A couple of previews (for the Packers and Giants, respectively) today over at the Carnival, especially valuable for all of your hard-core fantasy football honks. In another 24 hours or so, I'll be posting extensive sleeper and bust lists... which is when the last of my drafts are put to bed. Hurry back.
What's eight miles in the grand scheme of things anyway?
The real historical significance, of course, is that we now have a recorded instance of someone mistaking Wallace Wade for a college football stadium.
New Season. New chance to make some extra coin. And with the current momentum of B.O., some of us will probably be paying a lot more in taxes next year. So get a head start and make some easy money. Nothing you can do about paying your unfair share of taxes, but you can control the extra cash flow from The Truth's NCAA Winning Picks. Sorry, I digress.
In hours, my companions find the cheesecake photo of McCain's new VP pick.
Forget everything I just wrote, vote for titty!
Last night, I took the night off from staring daggers at my fantasy football draft prep and the non-hitting Yankees on my fantasy baseball team to watch Barack Obama take the Democratic nomination. (This is the big cue for those of you who don't share my politics to either dig in and suffer or scroll down. You've been warned.)
Over 70,000 people braved what must have been the security detail from hell (according to the reports I've read, waits of five hours were common) to watch a black man get closer to the Presidency than any black man has ever been.
Even if you are a Republican, you've got to be OK with that, at least out loud. And then he spoke for 40+ minutes, in a speech that he more or less wrote himself (hey, a literate President! Me likee!), and gave me about everything I could ask for.
Today, in response, the Republicans announced that their nominee to be vice-president would also make history, in that they chose a woman for the first time in their history. The partisan in me wants to note that she's a creationist with 18 months of experience being a governor (of Alaska), and that it smells a little desperate to me, given that no one imagines she would have gotten the job if Hillary Clinton were the Democratic nominee...
But I'll leave all that aside and focus on the positive. Sarah Palin is the kind of pro-life person that I respect... in that when the money was on the table, she didn't have her fetus at 44 years old tested or aborted, and consequently will be raising a child with Down's syndrome. She's also an ex-athlete and beauty pageant contestant who has made her reputation by fighting against corruption in her own party. Quite a resume, really.
What does get my goat, in watching the coverage of these things, is the wild glee that the cable channels have over this whole thing. We might cover politics like they were sports in this country, but they aren't. If your team beats mine, it has no real consequences to my life; we don't go fight a war over it or change the tax codes.
So, um, no... a close election and wild poll swings and smackdown debate moments and crafty negative ads are not panaceas and just good clean fun. No matter how much they may make you feel like they are.
They are sideshow distractions, carnival nonsense, designed to distract you and me from the things that matter when it comes to making a decision.
In a better world, you wouldn't need to speak as well as Barack Obama to be a Presidential nominee. You wouldn't need to be as ready with a quip and press-friendly as John McCain, either.
But that's not the world we live in, or the media we have.
Which doesn't mean that it's got to be that way, or for you.
So in the months to come, when the inevitable nonsense comes up about who is running the better campaign or what it all means when there is some gaffe, etc., etc...
Well, vote for a better reason. Please.
In the very real chance that you missed it yesterday, I'd like to direct you to the uproar that yesterday's list caused over at the Carnival. For those of you who would rather not click, it was my list of cursed NFL positions, including such luminaries as Chicago QB, Eagles Coach and Cardinals Owner. For the most part, fans from the tweaked fan bases look it in stride, added fuel to the fire (I did not know that the last time Lion QB made a Pro Bowl was in 1972), or pointed out my occasional mistakes (I should have said Eagles outside linebacker, rather than slight reasonable players like Jeremiah Trotter, and, um, Jeremiah Trotter).
Like any good list piece, it was a reasonable bar argument kind of piece, and it got some fairly significant Web attention, thanks to a link from Sports Illustrated.
And then J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS Fan saw it, and then all hell broke loose.
And yes, it upset me, and the other Carnival writers, all the way to the bank.
You see, it turns out that taking a comedic dump on Joe Willie Namath's Legacy is roughly akin to telling a Catholic that the Pope was a Hitler Youth. Or telling a Packer Fan that they might not have lost all of those playoff games in this millennium with a different, less interception-happy, quarterback. Or telling a Yankees Fan that Derek Jeter gives women communicable diseases while being the second-best shortstop on his team. Or finding a Packer/Yankee Catholic and telling him all of these things at once, possibly with a side order of how their mom fares between the sheets when she's working the night shift.
Because oh, my, J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS Fan does not like it even one little bit when you tweak Joe Willie.
Frankly, I don't get it, but maybe it's just a generational thing. If someone wanted to crack on my franchise's beloved quarterback from before I was born, I'd entertain the argument that Norm Van Brocklin might not have been all that great. The numbers really don't measure up against that argument, in that the 1960 Eagles really didn't run the ball all that well, but what the hey. It was 48 years ago. Have at it.
