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22.10.09
UNIBUJA POST JAMB SCREENING
Be informed that UNIBUJA post <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />UME is coming up from the 4th to 7th of November, 2009.
The scratch card can be obtained at the cost of N2000.00 only.
For more information call me on 08029077334, dont email me please.
29.6.08
Ahead of Germany v Spain
Germany will have mixed feelings regarding referee Roberto Rosetti. The Italian was in charge on 28 April 2004, when Germany suffered one of their biggest defeats in recent memory in a friendly against Romania (1-5). Rosetti was also the referee in Germany's 2-1 away win against the Czech Republic in the 2008 European Championship qualification.
Spain have also had changing fortunes when Roberto Rosetti was the referee. At the 2006 World Cup, Spain lost 3-1 against France in the round of the last 16. In the 2008 European Championship qualification, Rosetti was also the referee when Spain beat Sweden 3-0 at home
Germany and Spain have met each other 19 times and Germany have won eight of these contests, while Spain proved the strongest on five occasions.
At the World Cup and European Championship, the two teams have played each other five times, with Germany winning three times and Spain having the upper hand only once.
Spain's only victory in the Europeans was a 1-0 group phase triumph in 1984. Antonio Maceda's legendary injury time header eliminated West Germany, marking the only time until 2000 that (West) Germany were stranded in the group phase of a European Championship finals.
The last time these two met was a friendly in February 2003, which Spain won 3-1
Tags: Germany | Sports | Spain | sport | chelsea | championship | training | Coverage | Website | EUROPEAN | friday | v | INJURY | ballack | calf | missed | phase
Record-breaking serve at Wimbledon by Venus Williams
Venus Williams records the fastest serve ever by a woman at Wimbledon with the scoreboard also had Williams winning 6-1, 7-5 Saturday over qualifier
One swing from completing her week’s work, Venus Williams toed the baseline, dribbled the ball, gave it a toss and delivered yet another thunderclap serve at sun-kissed Wimbledon.
The ace bounced off the Court 1 backstop as Williams trotted to the net to bid another foe farewell.
The scoreboard said 127 mph, the fastest women’s serve ever recorded at Wimbledon
Tags: Sports | court | Russia | Wimbledon | Williams | Martinez | Saturday | scoreboard | Venus | Czech Republic | th | recorded | Fastest | Joins
28.6.08
NBC: Beijing Olympics Online Video Available Only After TV Broadcast
Sports fans in the world over had started rejoicing that finally we could do away with the lame soft-focus athlete stories and parochial commentary from NBCU with this Olympics: Yes, the company will have 2,200 hours of live competition from Beijing available online on NBCOlympics.com, but such hope is now gone with some heavy restrictions...we mentioned some of this heavy handedness earlier about Olympic trials
Other TV networks have a limited window in which to show Olympics highlights, but no video of Olympic events is permitted to be shown on any website besides NBCOlympics.com
-- No events that are scheduled to be televised (on NBCU’s six TV channels) will be available online until after they are seen on TV. If this is the case, what’s this about 2,200 hours of live coverage online? Is it only on-demand later
Tags: Sports | Events | Beijing | video | online | broadcast | Live | heavy | TOTALITARIAN | Olympic | will | story | after | only | some | restrictions | have | From | With | This | more | available | That | On
27.6.08
Euro 2008 Finals: Germany v Spain
Germany coach Joachim Low must decide whether to recall Torsten Frings for Sunday's Euro 2008 final against Spain.
The midfielder has declared himself fit after recovering from a broken rib and could replace Simon Rolfes (cut eye) in the only change to the side.
Spain also look sure to alter their line-up with striker David Villa almost certainly out with a thigh injury.
That could mean a start for Arsenal's Cesc Fabregas in a five-man midfield, with Fernando Torres the lone striker.
21.6.08
Quarter-final 4: Spain v Italy
Spain coach Luis Aragones is likely to revert to his first-choice XI having fielded his reserves in the 2-1 win over Greece.
Aragones gave a strong indication to what his starting line-up might be when he played the XI in the first two games against the substitutes on Friday.
Italy midfielders Gennaro Gattuso and Andrea Pirlo are suspended.
Alberto Aquilani and Massimo Ambrosini will probably come in while Daniele De Rossi and Simone Perrotta may start.
"Alberto Aquilani and I can co-exist quite well," Ambrosini said.
"But the choice is up to coach Roberto Donadoni. A lot will depend on what formation we use."
Camoranesi added: "I've started twice, which pleases me, but I'm not happy with how I've played.
"I wanted to be decisive, but I haven't contributed anything."
In defence, 35-year-old Christian Panucci, a regular full-back, is likely to play alongside Giorgio Chiellini in the heart of the Italian defence.
