphis back in the national spotlight!  B-ball is ranked in the top 10 again.  And to top it all off, the Tigers not only put in a bowl game appearance, but won.  I might have to order him some Corky’s BBQ to celebrate.
• When did Brett Favre get old? 
• Charlie Weis really is a genius.  Everyone had been saying it when he was in New England, but now that he’s own his own at ND, it has been confirmed.  Thank god he’s now using his powers for good and not evil.
• I never thought I would list OLN as one of my most-watched cable networks, but with hockey several nights a week, they’ve got me.  The camera work is still a little shaky, and the announcers a little over-pumped, but they’ve got Bill Clement and that’s really all I need.  And though they recently upgraded the studio, I will actually miss the safety-orange set.  I kept expecting it to be emblazoned with ads for deer urine or bullets or camo.
• As my friend Jen once remarked, Bill Cowher really does look like a pirate.  Or Popeye the  sailor man.  I can't decide which.
• I hate the NBC TV-timeout guy more now than I ever did as an undergrad.  NBC milks Notre Dame games for every commercial minute they can.  I have to clear my entire afternoon and evening to watch the game.  A football game shouldn’t take 5 hours people.  Hey seniors, next year pelt the guy with something stronger than marshmallows every game.
• Forget the Blue Man Group in Seattle; the Bengals officially have the most hideous uniforms in the NFL. 
• Why oh why, just because USC has had a few good seasons, does the rest of the PAC-10 think that makes them a powerhouse conference?  If you want to talk powerhouses I point you toward the SEC or the Big 10.  One good team doesn’t make a whole conference tough.  Exhibit A – the Big East.
• Would someone, for the love of god, take away Tony Siragusa’s ability to chime in at random on the Fox sideline?!?!?!?  Who thought this was a good idea?  I keep expecting the next report to be from the snack bar.
• Best TV moment of the NFL season:  when the Fox cameras caught Jeremy Shockey celebrating the Giants “win” over Seattle, only to realize mid victory dance the kick wasn’t good.  Priceless stuff.

And with that image in your minds, I’m off on vacation.  Feel free to add your favorite thoughts to the comments.  Thanks again to Fox for letting all of us sports junkies live out a little fantasy with this contest!

It’s the best time of the year.  This weekend starts the madness that is the BCS bowls and this year the match-ups are actually interesting and should make for compelling TV.  Unfortunately, I’ll be out of the country and will be anxiously awaiting scores and highlights on CNN.  Que sera, sera.  Right?

So before I board the plane and take off for warmer climes, here are my BCS predictions:

• Rose Bowl – Let’s start with the big game, USC vs. Texas.  As much as I hate to admit it, the Trojans have been impressive all year.  But not in the ways you may think.  While Bush, White and Leinart and company are spectacular athletes and playmakers, it’s the intangibles about this team that impress me.  They come up big at the right moments.  Short and sweet, they know how to win, as they have proven over the last three seasons.  Which is why as much as it kills me, I can’t pick against them.  Texas has played well all season and Young looks to have a bright NFL future.  But they have not played teams of a high-enough caliber to be ready for USC.  Their early season win over Ohio State wasn’t decisive.  In fact, it looked lucky at the time.  Both of teams are offensive power houses, and both have lackluster defenses.  This will be a shootout.  That’s why I’m picking USC over Texas, 38-31.
• Sugar Bowl – While the Mountaineers come into this game with a better record (10-1) than the Bulldogs (10-2), they come from a depleted and lackluster Big East versus the powerhouse SEC.  I still firmly believe that the SEC is the best conference in college football and the Dawgs are still a force to be reckoned with, despite the two losses, both to good teams.  That said, WVU does have some offensive weapons in their arsenal with White and Slaton and this won’t be a blowout.  I’m going with Georgia, 21-17.
• Orange Bowl – I love this game.  Not because it’s going to be any good, but because I really want to see JoePa beat the #### out of Bobby Bowden.  This game matches up two guys who are going to have to be carried off the field eventually.  One has personified class, and the other practically invented sleaze.  This time class should prevail easily.  The Nittany Lions have looked impressive all year, quietly posting consistent quality wins.  The Seminoles have been up and down all year.  Sure they had a big win over Tech in the ACC championship, but Tech helped them.  Hell, they practically handed it to them.  I’m going with Penn State, 30-9.
• Fiesta Bowl – This game has already been controversial for the inclusion of Notre Dame over Oregon.  The system is what it is.  Both teams had great seasons, but Notre Dame got the nod.  Sure TV audience size and advertising played into it.  The bowls are big business.  But that doesn’t make the Irish any less deserving, and they will prove it on Jan. 2.  Ohio State’s defense is the best ND will face this year.  They are tough and seasoned but have had trouble against great passing attacks, see the Texas game.  OSU’s offense is dependable with the strong rushing attack they are known for.  But I don’t think it will be able to keep pace with the Irish aerial attack.  Weis has had a month to prepare the game plan and the Irish have something to prove – not just that they were more deserving of the BCS bid than Oregon but that they are fully back as a force to be reckoned with.  Irish top the Buckeyes in a close one, 27-20.

