Sports Nut

Don’t bother trying to figure out how many underdog stories have involved Buzz Williams. The computer to do such calculations hasn’t yet been invented. There’s the Marquette basketball coach’s own journey, of course, which has generated just a few words through the years. And there are those of his teams, not just at Marquette, but at every stop along the line, be it as a head coach, an assistant or a neophyte at Navarro Junior College. There are the stories having nothing to do with sports, lives Williams has touched through his charitable work – kids in Buzz’s Bunch, benefactors…

Jon McGlocklin accepts a check from the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association at last year’s game. You go to the MACC Fund’s website, click through to the Stories of Hope portion, and then hold your breath. Because you know that, however much hope the stories deliver, they’re coming with an overdose of pain. Because when you’re dealing with cancer, how can you possibly avoid dealing with pain? And when you see pictures of bald children, how do you avoid holding your breath? But here’s the thing. You breathe again. Because hope is good. So are the stories that highlight it. And…

Photo by Adam Ryan Morris. You wouldn’t think there’s much of a drawback to breaking records and becoming the best. Aaron Rodgers did just that last season. “His 2011 MVP award commemorated one of the greatest statistical seasons in NFL history,” Jason Wilde wrote in his Milwaukee Magazine profile of the Green Bay Packers quarterback. The official measuring stick was his quarterback rating of 122.5, the best single-season mark ever posted. The unofficial measure? Your eyes. With every pinpoint back-shoulder throw, every magical escape, every piece of perfection, you knew you were witnessing something special. And the end results confirmed…

Brandon Jennings with assistant athletic trainer Scott Barthlama and Ekpe Udoh. Pop quiz: Name the longest-tenured player on the Milwaukee Bucks roster as measured by games played for the team. It used to be such an easy answer, right? For so many years, it was Michael Redd. And once he left, it was clearly Andrew Bogut. But now, for the first time since the year 2000, the Bucks have opened a training camp with neither player on the team. In other words, the last time neither of those guys wore a Milwaukee uniform, guys like Sam Cassell, Danny Manning and…

It was over, right? The Milwaukee Brewers were done in the standings, so you were done with the season. Yes, you’d checked out of America’s pastime and into Wisconsin’s addiction. The Pack was back. So were the Badgers. Come September, there were plenty of things to keep you busy. Emotionally investing in a team with no playoff hopes until 2013 was not on the to-do list. But let’s hope you wrote that list in pencil. Some revisions could be in order. When dawn broke Wednesday, the Brewers were 71-71, the first time they’d been .500 since April 24, when they…

Oh, the things we can extrapolate from the preseason exploits of your Green Bay Packers. Start with the offense. Assuming you can even call it such a thing. Because based on those four exhibition games, it will stink like the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles. The once-upon-a-time juggernaut averaged just 18.5 points per game. You know who averaged 19 in the 2011 regular season? The Denver Broncos. So if you liked Tebowmania, you’ll love this year’s Pack. Speaking of quarterbacks, Aaron Rodgers is clearly a bum. So bad, in fact, that his coach keeps benching him before the second half starts.…

Photo by Adam Ryan Morris You remember Prince Fielder. He was so darn good in Milwaukee. Almost indescribably good. But not quite immeasurably good. We know this because baseball uses those things called statistics. And we know this because the Detroit Tigers quantified Fielder’s value down to the dollar. They handed one end of the tape measure to agent Scott Boras, and he backed up until the thing read $214 million over nine years, and then everybody was happy. Well, everybody except Brewers fans. Yes, they’d figured for years that keeping him was an impossible dream, but they dreamed about…

It’s tongue-in-cheek, of course. And a tongue so firmly planted, it may bore a hole through the epidermis. But there, in today’s Wall Street Journal, the financial voice of these United States and beyond, are the words for all to read: “The Games of the XXXIII Olympiad should be held in…Milwaukee.” First, I’ll save you a Google search. For the Roman numerically challenged, that’s the 33rd Olympiad, and it’s scheduled for 2024. Second, it’s all in good fun until you get to the closing remarks: “And the Olympic slogan? ‘Hey, if Atlanta could do it…’” Yes, Atlanta once took the…

The Fab Five at the 2012 Olympics. Photo courtesy of USA Gymnastics. The closest I’ve come to covering the Olympics is Shannon Miller’s dining room table. Well, technically, it was her parents’ dining room table, because this was at her parents’ house in 1997, one year after she’d capped a career as the most decorated gymnast in U.S. history. Miller won a total of seven Olympic medals, the last coming at Atlanta in 1996, and I was sitting across from her to do a retrospective of the accomplishment. At the time, I wrote for a newspaper in Edmond, Okla., which…

Photo by Adam Ryan Morris Time to get it off my chest. The date: June 7. Milwaukee Brewers pitcher John Axford sports a 3.22 earned run average. It’s his lowest ERA of the season. He’s got a 1-2 record this year with 10 saves and only one blown save. In fact, dating back to the 2011 campaign, he’s got one blown save vs. 53 successful ones. He is, quite simply, considered among the best closers in baseball, and he’s got the numbers to back it up. The next day: June 8. I conduct a one-on-one interview with him for Milwaukee…