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College athletics are fun because you always see players being ridiculously versatile. But Buster Posey, a Florida State baseball player (what position I have no idea to attach here), took things to a whole new level last night. He played all nine fielding positions. In one game.

Posey started the game at catcher and played every infield position from the second to the fifth inning. He made the move to first base in the second, played second base in the third, shifted over to shortstop in the fourth and completed the rotation playing third base in the fifth. The Leesburg, Ga., native made his first collegiate appearance in the outfield in the sixth as he started in left field to begin the inning and shifted over to center with two outs. He the moved to the mound in the seventh and struck out both batters that he faced before moving to right field for the final out of the inning

The craziest thing is that he's the fourth freaking player in the Mike Martin's history to do so. And the last since he Martin forced his son into bouncing around the diamond. Actually, I assume he didn't actually "force" his son, but I just like to perpetuate the stereotype idea I have of baseball coaches (especially in this case -- I'm picturing a diamond version of Bobby Bowden) and their sons.

Now clearly, that's not an insult to Martin because Bowden is nearly beyond reproach in terms of coaching skill, but it's still fun to imagine. And yes, I totally added Posey to my fantasy team last night. Dude has mad positional versatility.

H/T: The Piler

Be sure to check out the link and see their theme picture: cheeseburger guy. Among the range of topics addressed at the "NCAA Gender Equity and Issues Forum" this week was childhood obesity. How so?

[NCAA] administrators are wondering whether increased obesity rates may have an adverse effect on the quality of prospective student-athletes in years to come.

Somehow I doubt the NCAA needs to worry about this. Youth sports are seemingly endless in number and yearlong in availability. The pool of quality athletes talented enough to compete at an NCAA level is more likely determined by young people's interest in those sports than obesity factors. It's a self-selecting phenomena. Obese kids truly passionate about sports and who have talent should and will generally find a way to be fit and compete.

Plus, at least with football, bigger kids are always in demand. Healthy kids are an important issue, but the NCAA is both over-extending itself considering this topic and is making much ado about nothing as far as future pools of quality athletes. High-level athletics requires fitness, and if kids are truly passionate about competing at the NCAA level, they'll be fit. The NCAA's focus should be on directing passion and energy into these sports which leads to able bodies, not hand-wringing over the larger obesity issue.

Here's the brief story of Western Oregon College softball player Sara Tucholsky, who hit the ball out of the park against Central Washington but tore a knee ligament while rounding first base. It's not a home run unless she makes it home, and she couldn't walk, so two Central Washington players carried her around the bases:

The Central Washington players are getting almost universal praise for a show of sportsmanship, but there are some contrary points raised about the incident as well. John Canzano of The Oregonian writes:

If we're being real, we should all acknowledge that if this were a men's game, at any level, on any field, what we'd have is a pinch runner at first base and nobody thinking twice about what a tough break it was for the batter.

J-Red of East Coast Bias writes:

Could you EVER imagine this happening in a men's game at the college level or above? If Wes Welker, generally considered a good guy, were streaking down the sideline with no one able to catch him, but he trips and falls or catches a cleat, could you imagine an NFL player explaining after the game that he didn't touch him down because he "deserved" the touchdown?

I'm not completely convinced that this couldn't happen in a men's competition, but I am in agreement that this really isn't the "great sportsmanship" that it's being labeled on all the morning news shows that are featuring it today. Sportsmanship is about playing by the rules, being humble in victory and being gracious in defeat. It's not about helping your opponent beat you.

UPDATE: As commenters have pointed out, Western Oregon could have simply put in a pinch runner and the whole thing never would have happened.

Half of the first round is complete in the 2008 NCAA Men's Hockey Tournament, and we're already down a number-one seed.

For the second year in a row, New Hampshire earned a top seed for a regional. For the second year in a row, top-seeded New Hampshire lost in the first round. Last year, the Wildcats never led in a low-scoring 2-1 loss to Miami. This year, the Wildcats jumped to a 1-0 lead just over a minute into the game before falling to Notre Dame 7-3.