What’s your take? 

Go Irish!

I’m going to brag for a minute. The NCAA just released Graduation Success Rate (GSR) figures for Division I-A schools. This new measurement was created to account for the high rate of transferring that occurs among college students, student athletes included. Now, here comes the bragging.

Among Division I-A schools, Notre Dame tops the list with programs scoring 100% graduation rates with 16 of 20 (80%) teams posting complete graduation figures. In football, ND posted a 96 GSR, with only the Naval Academy, at 98, scoring higher. None of the other BCS teams this year made the top 10. In fact, the next closest is Penn State with an 86 GSR. ND has been struggling with its identity as a football powerhouse versus an academic powerhouse for the last two decades. I think these results prove, it is possible to be both. See, there are no “easy” majors at Notre Dame. There are no majors populated almost exclusively by athletes as you’ll find at many universities. The most commonly cited “easy” majors are Psychology and Marketing. No cake walk there. Furthermore, all athletes have to fulfill the same basic liberal arts requirements that all Notre Dame students have. This means taking at least two semesters a piece of English, math, social science and science classes, in addition to fulfilling theology and philosophy requirements.  Ballroom dancing is not an option for credit.

Last year, several notable alums called for the University to relax its academic standards to recruit better athletes. This year’s on-field success, using the same athletes Ty Willingham recruited and groomed, coupled with the demonstrated classroom success, shows the fallacy of taking that path. Athletes are athletes. Some are more physically blessed than others, and some are more intellectually gifted than others. Notre Dame has always been, and will continue to be able to recruit good athletes. What sets a team apart is execution. And smart teams execute better, and at a higher level, than merely athletically gifted ones. Smart athletes are bale to grasp more complex systems, as Charlie Weis’ tutelage has demonstrated, that can usually overcome brute force.

As an ND student, I was pleased to know that the football players were being held to the same standards as the rest of us. Sure they had extra tutoring options, but they also had a much larger and more time consuming extracurricular commitment than I did. As an alum, I’m proud to see the graduation rate mimic that of the overall school population. I can only hope the University continues to place the same importance on “scholar” part of scholar-athlete as they have in the past.

Sorry to have been slow to post lately. Unfortunately, the real job has been demanding this past week. Happy holidays!

I’d like to make a few comments about women and sports.  Football in particular.  In another post this morning, someone kindly asked women to stay out of bars during NFL games unless they arrived in jerseys and had their faces painted like maniacs.  This got me thinking. 

Maybe I’m odd, here but here’s my story.  I grew up in Baltimore in a family with season tickets to the Colts.  All of my family loved the Colts.  My grandmother and my great-grandmother attended every home game.  Johnny U lived in our town and it was made very clear to me very early on in my life that he was a demi-god.  On top of that, my grandmother went to the University of Tennessee.  When the Colts left town, we turned our full attention and passion on the Vols instead of the hated Redskins in DC.  Football was religion in our house and everyone took communion.

When time came for college, I went to Notre Dame.  For all of you men out there who don’t think women know/appreciate football, I direct you to find a female graduate of ND.  Life revolves around football at ND.  No surprise there.  But what is surprising is that I’m not just talking about the guys that play on Saturday.  Every dorm, male and female (yes, ND has single-sex dorms, it IS that Catholic), fields an interhall team.  The guys dorms play full pads, full tackle, no-holds barred football.  The girls dorms play a version of flag that, well let’s just say its NOT no-contact.  The teams play a full fall schedule with playoffs and the championship game for both the guys and girls is played in the house that Rockne built the Sunday after the final home game.

I joined the team my freshman year, mostly because I loved football and thought it would be a good way to get to know other people in my dorm.  It was all that and so much more.  See, we had coaches.  We had a playbook borrowed from the guy’s varsity team.  We had a defensive back that gobbled up passes and returned them for interceptions like Ed Reed.  We had a running back that made tacklers miss like Barry Sanders (and I’m not just being flattering because she was my roommate and is still my best friend).  We practiced four days a week and played games on Sunday.  My freshman year we lost one game on our way to the championships.  We were scored on only once on an interception returned for a touchdown.  We played our way to a 0-0 championship game in ND stadium.  We went into overtime and broke the tie with a shovel pass into the end zone.  Our captain sealed the victory with an interception. 

Along the way, we learned routes, we learned blocking schemes, we learned defensive coverages and blitz packages and stunts.  I can guarantee my college friends and I, and the hundreds of other girls who played interhall, know as much if not more than any guy who played varsity in high school.

We all still love football.  We got to bars to watch games when we’re not actually at them.  But we’re not there in jerseys and face paint.  We’re the cute chicks in the designer jeans, t-shirts and Pumas at the table in the corner intently watching the game and dissecting the play calling on both sides of the ball and ignoring the guys in the jerseys and face paint who keep distracting US from the game.