Columnists - The Daily Cardinal

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Column: Parity, unpredictability create a wide-open field in NCAA Tournament

By Matt Masterson and Katie Will | Mar. 18, 2013

After four months of ups and downs, buzzer beaters and heartbreaking defeats, we are finally here. March Madness has finally arrived. But before you toss yet another tear-soaked bracket into the trash following Thursdays opening round of games (yes I still call them opening round games because that’s what they are; Tuesday’s play-in games do not constitute a “first round”), take a step back and look at just how wide open this year’s tournament is.

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Column: Steubenville case exposes worst in athletes’ arrogance

By Matthew Kleist | Mar. 17, 2013

The Steubenville rape trial, and Sunday’s verdict, has shed some light on the out-of-control direction which athletics in this country seem to be heading.

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Column: Thompson's poised approach in free agency proven an effective gameplan

By Rex Sheild | Mar. 13, 2013

As the second-coming of college football’s signing day (also known as the start of the National Football League’s free agency period) clogged up Twitter feeds nationwide the last couple days, I could not help myself but to keep constant tabs on where the big names in this year’s free agent’s class would end up. While I scrolled through the constant updates courtesy of ESPN’s Adam Schefter and Chris Mortenson, or NBC’s Pro Football Talk, teams like the Seattle Seahawks, Miami Dolphins and San Francisco 49ers made the biggest moves while the rest of the league, including the Green Bay Packers, tried to play catch-up.

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Column: Wisconsin hockey returns to classic venue at Coliseum

By Rex Sheild and Bill Anderson | Mar. 6, 2013

While Wisconsin hockey fans have grown accustomed to the comfortable seating and the rowdy Crease Creatures at the Kohl Center since its existence in late 90s, the program started the makings of their dynasty elsewhere in Madison—Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The current Wisconsin hockey team will relive the Wisconsin glory days at the building former head coach Bob Johnson built this weekend, where they will look to add another WCHA championship banner against St. Cloud State. With the Badgers closing their season at the Coliseum this weekend, it is only appropriate to revisit the once-great spectrum in college hockey.

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Column: Ending racism in professional soccer must start with the players

By Molly Reppen and Matthew Kleist | Mar. 6, 2013

Soccer is known as “the beautiful game” by many across the globe. Watching the elite players of the world gracefully glide over the pitch, waiting to make that one deadly strike to the cheers of tens of thousands of fans, it is easy to get caught up in the suspense and excitement of the most popular sport worldwide.

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The real authors of Anywhere, USA

By By Sean Reichard | Mar. 6, 2013

Can you be an author of serious work and still have a personal life to boot? What kind of a question is that?

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Column: ‘March Madness’ finding its way into college hockey

By Matt Masterson and Ben Pierson | Mar. 4, 2013

The term “March Madness” may be colloquially tied to college basketball, but heading into the last weekend of the regular season, it feels like that phrase was tailor made for college hockey, especially in the WCHA.

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Column: Ryan deserving as any for Big Ten Coach of the Year

By Kelly Kallien and Rex Sheild | Feb. 28, 2013

As the news of junior guard Josh Gasser tearing his ACL in an October Saturday morning practice filtered around the Twitter world, the hearts of Badger nation sank. As both someone who follows the UW hoops program and a journalist, I wrote off this Badgers squad. While much had been endorsed about the development of redshirt freshman guard George Marshall during his redshirt season and the drastic improvement of sophomore guard Traevon Jackson, they simply could not duplicate the experience and talent of Gasser—a two-year starter and one of three freshman to start in the Bo Ryan era.

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Column: Big Ten the top basketball conference amidst realignment

By Steven Wishau - The Daily Cardinal and Vince Huth | Feb. 27, 2013

With all the conference realignment in college athletics, the last couple seasons in college hoops have felt incomplete. That’s not to suggest I’ve lost interest in the sport, but the destruction of deep-seeded rivalries and the slow crumbling of the Big East conference have at least watered down college basketball’s appeal.

