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Courting the presidency: Obama and Romney face off in 10-sport decathlon

While BuckBokai awaits the season tipoffs in NBA and European basketball, somehow attention has strayed to another great competition, that sport for Americans who don’t like sports: Namely, the 2012 presidential election.

(Apparently the start of the NFL season isn’t enough; or maybe BuckBokai’s just sour-graping thanks to poor week 2 performances by both his New England Patriots and fantasy football team.)

Amidst the hoopla – entirely generated by either the 47% or the 99%, it’s unclear which – some enterprising folks over at The NOC have embarked upon video production of a presidential decathlon, a grueling 10-event competition pitting sitting president Barack Obama against his foot-in-mouth contender-to-the-throne Mitt Romney.

Okay, so this world is sadly not beautiful or poetic enough to play host to such an event, but the candidate lookalikes certainly appear to be taking challenges like handball, thumb war, chicken kissing and street fighting (no, really) seriously.

The trailer for The NOC’s entire “Obama vs. Romney: Presidential FaceOFF” series runs below; following this is the instant-classic PIG shootout during which the fan reactions are completely priceless. How many believed they were actually watching the politicos dueling on the court?

In a better world, we just might decide presidential succession this way. Or at least award a few electors…

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Justice Leaguer meets Dream Teamers

In case you missed it, a serious meeting of Dream Teamers took place during the 2012 NBA Finals a couple of weeks ago. BuckBokai isn’t referring here to the Miami Heat and Oklahoma City Thunder, although note that five players from these squads – Kevin Durant, James Harden, Serge Ibaka, Lebron James, Russell Westbrook – will be playing in the London Games and another two – Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade – could well be.

Instead, check out the below YouTube to see Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter version) of the Justice League meet ever brilliant Charles Barkley of The Dream Team and Shaquille O’Neal of Dream Teams II and III after Game 3 of that series. Ms. Carter’s smile remains as appealing beautiful at 60 as in her heyday, though she’s clearly the victim of an overzealous maker-up.

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21st century sports: Snowboard Basketball

Now that winter’s getting ready to set in over wide swathes of North America and Northern Europe, let’s hope we see a revival of the greatest 21st-century sport invented in 2010: Snowboard basketball.

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The Bizarro Bowl: ’76 Buccaneers vs. ’08 Lions

In honor of the start of the 2010 NFL season – no, a Thursday night opening game will not be acknowledged as official because *you’re supposed to play football on Sunday; God said so.* – BuckBokai celebrates by going to the interweb’s greatest time waster sports simulator site, What If Sports.

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World’s greatest sports mascot prevented by George Lucas

Admiral Ackbar may have led rebel forces to victory in the “Star Wars” saga, but he lost a simple fight for fame in Mississippi.

The University of Mississippi Rebels were without a mascot since 2003 when the question was put out the student body by vote. A group of (geeks) students used a bit of cool logic in conceiving of the perfect mascot in Ackbar: After all, he’s the Rebel Leader, right?

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Arena Football’s Future: Would you like to know more?

Ah, now that the 2010 NFL season has begun (sort of), BuckBokai reflects on two things: 1) how patently *lame* the aberration known as “arena football” is and 2) how awesome said aberration will be in the 23rd century – you know, once we’re at intergalactic war with Klendathu.

First, full disclosure with all the shame of a blacked out one-night stand by a married man – except BuckBokai was conscious. BuckBokai once tried to like the indoor game. Seriously, in 2002, the post-Super Bowl jones (you know, that condition due to which Vince McMahon was ostensibly induced to set up the XFL a year earlier) set in hard with me and BuckBokai sought the Arena Football League as a methadone to the proper football addiction.

What greeted me instead was this:

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Random thought re: Roger Clemens busted

So ESPN is reporting that the New York Times is reporting that Roger Clemens will reportedly be “indicted on charges of making false statements to Congress about his use of performance-enhancing drugs,” i.e., let’s face it, anabolic steroids and human growth hormones.

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Bobby Thomson, of the Shot Heard Round the World, dies at 86

Bobby Thomson, that unwitting creator of a million zillion what-if stories both published and unpublished, that subject of prose and poetry, that metaphorical slayer of poor Ralph Branca, died today at his home in Savannah, Georgia. He was 86.

Thomson played Major League Baseball for 15 years mostly with the New York Giants, going for a .270 lifetime batting average, three All-Star bids and 263 home runs plus one Shot Heard Round The World.

In its mundane three-dimensional existence on the baseball field, Thomson’s famous shot was “merely” the culmination of 154 games of war in a baseball for National League supremacy among New York City boroughs: Brooklyn vs. Manhattan. In an extra playoff game – actually, the third extra game in a best-of-three series, actually, and don’t remind Bud Selig or we’ll have another round of MLB playoffs – Thomson’s walk-off homer against the Dodgers’ Ralph Branca gave the Giants the pennant. Or, as the man said:

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Kobe Bryant vs. the Martians

If, in fact, the terrifying events speculated upon in Space Jam ever do come to pass, we can rest assured that any would-be alien conqueror (or maybe that should be conquistador, as in the San Diego Conquistadors) will find a Terran team ready with a gameplan.

