And now, your feature presentation

Instead of writing a long, boring column that not a lot of people will read, I decided to do something different this time. I’m going back to my bread and butter, which is making lists. In the past I’ve counted down the five Michael Jordan games I most wanted to attend (on 4/20/06), the ten best TV announcing teams (8/8/06), the 15 most anticipated events of a weekend (9/9/06) and even made a mega-list of my top college basketball players, coaches, rivalries, stadiums, etc. (11/16/06).

But I haven’t made a list for a while. So I thought today I would make a list of my ten favorite sports themed YouTube videos. These videos range from funny to disturbing to jaw-dropping. There is basketball, football, baseball, boxing, and even just a sports newscast. I have enjoyed these videos many times, and I hope you do the same.

*You may notice a theme to many of these videos. That is because I’m biased to my favorite teams. Just putting it out there…


10---On my YouTube favorites, I have about ten Jordan/Pippen highlight tapes. This one is my favorite. It shows how great both 23 and 33 were, both on the offensive and defensive end. Plus it has one of my favorite songs, “Victory” by Puff Daddy, the Notorious BIG and Busta Rhymes, as the background track.

9---I have a personal list of people who are funny, no matter what they are talking about. Lil Jon, Steve Spurrier, Ozzie Guillen are all on the list. So is Mike Tyson. Here’s a great video of why the former heavyweight champ is on that list. Part of me actually feels bad for Iron Mike, because he has been taken advantage of so many times and I feel he is greatly misunderstood by the American public. But he does have a tendency to say some pretty stupid stuff.

8---Last years Florida Gators football team was a special one, not only because they won the National Title in convincing fashion over the thought to be unbeatable Ohio State. They were special because they combined talent with toughness, not to mention a third T, trickeration. (You thought I was going to say Tebow) Some YouTube genius decided to put together all of the best trick plays Urban Meyer’s crew used last year, all key parts to the schools second ever championship. It may sound corney, but I like that they left the original announcers on the video as the audio, instead of adding music. You get the feel of the excitement that occurred during the game.

7---Speaking of trick plays, here are the important plays from the last two minutes and overtime of the Oklahoma/Boise State Fiesta Bowl from January. Strangely, this was the only part of the game that I saw. I was hanging out with friends that night and we didn’t think it was must see TV after watching the Rose Bowl earlier in the day, so we skipped quarters one through three and a half. When we turned it on with about three minutes left, we saw the greatest ending to a game in college football history.

6---Ever watched the news when the anchor messes up a bit and it is just downright hilarious? Now picture the anchoring tripping over himself about six thousand times in less than four minutes. It’s known as ‘Boom Goes the Dynamite’, and it’s a first ballot YouTube Hall of Famer.

5---Nobody works an NFL press conference these days like Herm Edwards. The Chiefs coach is funny while being serious, the best combination for a great sound bite. He’s one of the all time greats, but he still has a long way to go before he’s mentioned in the same sentence as the greatest to ever do it, the best NFL sound bite of all time, the great Jim Mora.

4---Growing up, one of my favorite video games was Techmo Super Bowl for the old Super Nintendo System. I personally didn’t have the game or system, but a friend of mine did, and we would play for hours. For some reason, I didn’t play with the Oakland Raiders every time, because according to this video, Bo Jackson was the greatest running back in NFL video game history. Note that Bo not only runs back and fourth the field multiple times, but he also runs out the entire clock of the quarter.

3---Michael Jordan is my favorite athlete of all time, and unless he does some OJ Simpson type stuff, he always will be. I am personally offended when people don’t consider him the greatest basketball player ever and when the great Bulls teams of the 1990’s are disrespected. But even I will admit that MJ isn’t the best dunker of all time. He was the tutor, but his pupil, Vince Carter, has him beat. Watching this video of VC’s 100 best is just amazing, because he dunks when it doesn’t even seem possible to come close to the rim.

2---There isn’t much to say about this video, other than it is a highlight tape of the first seven games of the Bears 2006 Super Bowl bound season . I have watched it over 100 times, partly because its one of the only NFL videos on the website, and partly because it is very well done. I love the Al Pacino speech from “Any Given Sunday” to start it off.

Drum roll please….

1---Of all the videos to finish the list off, who would have guessed a minor league baseball game in Alaska would be number one? But when a plane crashes during the middle of a game, followed by the announcer talking in monotone as if nothing extraordinary has happened, it has to be placed at the top of the list. Listen when he says “It’s on fire, no way that just happened folks.” It sounds like the guy behind the mike is talking about a hamburger that got overcooked, not a plane crashing into a field full of people.




Hope you liked the list. If you have any good sports videos, regardless of sport, team, or year, feel free to pass it along. And I’m sorry I couldn’t get the videos to open in a separate window. I still haven’t figured out how to do that.