Author Topic: Our favourite things this week: from Solskjaer to basketball vasectomies  (Read 515 times)

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Our favourite things this week: from Solskjaer to basketball vasectomies

Hannah Jane Parkinson   
theguardian.com, Friday 28 March 2014 13.11 EDT   

1) Why college basketball coaches are the angriest people in the world

Vice's Colin McGowan takes a look at the extreme rage of college basketball coaches in this funny and enjoyable piece written off the back of University of Louisville coach Rick Pitino's silverback gorilla-like rage last week. (Incidentally, if you take a visit to Pitino's website, the browser window opens playing Jay Z's Run This Town. We'll just leave that with you).

As McGowan points out, Louisville were 13 points ahead with just five minutes left on the clock in their game against Saint Louis, so why the full on spitting tornado of anger? One of the suggestions made here is that college coaching is a profession "attractive to psychological Napoleons, the types of people who consider intimidation a management tactic". A great read exploring the power dynamic between young college kids enjoying their sport and ambitious careerists eager to win prize money.

2) Say what you really feel, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer

In his interview after Cardiff were beaten 6–3 at home by Liverpool, the Bluebirds' manager Solskjaer was asked whether he thought Brendan Rodger's side were title contenders this season. Given that his club are currently languishing second-to-bottom in the relegation zone with just 25 points, Solskjaer didn't really have a lot of time for this question...

3) The warmest of ice-hockey stories

Sam Tageson is a lifelong fan of NHL team San Jose Sharks. 18-year-old Sam, who has been playing ice hockey since the age of six, was encouraged by his doctors to give up the sport as he was born with a rare health condition, which means his heart only has two chambers instead of four. Sam kept up the sport however, and last week was offered a one-day contract with his boyhood team. He got the chance to practise with his heroes on the ice, before skating onto the rink with them before the start of the game. The video below of Sam in tears on the jumbotron screen, overcome with emotion, is pretty darn touching.

4) Is it a boat? Is it a plane? Is it Chamberlain? Is it Gibbs?

It's been a good week for mistaken identity. Not only did referee Andre Marriner have a total mare when he mistook Arsenal's Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain for Arsenal's Kieran Gibbs (hey, at least they both play for Arsenal), but the Canary Islands also mistook a boat for a plane. Many thanks to BBC News for sending me two alerts to my phone in quick succession about a) the 'plane' crashing, and b) the plane being a boat.

Marriner has escaped any formal action for his blunder and will officiate Southampton v Newcastle this Saturday in the Premier League, but that doesn't mean the internet hasn't gone to town on this, because, well, internet. So here we present to you Gibbs or Ox?, the website which tests one's ability to tell the difference between AOC and Gibbs. Bon chance!

5) Getting shirty over female fan apparel

Lindsey Adler of BuzzFeed takes a look at the dismal offerings of sports apparel for female fans. Adler's piece focuses on the four major American sports, but things aren't much better for UK sports fans either. While men get kitted out head to toe in every size and shape imaginable, with inventive designs and a variety of casual and formal options, women sports fans are usually left with one supposedly sexy crop top with a club logo, or the kind of fleece your mum might wear when she goes walking with the Ramblers' Association. Can we have something in between please?

6) Father and son break the world record for a table tennis rally

Yesterday, father and son team Daniel and Peter Ives broke the Guinness World Record for the longest ever table tennis rally, clocking up 8 hours, 40 mins and ten seconds of ping pong action, with 32,000 shots played in total. The pair powered through thanks to a combination of energy drinks, painkillers, and Jaffa Cakes. The mammoth rally was to raise money for Prostate Cancer UK, and the pair have raised over £1,000 so far. (You can still donate here).

"The last five minutes was [sic] very nerve-wracking heading towards the record. The whole room went completely silent. Then there was a huge cheer when we passed the mark", Daniel told his local newspaper, the Bristol Post. Watch a a time lapse video of the record rally below.