Italy have a number of key players who are just one booking away from a one-match suspension - Giorgio Chiellini, Luca Toni, Daniele De Rossi and Gianluca Zambrotta.
In the Spanish camp, despite the likelihood of playing the starting XI that faced Russia and Sweden, boss Aragones said he had not decided on his line-up.
"Things are basically clear but the play of some has me thinking, I'm not sure which team will play," he added.
Meanwhile, the coach played down a heated discussion he had with full-back Sergio Ramos in a practice session this week.
Ramos was reported to have been pulled aside by teammate Carlos Marchena to bring an end to the argument that came a day after the coach criticised him in a news conference.
"He expressed his opinion, that's all," said Aragones, responding to a question about the spat.
Although there is a full squad to pick from, Carlos Marchena, Daniel Guiza and Alvaro Arbeloa are one booking away from a suspension.
BIG MATCH STATS
Head-to-heads
Spain and Italy have played each other on 27 previous occasions. Spain have won eight, Italy nine and there have been 10 draws.
In competitive matches, Spain have been less successful winning just one out of nine. Italy have won five times and there have been three draws. Spain's sole competitive victory was in the very first match between the two, a 2-0 win at the 1920 Olympic Games.
The two teams have played each other twice at European Championships, drawing 0-0 in a group phase match in 1980 and Italy winning another group match 1-0 in 1988. Italy head coach Roberto Donadoni played in the latter of those games.
Spain have not lost to Italy in their last four encounters since a 2-1 defeat in the 1994 World Cup quarter-finals. Donadoni also played in that match.
Team facts - Spain
Been knocked out of major tournaments on three occasions on 22 June, all three after a penalty shoot-out. Lost against Belgium at the 1986 World Cup, England at Euro 96 and South Korea at the 2002 World Cup. Their only other international on 22 June was a 3-2 friendly win against Italy in 1930.
On a streak of nine straight wins and will break their best ever international winning run with a victory against Italy. Their previous streak of nine straight wins was ended by Italy in 1927.
Victory will see them break their record for longest winning streak in competitive matches (seven).
Team facts - Italy
The last two reigning world champions from Europe went on to the final of the next European Championship. Germany finished runners-up in 1992 and France won Euro 2000.
Player facts - Spain
Used 22 of the 23 players in their squad at Euro 2008 with only third choice goalkeeper Andres Palop missing out.
David Villa is Euro 2008 top scorer with four goals. He is now Spain's record goal scorer at the European Championship with four goals, and also top scorer for Spain at European Championships and World Cups combined with seven goals.
Carlos Marchena, Daniel Guiza and Álvaro Arbeloa will miss a possible semi-final match if they receive a yellow card against Italy.
Player facts - Italy
Alessandro Gamberini and Marco Borriello are the only outfield players yet to play for Italy at Euro 2008.
Alessandro Del Piero can play his 13th European Championship match, which will equal Italian record holder Paolo Maldini.
If Del Piero scores, he will become the first Italian to score in four different major tournaments (European Championships and World Cups).
A yellow card for Gianluca Zambrotta will equal the record of six yellow cards at European Championship finals, set in Spain's last group match by Giorgios Karagounis of Greece.
Zambrotta will face his FC Barcelona teammates Carles Puyol, Andres Iniesta and Xavi.
Andrea Pirlo and Gennaro Gattuso are suspended for this match having received their second yellow cards of the tournament in Italy's last match, against France.
Giorgio Chiellini, Daniele De Rossi, Luca Toni and Zambrotta will be suspended for a possible semi-final match if they receive a yellow card against Spain.
Souce: BBC Sport
15.6.08
Switzerland v Portugal
Switzerland and Portugal have met each other 19 times before, with Switzerland holding the upper hand with eight wins against six victories for Portugal. Five matches have finished in a draw.
In nine competitive matches (World Cup and European Championship qualifiers), Switzerland have won twice, Portugal have won three times and four matches have been drawn.
This will be their first encounter at a major tournament. Their last meeting came in a World Cup qualifier on 13 October 1993, when Portugal won 1-0 at home, courtesy of Joao Vieira Pinto's winning goal.
Switzerland will be playing for pride against Portugal in their final Group A game after the hosts failed to qualify.
Home striker Eren Derdiyok picked up a slight ankle injury in the defeat by Turkey - their second in the tournament - so Daniel Gygax stands by to start.
With Portugal having secured top place in the group, coach Luiz Felipe Scolari is expected to rotate the squad.
Seven changes are likely - two in the back four, four in midfield and Hugo Almeida partnering Nuno
Tags: Sports | Portugal | tournament | sport | hugo | Coverage | Switzerland | Website | Turkey | Stands | Coach | MOBILES | daniel | rotate | SQUAD | changes | Having | expected | Scolari | felipe | PARTNERING | secured | midfield | luiz | Almeida | Nuno | Gygax
22.2.08
Most overpaid MLB players
Going into the 2008 season, 124 baseball players hold contracts with an annual salary of $8 million or more. Getting a contract of that value generally means a player has shown his worth with great performances or long-term durability. Teams, however, sometimes overpay for past performance.