But you see, what we have to really assess Namath isn't terribly compelling. You've got a less than .500 record, with a 50.1% completion percentage, 47 more picks than touchdowns, who threw a lot when he was young and healthy and the Jets were mediocre, threw less when they were good, and then couldn't stay on the field. He made the Pro Bowl five times in twelve years, and didn't do it again after age 29. He was a first-team All-Pro just once. He won, as far as I can tell from the research, two playoff games in his entire career. (The Raiders and Colts, in the Super Bowl III year.)
As good as his leadership might have been in Super Bowl III, the Jets won that game on their defense and ground game. I get that winning the big game as a big underdog set him up for life in New York, but if that's all you have to do to cement your legacy, he should have retired at age 25 and been the football equivalent of James Dean. The '70s counted as well, and for the most part, those weren't very kind to him on the field.
This isn't meant to denigrate his importance as a cultural icon... but, um, isn't the game played between the lines? J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS Fan felt compelled to tell me about Namath's womanizing, his media impact, his swagger. Um, great.
In the modern game, this makes him Matt Leinart.
A better argument would have been to point out that he was well regarded as a player by his contemporaries, that he struggled with injuries that would have been dealt with much better with today's knee surgeons, and that he must have been one hell of a leader, given the way that his teams seem to perform better when he was in the lineup. There's a case to be made. The Sporting News, after all, named him 96th in their Top 100 Players Ever list in 1999, and he made the Hall of Fame very soon after retirement.
Football statistics are heavily dependent on context; for all we know, Sammy Baugh might have been the best guy to ever play the position. It's like comparing apples to venison. When you look at the film, Namath does throw a beautiful ball with a quick release. It's just what happens to it in the air that's the problem.
And if you want to limit to just his contemporaries... I'm sorry, but I'm going with Kenny Stabler. And Len Dawson. Aesthetics aside, Bob Griese won a ton of games and committed very few mistakes. Sonny Jurgenson put up huge numbers in an impossible era for quarterbacks, and also did it with terrible teams. Bart Starr might have been the best of the '60s. Roger Staubach won more Super Bowls, Fran Tarkenton more playoff games, and Johnny Unitas is Johnny Unitas. People can make a case for Terry Bradshaw, not that I would be thrilled to do so. I think I'm taking Namath over Bert Jones. And that's just from his era.
And, moving beyond Namath, not that J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS Fan was really very interested in doing that... um, guys? Richard Todd threw 30 picks in a year. Pat Ryan still gives me Kotite-esque nightmares. Glenn Foley was your Bobby Hoying. Kellen Clemens made them give Brad Smith snaps. Chad Pennington longs for Koy Detmer's arm strength. And so on, and so on.
Now, is Jets Quarterback really the most cursed position in pro football? No, of course not. Namath gave them an identity. Vinny Testaverde gave them a forgotten great year, and Pennington was a decent game manager and leader before injuries robbed him of, well, the ability to throw a football.
I could have gone with other picks, like Buccaneer QB or Offensive Lineman, or maybe smacked another coach or owner around. But, well, I didn't... and now we know just how touchy you are about your history. Enjoy your delusions.
This is Monta Ellis, one of the best guards in the world, who provided the Golden State Warriors with 20, 5 and 4 , along with a 53% (!) shooting percentage and a steal and a half a game in 2007-08. He also gave the team the sense that they really were on a different path, in that five years ago when a second round pick paid off like gangbusters, they watched it walk away to Washington and become Gilbert Arenas.
He's also going to miss the next three months with a high ankle sprain. I should say, at least the next three months. The Warriors will also be without Baron Davis, of course.
So they're going to go to battle next year with a roster that counts Stephen Jackson as its best player, the defensive sieve that is ex-Clipper Corey Maggette, and back ups where they had stars. Add it up, and you can start the clock on Don Nelson making real the ever-present retirement threat... and the Warriors going back to their comfortable cocoon back at the bottom of the West.
Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.
After tonight's thoroughly expected beatdown (Sidney Ponson was starting, after all, and he's now 3-13 against Boston for his career, with a 6.95 ERA), the worst team that money can buy is seven games out of the wild-card with thirty games left to play. Oh, and tomorrow for the sweep, the Sox run their best pitcher this year, Jon Lester, against the suddenly very hittable Mike Mussina.
This is also the last series in Yankee Stadium history against the Red Sox, and the hated invaders have outscored them by 18-6 in the first two games. Tonight was close until the 8th inning, when a 7-run eighth inning was punctuated by a Dustin Pedroia grand slam.
Let the history show that when the Yankees desperately needed outs in the eight inning, with a $200 million payroll, they didn't hand the ball to a John Wetteland, or a Mariano Rivera, or a Mike Stanton, Jeff Nelson, or even a Kyle Farnsworth. Instead, it was Jose Veras (heroic most of the year, out of gas tonight) and David Robertson (in the 21st and worst game of his career), in a game where the once-vaunted Yankee offense had mustered all of two runs in seven innings against Paul Byrd and Manny Delcarmen, who came into the night with a high 4-run ERA against the rest of the world.
