Photo credit: Steve Griffin, Salt Lake Tribune
The SOAR Blog didn’t give Real Salt Lake due attention and praise when the team won the Major League Soccer championship in the spring, but that doesn’t mean SOAR isn’t incredibly proud of its home team for bringing the State of Utah a professional sports championship title for the first time in 40 years.
It seems fitting that the influence of professional soccer in Utah, and in the United States, was recognized today by President Barak Obama in a brief ceremony honoring Real Salt Lake team at the White House. Joe Biden wasn’t there- he is heading up the contingency representing the U.S. at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa which is now less than a week away. One of Real Salt Lake’s players, Robbie Findley, will play with the U.S. team, which is a contender against Algeria, England and Slovenia.
Professional soccer is too often overlooked by North American spectators. World Cup engenders even more global enthusiasm than the Olympics in some regard- except in the United States. There are books, classes, experts, lectures galore on the global significance of “footy,” so I won’t belabor the topic here. We’re glad that with all of the other matters our presidency has to attend to that it would recognize the athletic power coming out of Salt Lake City and the importance of the World Cup.
Any chance Obama will vie for World Cup 2018 to be in the U.S. like he did for the Olympics? (2014 is already scheduled to be in Brazil).
See the Salt Lake Tribune article here
For more than 10 years (1994 – 2004), I wrote a self-syndicated column called “Utah Tech Watch” that began as a biweekly column and six months later moved to a weekly schedule.
Over time this column was published by three papers — the Deseret News (now the Deseret Morning News), The Daily Herald (in Provo, Utah) and The Enterprise (Utah’s weekly business paper) — as well as being distributed for free via email to several thousand subscribers.
Each year, one of my most fun and yet difficult self-directed assignments was to identify the top 10 stories of the year.
I plan to resurrect “Utah Tech Watch” as an online media property in 2008, and when I do, I’ll also resurrect its annual Top 10 stories piece. But for now, let me transpose this idea to this SOAR Communications blog with what I propose are the Top 10 Global SOAR Stories of 2007.
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So Chip and I were in NoCal this past Thursday to visit with new SOAR Communications’ client, Ritchey Design, whose sales and marketing offices are in San Carlos, California.
After our meeting, we headed east to Sacramento to attend a hotel grand opening with project client, Rim Hospitality.
On the way, we heard the breaking news on San Francisco sports talk show leader, KNBR-AM, that a federal grand jury had issued five indictments against home run king, Barry Bonds, accusing him of lying under oath.
By now, sports fanatics and non-fans alike probably know most of the details of the alleged crimes –
- four counts of perjury, and
- one count of obstruction of justice.
If convicted on all five counts, Bonds could spend as much as 30 years in prison.
As we drove east on I-80, we heard one of Bonds’ attorneys proclaim Barry’s innocence and predict that Bonds would not spend a day in jail.
The home run king is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on December 7 to answer the charges.
Nevertheless, as a player without a team, Bonds may have played his last inning of professional baseball.
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In an interesting turn of events, it now appears that Alex Rodriguez will re-sign with the New York Yankees.
The interesting aspect of the pending 10-year, $275 million contract is that the negotiations have apparently been conducted without the active participation of A-Rod’s agent, Scott Boras.
According to a detailed article in today’s “Wall Street Journal,” Rodriguez (and his wife) desperately wanted to stay in New York City, but A-Rod felt that option had been effectively been burned after he had declared free agency, with the strong urging of Boras. (The WSJ story can be found here; subscription required.)
A-Rod apparently shared this frustration (and love for NYC and the Yankees) with his friend, investing genius Warren Buffett, who advised the slugger to approach the Yankees without Boras’ involvement. Apparently, A-Rod did exactly that, reaching out to a Goldman Sachs personal wealth manager, who in turn reached out to a Goldman exec who had worked directly with the Yankees organization.
Even if an A-Rod/Yankees agreement is reached, it will still need the blessing of Boras. And why wouldn’t Boras agree to such a deal? He still gets his commission on any A-Rod deal.