Eighty-six of those 124 players carried over their contract from the previous season, but some did not produce enough last year to justify the salary paid. By examining these players and their contracts, is it possible to avoid such mistakes in the future?
To evaluate a player’s output versus his salary, “Win Shares” provides a single number of a players value, including batting, fielding and pitching. The Win Shares metric, developed by Bill James, is intended to indicate the number of wins contributed by a certain player.
Win Shares per million dollars allows the ranking of players based on bang for the buck. For the players in question here, we use the average number of win shares per season since the signing of the contract, and the average yearly value of the contract.
For example, shortstop Orlando Cabrera played three seasons on a contract that averages $8 million annually. In that time, he posted 19.6 Win Shares per season. 19.6 Win Shares divided by $8 million results in Cabrera producing 2.45 Win Shares per million dollars—a good number. For the 86 players we are talking about, the average is 1.4 Win Shares per million dollars.
Splitting the players into four groups provides a better way of seeing who is not producing at a level worthy of their contracts. We divided players into batters and pitchers, then subdivided them based on how far into their deals they are—short term (one or two seasons in) and long term (three or more).
Bottom five short-term pitchers
5. Randy Johnson, Arizona Diamondbacks: 0.3 WS/million. Johnson needed back surgery during the ‘07 season. He is throwing well in spring training so far, so it’s possible he can bring up that number in the second year of his contract.
4. Vicente Padilla, Texas Rangers: 0.2 WS/million. He played most of the season, accumulating 23 starts with a 5.76 ERA. He struggled with elbow problems most of the year.
3. Adam Eaton, Philadelphia Phillies: 0.2 WS/million. This was just a bad deal. Eaton never was very good and sustained a strained middle finger tendon in each of his previous two seasons. With the Phillies, he posted the worst ERA of his career.
2. Chris Carpenter, St. Louis Cardinals: 0.0 WS/million. Carpenter made one start in ‘07 and eventually had to have Tommy John surgery. He’s not expected back until mid to late ‘08 at the earliest. He’ll basically provide no value for the first two years of a five-season contract.
1. Jason Schmidt, Los Angeles Dodgers: 0.0 WS/million. Schmidt made six starts in ‘07 and pitched very poorly, posting a 6.31 ERA. He missed the rest of the season after shoulder surgery. He has two years left on his contract and threw pain free in his first bullpen session of the spring.
Bottom five short-term hitters
5. Nomar Garciaparra, Los Angeles Dodgers: 1.2 WS/million. He could not sustain his solid ‘06 campaign and fell even further off his poor ‘05 numbers. The Dodgers are rid of this contract after this season, though.
4. Derrek Lee, Chicago Cubs: 1.1 WS/million. A great ‘05 season earned Lee a big contract for ‘06. Lee’s low rank here is based on a 50-game season in the first year of the contract. Based on ‘07, he can make this deal look a lot better over the next three seasons.
3. Jim Edmonds, San Diego Padres: 0.95 WS/million. Edmonds saw both his on-base average and slugging percentage take a nose dive for a second year. The Padres acquired him from St. Louis in the offseason and hope for some kind of rebound in the final season of the deal.
2. Hideki Matsui, New York Yankees: 0.9 WS/million. Once an iron man, injuries limited him to 194 games over the last two seasons.
1. J.D. Drew, Boston Red Sox: 0.85 WS/million. Drew actually stayed healthy in ‘07, but his slugging percentage was off about 75 points from his career average. Drew has four seasons left to improve his standing.
Bottom five long-term pitchers
5. Jason Isringhausen, St. Louis Cardinals: 1.1 WS/million. Isringhausen is effective, but closers just don’t deliver that much in terms of Win Shares because of the few innings they work.
4. Ben Sheets, Milwaukee Brewers: 0.9 WS/million. He signed a four-year deal after an outstanding ‘04 season. That was his third year in a row throwing 200-plus innings, but he hasn’t qualified for the ERA title since.
3. Pedro Martinez, New York Mets: 0.6 WS/million. Injuries wiped out most of the ‘07 season and caused him to post the highest ERA of his career in ‘06.
2. Mike Hampton, Atlanta Braves: 0.4 WS/million. He enters the last season of his eight-year contract having not pitched since ‘05.
1. Carl Pavano, New York Yankees: 0.08 WS/million. He signed a four-year, $40 million contract after the ‘04 season, but a series of injuries have limited him to 19 starts and a 4.77 ERA with the Yankees.