Though Michael Jordan, having now been enshrined in the Hall of Fame twice to definitively end his basketball career (really), probably wouldn’t suit up for Team Earth, prospective on-court leader Kobe Bryant is ready.

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Ultimate championship: Dream Team vs. Redeem Team

As you may have heard, the 1992 version of Team USA was inducted into the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame last Friday.

Over at BuckBokai’s sister site BallinEurope.com, this writer enthused that “the only two teams … who *might* possibly give the Dream Team a series [were] Dream Team III, with much of Dream Team I plus Hakeem Olajuwon and Shaquille O’Neal, who probably should have been on the roster in lieu of the more politically-correctly chosen Christian Laettner in ‘92; and the Redeem Team of 2008, Generation Y’s own Dream Team.”

Which got BuckBokai to thinking later … Why not face ‘em off through the miracle of the virtual sports time-travel website What If Sports?

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Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots: The brief, twisted video history

There’s been something of an onslaught of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 at BuckBokai’s household lately, as the Young Bucks (Z., almost five years old, and S., 3½) are typically responsible for the DVD programming.

Hey, it beats “My Little Pony,” let me tell you.

Lest the digression snowball rapidly out of control, here’s BuckBokai’s favorite bit in the movie:

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Insights from parallel universe: Iverson goes to Olympiacos

Sometimes seemingly minor incidents in the grander scheme of sports history are exactly the opposite, for who can truly know the axis upon which events revolve?

Going into the 2009-10 NBA season, a handful of European news outlets tersely reported a rumor that those freewheeling, free-spending Angelopoulos Brothers running the Olympiacos basketball club had offered one Allen Iverson a huge chunk of change to come play in Greece with the Reds.

Yours truly’s speculation then was that ultimately substituting A.I. for Linas Kleiza – for as things turned out in the market last year, Kleiza was the highest-end free-agent the Brothers could coerce to jump the pond to play hoops – would have gotten the Reds off to the exact same start, namely near the top of the EΣAKE and Euroleague tables. (After all, i argued then, there’s nothing even A.I. could’ve done about the H1N1 that struck several members of the club numb for weeks.)

Now that this unfortunate season for both Iverson and Olympiacos are in the books, we have more details to expand the parallel universe of 2009-10 basketball.

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Brett Favre might retire, believed to be former Obsidian Order officer

In one of the most nauseating annually repeated stories in recent sports history, mainstream news outlets are once again paying attention to that Elim Garak of the NFL future Hall of Famer Brett Favre and his on-again/off-again talk of retirement. Reports ESPN.com this morning:

Favre has informed the Vikings he will not return to Minnesota for a second season, according to multiple reports.

Favre has sent text messages to teammates saying, “This is it,” league sources told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter.

Here’s the thing. BuckBokai has figured for years that this whole will-he-won’t-he dance is a charade worthy of Starfleet’s favorite Cardassian tailor. To wit: Brett Favre *simply doesn’t want to go through the grueling workouts of training camp.* That’s it, seriously. Waiting for a decision like this every summer is tantamount to Lebron James’ ballyhooed PR-heavy exit strategy.

Except every year.

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“It was real”: The Space Jam trailer recut

From the Shameless Cross-Promotion Department comes an excellent YouTube clip BuckBokai stumbled across for his other website, BallinEurope.com.

To quote myself (o how gauche), “one of the greatest phenomena on YouTube is the recut movie preview. BuckBokai believes that this recut Space Jam trailer is the best in the genre since the immortal Shining.” You gotta love the way Charles Barkley is given the lion’s share of trailer time, too.

(Incidentally, YouTube user Royalplinko proclaims the ‘Jam to be “the greatest film of the 90s”: a sentiment which with BuckBokai is hardly prepared to disagree.)

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More Shatner vs. Timberwolves GM? Kaaaahn do!

Another day, another Kirk vs. Kahn clip. This one features a slightly bemused Chris Webber listening to everyone’s everyone outside of Minnesota’s favorite NBA general manager David Kahn explain during a summer league game that Darko Milicic is as good a passer as Vlade Divac was.

(Dude, David, you might have done some homework there and realized that Webber actually *played* with Divac and so realized you were trying to blow a lot of interstellar gas up the gluteus maximi of the television audience that night.)

In any case, this one’s brought to you by request from Bill Simmons, YouTube user Didn’tDrawIron and BuckBokai, your home for Kaaaahn clips.

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Captain Kirk’s thoughts on Ricky Rubio

You gotta love David Kahn, GM of the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Why? Well, primarily because you’re not a T-wolves fan, but also because he represents a single brilliant degree of separation between the awesome (or “almost surreal” as the man himself put it) Ricky Rubio and Star Trek.