Rich's Sports Beat

Two weeks ago, a column appeared in the Big Daily authored by John Steigerwald. Steigerwald is a Pittsburgh native and has covered sports for nearly four decades in the area. He got his TV career started at WTAE-TV and was a member of the Front Four back in the late 70s (Steigerwald, Stan Savran, the late Myron Cope, and Bill Hillgrove). Steigerwald then moved to KDKA-TV in the middle 1980s. I remember my dad sending me the press clipping while I was in college. Up until a few years ago, Steigerwald remained at KDKA until his contract was not renewed. He did a stint on KDKA Radio and was also on what was then known as The Zone, a radio station for man talk (now known as KDKA-FM, The Fan, an all sports talk station). He now writes a column for a number of newspapers and also has a blog called JustWatchTheGame.com. He has also authored a book that has pretty much told it like it is and thrown no punches. He is the very epitome of old school and he admits it. That column discuss...

The Stanley Cup playoffs will be underway by the time you receive this week’s edition. The first round opened on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, depending on seeds. This is always a fun time of year for hockey junkies like me and even the casual fan. Now we’re playing for all the marbles. For those now in the know, you may be wondering why the Pens didn’t win the division, or fell behind someone with fewer points than they had. Allow me to explain. There are three divisions in each conference and the three division winners get the top three seeds in the conference. The remaining five teams then decide seeds four through eight. So, for the third year in a row, your Penguins will be the fourth seed and, really, it doesn’t really make that much of a difference in the playoffs until you get to a game seven. And even that doesn’t seem to matter, as the Pens won the Stanley Cup on the road two years ago in Detroit against the Red Wings. It’s much like the NFL playoffs where the te...

College basketball is now in the books with one of the most unusual NCAA tournaments in recent memory, if not ever, and perhaps one of the worst finals ever played. While I was not a UConn supporter, congratulations to the Huskies for winning the national championship. All things being equal, if Kentucky had had a better shooting night Saturday night, it would have been the Wildcats and not the Huskies playing Monday night. If Butler had had a better shooting night Monday night than had the Huskies, Butler would be the national champions. So it goes. This final was so bad that I was changing channels between the Pirate game with the St. Louis Cardinals, which I watched until the National Championship game came on. Once UConn got on its mini run late in the game, I knew it was over and I could not bear watching. I decided to watch the ending of the baseball game. It was just a matter of a few ticks on the clock before UConn would be declared national champions. All that being s...