The Irish played six-plus periods of hockey in the CCHA Championships at Joe Louis Arena last week, and they scored two goals in losses to Miami (Ohio) and Northern Michigan. Unexpectedly, they exploded in this game, adding two empty-netters in the final minutes as UNH desperately tried to get something on the board.

Elsewhere in the West regional, host school Colorado College was stonewalled by Jeff Lerg and defending national champion Michigan State. Sparty scored three second-period goals and rode Lerg to a 3-1 win. Lerg stopped 41 shots on the night.

In the East Regional at Albany, Phoenix draftee and Hobey Baker favorite Kevin Porter scored four goals in top-seeded Michigan's 5-1 romp over Niagara. The Wolverines, who are the top national seed, face Clarkson Saturday for a berth in the Frozen Four. Clarkson beat St. Cloud State 2-1, knocking the Huskies to 0-8 all-time in the NCAA Tournament.

Saturday's schedule is as follows (all times Eastern):

Northeast regional (Worcester, MA)
Air Force vs Miami (Ohio), 4pm
Minnesota vs Boston College, 7:30pm

Midwest regional (Madison, WI)
Princeton vs North Dakota, 3pm
Wisconsin vs Denver, 6:30pm

East Regional (Albany, NY)
Clarkson vs Michigan, 7pm

West Regional (Colorado Springs, CO)
Notre Dame vs Michigan State, 10pm

I'm not sure who posted this, but I'm forever grateful.

The following video comes from the 1987-88 college hockey season. Why was it posted Friday, March 27, 2008? The world may never know.

One of the participants in this stick-swinging affair from some 20 years ago is Lee Davidson. He was a sophomore for the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux when the Sioux hosted Alaska-Anchorage October 30-31, 1987. Based on the video's narrative, Davidson was hit pretty hard by Shawn Lofroth of UAA, and was next seen by the camera near the blue line. It's there that he swings his stick at Lofroth.

The actual stick-swinging skirmish doesn't last very long, and apparently the officials were busy near the net. As far as we can see, they never get anywhere near Davidson and Lofroth.

Davidson played for UND from 1986-1990, and is now an assistant coach at Minnesota-Duluth. He told me today he doesn't really remember the incident vividly, and he sounded surprised that someone would so randomly post this on YouTube (though I guess this is what YouTube is for).

"There was a skirmish at the side of the net, and I was just standing there," Davidson said. "I got cross-checked pretty hard."

Davidson claims he wasn't assessed a penalty for his role in the incident.

I covered some of the scenarios in Saturday's Ice Sheet, but we know more now.

The field for the 2008 NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Championship won't be official until Sunday afternoon's selection show. However, thanks to a transparent mathematical system being used to rank the teams in Division I and select the at-large teams, we know now who will make the tournament.

With this year's selections will come a lot of controversy, as a Wisconsin team (pictured to the right celebrating their 2006 NCAA title) that finished the season under .500 overall will make the field of 16 as an at-large team. It's not unprecedented for sub-.500 clubs to win a conference tournament to get an automatic bid (Alabama-Huntsville did it just last year). However, it's crazy to think that a team that couldn't even win half its games is good enough to earn an at-large bid to a national tournament.

It might be crazy, but it's happening. The folks at College Hockey News and U.S. College Hockey Online have both updated their "Pairwise" rankings. These rankings are a replica of the mathematical formula the selection committee will use to pick the field as they gather this weekend.

After the jump, we'll tell you who's in the field, and also reveal another crazy fact about this tournament that works heavily in Wisconsin's favor (as if their mere inclusion in the field wasn't a crazy-enough circumstance).

We told you Friday about the work being done by former U.S. Olympian and NHL player Mark Johnson at the University of Wisconsin.

Passed over for the men's hockey head coach position in 2002, Johnson ended up coaching the women's program, and he has since 2003. He led the Badgers to back-to-back NCAA championships, and attempted to win a third in a row Saturday in Duluth, Minnesota.