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The hows and whys of reading

By Sean Reichard | Feb. 26, 2013

Talking to my friend Marina last week, I confessed to her that just an hour before I had checked out a staggering 13 books from the library. I had rushed out after an exam to return a few and then schlep the new load back to my dorm room in a Trader Joe’s bag. They were piled up requests, some of which I had forgotten I requested, all various sizes and styles, and now they were lovingly stacked alongside some of the other books I had checked out from the library before.

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Column: NFL combine coverage getting out of hand

By Matt Masterson | Feb. 26, 2013

When it comes to overhyped sporting events, nothing takes the cake quite like the NFL scouting combine. What began as simply a series of physical tests for NFL-bound athletes has been transformed by the 24-hour news cycle of the sports media world and their talking heads, desperate for a discussion point.

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Column: Bundesliga has overtaken EPL as best league in the world

By Matthew Kleist | Feb. 25, 2013

Two weeks ago, I subtly made the statement that the German Bundesliga is “the most competitive league in Europe over the past couple of years” in my column. This statement is more than just my opinion; there is some concrete evidence to support this notion.

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Column: Titles are titles

By Max Sternberg | Feb. 22, 2013

I hear it time after time: “College basketball’s regular season is irrelevant” or “Nothing matters until March”. Though I am usually successful in restraining myself from the onslaught of dispute I would like to unleash in response, the assertion continues to bother me. Sure, March Madness is fun, but such fun takes nothing away from the importance of the conference schedule. So please don’t change the tournament, because it is great as it is. As any coach or player would tell you, those advocating for such a change on the grounds that it renders the regular season irrelevant are completely off base.

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Column: Professional athletes’ financial woes not an issue to be taken lightly

By Rex Sheild | Feb. 21, 2013

It would be the ultimate dream of a sports fan to become a professional athlete and make an absurd amount of money. Fancy cars. Big house. Life could not get any better, right? Well, as Lee Corso famously says, not so fast, my friend.

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Jordan-James debate not as significant as we might think

By Vince Huth | Feb. 20, 2013

If you’re reading the sports page, you’re probably well aware by now that Sunday was Michael Jordan’s 50th birthday. SportsCenter jammed MJ highlights, statistics and anecdotes down our throats for seven days straight—it was one of the few instances in which the show was entirely justified to flood its programming with a single topic. Although it’s easy to overdose on Tim Tebow or the Los Angeles Lakers’ latest struggles, you can never get enough MJ (by the way, do yourself a favor and read Wright Thompson’s excellent MJ profile on ESPN.com if you haven’t done so already).

Panel stresses need for more AIDS education

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Satire: more kicks and more pricks

By By Sean Reichard | Feb. 20, 2013

What a strange and wonderful beast comedy is. Unfortunately, it’s not always well adapted to the yoke of literature. The presence of mind required by reading is different than that of film or television or theatre, and the wordy rigid structure of a book can do serious damage to the sort of spontaneity and vivaciousness comedy demands. I’m being very vague here.

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Column: Jerry Buss didn’t just fix the Lakers, he left his mark on the NBA

By Matt Masterson | Feb. 18, 2013

Name your five favorite athletes.

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Column: Weekend of college basketball games shows sport's appeal

By Rexford Sheild | Feb. 14, 2013

As Matt and Vince wrote about in their columns this week, college basketball reigns supreme at this juncture in the world of college sports—as it should. I've been to my fair share of NBA regular season and playoff games, but they do not even compare to the excitement and emotion of college basketball games.

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Column: It doesn't need to be March to have exciting college basketball

By Vince Huth | Feb. 13, 2013

For as long as I’ve followed college basketball, I can’t recall a single season during which I didn’t hear how little significance came with the sport’s regular season.

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Column: When it comes down to clutch time, nothing beats a buzzer beater

By Matt Masterson | Feb. 11, 2013

As I sat in my apartment Saturday afternoon, having just watched Ben Brust’s half-court prayer send the Wisconsin-Michigan game into overtime, I tried to remember the last time I was this excited by a sporting event—any sporting event. When was the last time that a play literally made me jump out of my seat and start jumping up and down while yelling myself horse?