Bottom five long-term hitters
5. Adrian Beltre, Seattle Mariners: 1.3 WS/million. He performs better than one may think, averaging 17.1 Win Shares in his three seasons with the Mariners. He just didn’t live up to his breakout final season with the Dodgers, the basis for his big contract.
4. Manny Ramirez, Boston Red Sox: 1.3 WS/million. Yes, Manny is a great hitter. But the price tag is just too high. Note that the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez over the length of his previous contract averaged seven more Win Shares per season than Ramirez. If you take their WS/million out to the next decimal point, Alex beats Manny 1.34 to 1.27, but still doesn’t reach the average of 1.4 WS/million. These numbers reflect superstars receiving a premium for contributing to lots of wins. It’s those extra wins that put teams over the top and into the playoffs.
3. Garrett Anderson, Los Angeles Angels: 1.2 WS/million. This is simply a case of a team valuing batting average more than on-base average. Anderson doesn’t get on base very often for a player with such a good batting average.
2. Jason Giambi, New York Yankees: 1.2 WS/million. His average is brought down by poor seasons in ‘04 and ‘07. He also was limited to 139 games in both the ‘05 and ‘06 seasons. Still, he has had four great years with the club—on-base averages more than .400 and slugging percentages well over .500, hitting 151 home runs.
1. Ken Griffey, Jr., Cincinnati Reds: 1.1 WS/million. His contract seemed like a sweet deal at the time for the Reds. Griffey, however, played 140-plus games in a season just twice in eight years. He has hit 195 home runs for Cincinnati after hitting 209 in his final four years for the Mariners.
Hitters vs. pitchers
Note that pitchers, in general, are a poor investment. When you rank the players by Win Shares per million dollars and divide them into four even tiers, or quartiles, you get the following counts of pitchers and batters:
| WS/million quartile | Pitchers | Batters |
| First (highest) | 5 | 16 |
| Second | 3 | 19 |
| Third | 8 | 14 |
| Fourth (lowest) | 18 | 3 |
| Total | 34 | 52 |
Nearly 53 percent of the pitchers in the study finish in the bottom quartile, compared to 5.8 percent of batters. However, many of these were in the first year of their new deals, so they have a chance to bounce back.
Lessons learned
What lessons can we learn from these contracts? Pitchers produce much less than hitters, so big contracts are not the best idea for pitchers. Maybe the Twins knew what they were doing in trading away Johan Santana.
Pitchers with any injury history are bad gambles. Johnson, Pavano, Schmidt, Carpenter, Eaton and Martinez fit this mold.
The hitters are more complicated. Great hitters simply demand a premium. It’s tough to argue that the Ramirez and Rodriguez contracts were mistakes, despite less bang per dollar. But signing older players with a history of declining productivity doesn’t work. Garciaparra, Edmonds and Anderson prove that older hitters just aren’t worth a lot of money.
Culled from Yahoo Sports
23.1.08
Fake wrestling star tries UFC
In the spring of 2000, Brock Lesnar was a University of Minnesota senior, just two weeks and a handful of workouts away from the NCAA Division I wrestling tournament.Today, the 30-year-old Lesnar finds himself in a similar situation as he trains for his match against former Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight champion Frank Mir in the most publicized debut in UFC history.
The former “Next Big Thing” of pro wrestling has become ultimate fighting's next gigantic question mark, a 1-0 fighter with 69 seconds of ring experience thrown into the deep end of a shark-infested pool.
Whether he's in over his head remains to be seen, but the reason he's being billed as the semi-main event of UFC 81 on Feb. 2 in Las Vegas is because of his fame as a former World Wrestling Entertainment champion.
The success of this card hinges on people buying the novelty of a
former WWE champion fighting a former UFC champion. The idea, if it
clicks, is to rally the UFC fan base to want to see the fake wrestler
get smashed, and for the pro wrestling audience, to whom the show is
being heavily marketed, to tune in out of curiosity to see how one of
its all-time tough guys can do.
Lesnar knows his role is to antagonize UFC fans, as he did in
dismissing Mir's submission ability in a commercial. Lesnar noted upon
signing with UFC a few months ago that when it comes to promoting a
fight, he "learned from the best."
"I've got eight workouts left (as of late last week) and I'm very
excited for February 2," Lesnar said. "I've got it all to lose and I've
got everything to gain. Frank Mir doesn't have the same kind of
pressure."Source: sports.yahoo.com
Tags: Brock | Champion | Frank | Las Vegas | Minnesota | Pool | university | become | being | BILLED | championship | debut | fighter | Fighting | finds | Gambles | gigantic | handful | heavyweight | Lesnar | NCAA | publicized | remains | SECONDS | seen | semi-main | SENIOR | shark-infested | situation | Sports | thrown | tournament | trains | ultimate | untested | weeks | workouts | wrestling
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