The homestanding UMD Bulldogs were too much for Wisconsin, however, as they shut out the Badgers 4-0. The story of the Women's Frozen Four was the play of UMD sophomore goaltender Kim Martin, who was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player. Martin, a two-time medalist on the Swedish Olympic team, stopped 41 of 43 shots in the semifinal win over New Hampshire, and then kept the Badgers off the scoreboard Saturday with 28 saves.

In the end, Martin's wizardry in goal was simply too much for the experienced and talented Badgers, who lost five of six games this year against UMD. The teams played four times in the regular season, then met for the Western Collegiate Hockey Association playoff championship and the NCAA title. Both were won by UMD.

Johnson may have failed in his bid to win, but he has served as a great mentor for the young women on the Wisconsin team. After their season ended in heartbreaking fashion, Wisconsin senior captain Emily Morris received her individual award from the NCAA and proceeded to skate near the UMD bench to shake hands with every UMD player and coach. It was the ultimate gesture of good sportsmanship and set a great example for all the young athletes who were in the crowd - not to mention the younger players on her team.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

I'll be the first to admit: I'm a Western Conference guy. I'm a Wild fan, and with the new (read: bad) scheduling formula the NHL employed after the lockout, chances to see the stars of the Eastern Conference were somewhat limited in my house for some time (I didn't even get OLN/Versus for the first season after the lockout, until we finally got DirecTV)

It wasn't until last year that I convinced the lovely Mrs. Ciskie to pull the trigger on the end-of-season offer from the NHL for Center Ice. Between that and the half-season buy this year, I've fallen into the Alexander Ovechkin trap.

I flat-out love watching that kid play hockey. How could you not? He kills himself every shift, he oozes a passion for the sport that simply can't be taught. And he scores goals like no one we've seen in this league over the last decade.

Friday night in Atlanta, Ovechkin scored his 59th goal of the season in the first period, but saved his best work for the third.

(Still to come: More on Ovechkin, that Ducks-Sharks clash late Friday night, Friday's winners and losers, and an preview of Selection Sunday in college hockey)

Wait, did I say "1980 Olympian"? And this is a hockey story? Looks like I get to post this:



Indeed, former Wisconsin men's hockey star Mark Johnson played on that 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team. Johnson scored two goals in that magical win over the Soviets, including the goal at the buzzer in the first period that sent goalie Vladislav Tretiak to an early shower.

Johnson was an All-American at Wisconsin, where he played for his father, legendary coach "Badger" Bob Johnson. He moved on to a nice career in the NHL, where was an All-Star in 1984 and a three-year captain for the Hartford Whalers.

Now, Johnson is the head coach at the University of Wisconsin. No, he's not following his father's footsteps by coaching the men's team. Instead, Johnson is carving out his own path, and he's made quite a name for himself by coaching the UW women's team.

Sports columnist Selena Roberts is a gifted writer who usually sounds just the right notes in writing about the way sports intersects with issues like race, class, politics and the law. But she was dead wrong about the Duke lacrosse case. Roberts wrote a terrible column on March 31, 2006 that centered around this 20-word paragraph:

But why is it so hard to gather the facts? Why is any whisper of a detail akin to snitching?

Roberts' thesis was that the Duke lacrosse players were banding together to protect the rapists in their midst. Of course, as we now know, it wasn't so hard to gather the facts in the Duke lacrosse case -- the facts were right there, out in the open, but a corrupt prosecutor named Mike Nifong (the only person who went to jail for the Duke lacrosse case) was so eager to twist the facts to his own political advantage that he would have sent three innocent men to prison had the attorney general not taken the case out of his hands.

But while Roberts got the story wrong in March of 2006, that can be understood -- it was a complex story, one that most members of the media got wrong. What is harder to understand is Roberts' continuing refusal to admit she was wrong, nearly two years after the fact.