Sports Betting Blog

Roger Federer turns 31-years-old this August. Many fans, sports commentators and both retired and active players still consider him the finest tennis player in the history of the game. And he has certainly made a great argument for himself. He has held the ATP No. 1 position for a record 237 consecutive weeks from February 2, 2004 t August 18, 2008. Federer has occupied the #1 ranking for 285 overall weeks, one week short of the record 286 weeks held by Pete Sampras. Federer has appeared in an unprecedented 23 career Grand Slam tournament finals, including a men’s record ten in a row, and appeared in 18 of 19 finals from the 2005 Wimbledon Championships through to the 2010 Australian Open, the lone exception being the 2008 Australian Open.

As if that was not enough, Federer holds the record of reaching the semifinals or better in 23 consecutive Grand Slam tournaments over five and a half years, from the 2004 Wimbledon Championships through the 2010 Australian Open. But that is not really was had made Federer, the star he is. At the top of all his accomplishments, we can’t forget that the Swiss Maestro, as he is often dubbed,  has won 16 Grand Slam titles, breaking the previous all-time men’s record of 14 by Pete Sampras. For the sake of comparison, please consider that Federer won 16 Majors in a span of 27 Majors (2003 Wimbledon – 2010 Australian Open), while Sampras won 14 in 49 majors (1990 US Open – 2002 US Open). So, looking at those numbers alone, and comparing them to Sampras’ it should be evident that Federer still has a couple of great years ahead of him. But considering how dominant both Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have been this last two seasons, it becomes clear that this is his best chance.

Only Sampras has won more times at Wimbledon than Roger Federer. Sure enough, Federer hasn’t won a Grand Slam tournament in all of his previous nine tries, but if a win is going to come this season, it is going to be here, at the grass field of the All English Club in Wimbledon. The Federer Express game is best suited to the grass courts, perhaps that’s why he has won here 9 different times. The big issue here is that between Spaniard Rafa Nadal and the Serbian Novak Djokovic, these two have won every grand slam since the 2010 Australian Open. So he is still considered a long shot, when it comes to wagering on the Wimbledon 2012 Champion.

Then again, FedEx knows very well that a win here will certainly mean that he is going to go back to the top of the ATP Ranking tour. The two last Grand Slams of the season are down the stretch. This is it: a win here would give him the momentum he needs to finish his career in a high note. “It’s up to somebody else to break that [Djokovic-Nadal] mold,” Federer said in a press conference in Wimbledon. “I hope I can do that. I played two quarterfinals now the last couple years. I want to do better. I have to do better at this event.” He knows what it takes to win here. Let’s see if he can make it to the Championship Game.

After more than two years of investigation and a couple of weeks of delibery a Grand Jury convicted Jerry Sandusky of sexually assaulting 10 boys over 15 years. In 2009, a three-year investigation explored allegations of Sandusky having inappropriate contact with a 15-year-old boy over the course of four years, beginning when the boy was ten years old. The boy’s parents reported the incident to police in 2009. In the course of the investigation the prosecutors identified eight different boys that had been singled out for sexual advances or sexual assaults by Sandusky. All the assaults happened between 1994 and 2009.

The jury consisted of 7 women and five men, nine of it’s individuals with some sort of connection to Penn State University, were Sandusky worked for many years as a defensive coach under Hall of Fame Football coach, Joe Paterno. It took the jury more than 20 hours over a span of two days to reach a decision, but at the end, Sandusky was found guilty on 45 of 48 counts and will most likely spend the rest of his life in jail. The charges carry a minimum 60-year sentence and 442 years at maximum. According to reports, Sandusky showed little emotion as the verdict was read to him on Friday. Judge John Cleland revoked his bail and ordered that he be taken to the county jail to await sentencing in about three months. At least for now, the 68-year-old Sandusky will be set-aside in solitary confinement.

There was a lot of tension in the courtroom during the reading of the sentence. One of the victims, the man who is known in court papers as Victim #6 broke down in tears when he heard the verdicts. The man, now 25, testified that Sandusky called himself the “tickle monster” in a shower assault. He declined to comment to a reporter afterward, but his mother said: “Nobody wins. We’ve all lost.” As soon as the courtroom was adjourned, one could easily hear the cheering from a group of a few hundred of people gathered outside the courthouse as they took knowledge that Sandusky had been convicted.

It is still unclear how this will play out to the other people that have been involved in this hearing. Let’s not forget that there is a lot more to this story. In 2002 assistant coach Mike McQueary, then a Penn State graduate assistant, said he walked in on Sandusky anally raping a ten-year-old boy in the football locker rooms. The next day, after talking about the incident to his father, McQueary reported the incident to Joe Paterno, his immediate supervisor. Paterno then followed up and informed Penn State athletic director Tim Curley.

Ultimately, it is alleged, the only actions Curley and senior vice president for finance and business Gary Schultz (who oversaw the Penn State police department) took was to bar Sandusky from bringing children to the football building and take away his keys to the locker room. Rumor has it that these actions were approved by school president Graham Spanier. No one called the police, not McQueary, not Paterno, not Curley, not even when this reached the president of the school.