Tragic Loss, False Identities and The Road to the Super Bowl

As I am sure you have heard by now, Sarah Burke, Freestyle skier extraordinaire and pioneer in getting her sport of Freestyle skiing into the Winter Olympics, passed away yesterday after having had a horrible crash during a training run in Utah 9 days ago. While her family felt it was important to stress the fact that her death wasn't directly caused by her fall, stressing instead however that she did in fact suffer cardiac arrest right after the accident which cut off the flow of oxygen to her brain. The full extent of the damage was not revealed until shortly after the doctors in Utah tried to fix the severed arteries damaged in the fall.

Once they saw that she had suffered such extreme and irreversible brain damage, the doctors informed the family and their new conference scheduled for Monday was cancelled. It was only a matter of time after that before she finally succumbed to the severity of her injuries and she died peacefully yesterday afternoon.

She was only 29 years old but she was already considered a living legend in her sport and had fought tooth and nail to get her sport on the big stage of the Winter Olympics. She narrowly missed out on getting it into the Vancouver Olympics but would have been the top competitor for the 2014 Olympic games in Sochy, Russia had she not been taken away by such a tragic fall.

Her loss will be flet most by her family and her grieving husband of course but whenever a young, vibrant athlete, at the peak of their lives, is so unfairly taken away from the world, we all feel the loss as if it were one of our own family members. The Sports world has suffered a tragic loss.

Some one is going to have to explain to me how athletes from the Dominican Republic continue to evade US Authorities by somehow using false ID's and names to gain entry to the US as well Green Cards to play Baseball. Late word today on sportsnet.ca was that Cleveland Indians Pitcher Fausto Carmona (Gret name choice too, by the way; Fausto) was arrested as he attempted to renew his papers. Apparently, his real name is Roberto Hernandez Heredia and he also lied about his age as well as when he was listed as Fausto, he was 28 but Mr. Heredia is actually 31. A pretty big lie for a man who is scheduled to make $7 million this year, and the Indians hold options for 2013 at $9 million and 2014 at $12 million. That's $28 Million locked in for a guy who was able to effectively lie to the entire world for almost a decade, if not longer, until today.

While he was released on US $13,000 bail, the Indians have a pretty big decision to make with regards to whether they honour his contract or decide to terminate based upon his deception. Considering this is a man who once won 19 games for them in a season, it won't be an easy decision.

Conference finals are upon us in the NFL with the New York Giants playing against the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens heading up to Foxborough to play my New England Patriots. Nothing would make me feel better then to have a re-match with those pesky Giants but I really think it will end up being the 49ers who beat the Giants and head to the Super Bowl by smacking around Eli Manning and holding his offence in check to the tune of a 21-10 win while the Patriots will steam roll the Ravens by a final score of 35-14. Normally I would go ahead and breakdown the what, why and exactly how but I think this time I will just let my Super Bowl Finalists speak for themselves: San Francisco vs. New England