Hot Reads: February 1, 2010

After a brief, one-week hiatus thanks to three St. Joe’s men’s basketball games in five days, and the subsequent wrist exhaustion, we’re back to give you the best articles in brief.

After a distinctly underwhelming Pro Bowl (hey, at least Mario Williams managed two sacks in that defensive masquerade) that did somehow squeak out strong ratings, it’s Super Bowl week! Bring on the lame coverage over-dissecting each angle, and created several erroneous ones of their own, until you’re so nauseated you don’t even care who wins!!

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In the way of interesting coverage, this year’s BCS Championship Game has opened up the now obligatory questioning of back-up quarterbacks heading into each big game from here to kingdom come (thank you Marcell Dareus). I’m sure Colt McCoy is thrilled that his lasting legacy to this point is as the moniker for quarterbacks injured in big games. Of course, no coverage of Super Bowl XLIV would be complete without delving into the Manning family lineage.

Top prospect trades corner outfield for corner tabernacle

We always see baseball players point to the sky as the cross home plate, but one highly touted prospect has preempted that celebration by retiring from professional baseball to join the priesthood.

Foxsports.com is reporting that Oakland A’s outfield prospect Grant Desme is retiring from the ranks of pro ball to pursue a life in the priesthood. (An aside: kudos to Foxsports for the unbiased article title of “Touted A’s prospect leaving baseball for…priesthood?” Nice.)

It’s not for a lack of talent, as Desme’s play in A ball last year and the Arizona Fall League garnered him some serious acclaim. He spent one season at San Diego State before tearing things up at Cal Poly (a public school, by the way) and earning the 2007 Big West conference Player of the Year award. He was drafted in the second round (74th overall pick) by Billy Beane’s notoriously thorough scouting department.

Desme got a taste of minor league ball in 2007, but was limited to just 14 games total between ’07 and ’08 due to injuries. He rebounded for a huge year in 2009 between Kane County (Northwest League, short-season A) and Stockton (California League, high-A), batting .288 in 131 games with 31 homers, 89 RBIs, and 40 steals (the only 30 steal-30 homer player in ALL of minor league baseball). He continued to rake in the Arizona Fall League, taking home league MVP honors thanks to a .315 average, 11 dingers, and 27 RBIs 27 games. Baseball America ranked Desme as he A’s eighth best prospect.

Hot Reads: January 11, 2010

It’s been a busy weekend, giving us plenty to write about, and that’s even without contemplating the changes the Eagles will be making in the coming months.

As we sift through the fallout from Mark McGwire’s big announcement today, I managed to find two pieces of commentary that reflected my thoughts on the matter: Gene Wojciechowski’s call for honesty, and Rob Neyer’s view on McGwire’s Hall prospects.

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Jumping continents, we find resolution in the Togo men’s national soccer team tragedy. The Sparrow Hawks, which originally said they would withdraw from the Africa Cup of Nations, decided as  a team to play in memory of the deceased, before changing their mind again and jumping a plane out of Angola. There were reports that they were hoping to return to the tournament later on, but any chance of that has been squashed, as African soccer’s governing body, the CAF, has diqualified them from the tournament for missing their scheduled opening game. With Togo’s track record of recieving hospitality (or basic humanity) this week, I wouldn’t be surprised if the flight attendants spit in the peanuts on the flight back.

Hot Reads: January 5th, 2010

A little bit of holiday hangover has the first edition of Hot Reads of the new year behind schedule, but it’ll be well worth the wait.

The sporting landscape is dominated by two major events this week, the first and most prominent being the BCS National Championship Game between Alabama and Texas on Thursday night. And while the coverage is far to ubiquitous for us to even begin to encapsulate, some of the most engrossing attention has focused, and deservedly so, on the Crimson Tide’s Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram. His charisma has won over even the staunchest of Toby Gerhart supporters in the LA Times Bill Plaschke, and the relationship with his incarcerated father and former NFL-er Mark, Sr. gives Lenn Robbins of the New York Post a view of what’s going on inside the helmet.

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While Heisman finalists Ingram and Colt McCoy of Texas are dominating the hoopla, Ivan Maisel points out that Alabama’s quarterback Greg McElroy is not to be forgotten in the equation.

Hot Reads: December 28th, 2009

While just about everyone else at St. Joe’s may be on vacation, we at The Hawk are still hard at work. And we know that with all the holiday milieu and gifts to return, we realize you might not have that much time to peruse the Web for the top sports stories. We, on the other hand, don’t have anything better to do half the time, so we’ll help you out by going through our browsing history:

It will come as no surprise that the hot topic this week is the decade-in-review articles, and it won’t take much to find a whole slew of them. Leading the pack is ESPN Soccernet’s superb index of categories chronicling all the best and worst in the footballing world this millennium.

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(By the way, real teams of the decade from yours truly:

Premier League (4-4-1-1): Shay Given, Gary Neville, John Terry, Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole, Ryan Giggs, Patrick Vieira, Roy Keane, Stephen Gerrard, Cristiano Ronaldo, Thierry Henry; Bench: Brad Friedel (Go USA!!), Sol Campbell, Paul Scholes, Frank Lampard, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Didier Drogba.

International (4-4-1-1): Gianluigi Buffon, Cafu, Paolo Maldini, Fabio Cannavaro, Roberto Carlos, Luis Figo, Claude Makelele, Zinedine Zidane, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Thierry Henry; Bench: Iker Casillas, Carlos Puyol, Ryan Giggs, Kaka, Lionel Messi, Ruud van Nistlerooy).