Huge changes will be coming for this franchise, and the fan base is going to welcome it in a big way. If nothing else, the building deserved better than the utter walkover that the current tenants have provided.
Oh, and on the off chance that you have any moment of pity for the Steinbrenner Nazis, read what happens if you need to move during "God Bless America." George? Please die already.
Here's the link that will make you think... that someone in Shawne Merriman's life needs to get him to breathe a towel or six of ether and get cut on before the big idiot wakes the hell up.
In researching this piece, I checked out Merriman's web site, which is as Extremely Manly as you might imagine. Guess what? It doesn't mention his wife or kids, and I couldn't find anything on the Web confirming or denying the existence of anyone taking up dependent status on his 1040. There does seem to be some women in his past, but nothing too serious.
Say what you will about the effect that a wife and kids might have on a man's liveliness, but I guarantee you that if there were an equal partner in the future Merriman earning potential, there would be no way in hell that he wouldn't already be under the knife. Good luck, Charger Fan (and anyone that already drafted the Chargers as their defense in a fantasy league...)
H/t to Awful Announcing, who had the courage to read the Wall Street Journal so that I didn't have to...
For the past six years, the company has been running a well-received series of ads for its "Chunky" soup that feature National Football League greats and their mothers calling them inside for dinner and serving them soup.The size of Eagle Fan's heart for Number Five grew three sizes on this day; yes, we did all hate those ads that much, especially in close correlation to Don's tendency to actually blow Chunky chunks in big games. (And yes, you are right to want to throw all marketing people into the tenth circle of Hell for phrases like "soup independence.")
But starting with this NFL season, those moms will be riding the bench. The reason for the change? Campbell Soup says its new research has revealed that the company's target consumers -- men in their 30s -- are finally achieving soup independence.
The new campaign, dubbed "Working Day," features San Diego Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson. In one of the series of five ads, which debut when the NFL season kicks off on Sept. 4, Mr. Tomlinson is shown in action on the field as a voice-over describes his job in blue-collar terms.
"Another grueling day on the job," the ad begins. "You're dying to get out of those work clothes. You're hungry. You take a can of Chunky soup. You think about your day. Was I productive? Did I do right by my boss?"
So last night I'm in a midtown Manhattan bar, making nice with all of the other cool blogger kids (and yes, dear God, they are all kids -- I've got a decade at least on most of 'em) as the finest teams that money could buy proceeded to soil the bedclothes in the Bronx and Philadelphia, respectively.
We'll start with the Yankees, who got two Johnny Damon right field foul pole home runs and did next to nothing with the rest of a mess of baserunners against the Red Sox in a have to not have it 7-3 loss. The line will look like Andy Pettite was less than clutch, but in watching the game, it was all bloop hits and infield trouble, rather than anything particularly well hit.
Meanwhile, the Yanks at the plate were doing what an old team does -- wait for a long ball that never came, despite the presence of ancient Tim Wakefield and his ever more ancient knuckleball. In a game of this importance, you'd expect the home team to be handing out batons at first base to push matters and avoid the crippling double play balls. You'd also be watching a team that isn't the 2008 Yankees.
In Philadelphia, the Mets were penning their own, far more tragic, same old story: a big early lead, the starter being left in too long because the bullpen isn't trustworthy, the offense gripping the bats into sawdust during the opposing team's This Can't Be Happening AGAIN comeback, and some relief goat du jour taking the fall late. The names to fill in for the Mad Libs game of How Can Met Fan Tear Out His Hair (surprising, given last year's El Foldo, that there would be any left to yank) were Pedro Martinez and Benny Ayala.
It astonishes the mind that a team with this kind of payroll and farm system couldn't make a move to get bullpen help. Hell, the Diamondbacks added Jon Rauch and the Rays added Chad Bradford and the Twins got Eddie Guardado; fungible relief help is what gets moved at the deadline. Billy Beane would have probably packed Huston Street's bags for him in Oakland, or you could have gotten what you really needed (Brad Ziegler) for some collection of Matt Murton-esque talent on the cheap. No team should ever gag away a pennant from the unbelievably unpredictable event of Billy Wagner being injury prone, or Pedro not being able to hold an early lead.
Oh, and a special shout out -- HEY! -- to noted soothsayer Jimmy Rollins, who called Philly Fan a front-runner and a punk last week in what can only be imagined as a Get Out Of Town Already move, only to back up his talk with a huge 5 for 7 night, including a 2-run homer to start the comeback from a touchdown down. He also had three of the Phillies six steals. (Yankee Fan, take note -- this is what an offense, at home in a must win game, does. It also helps to not have all of your offensive players, with the possible exception of Robinson Cano, on the downside of their careers.)
Rollins continues to be a living nightmare for Mets Fan, which you think would be all that would be required to earn him the ever-loving love of Philly Fan, but one suspects that the fan base is happier to root for Jamie Moyer (adorable, even while highly ineffective last night), Chase Utley (OK, in that he's just a better player than J-Roll) and Shane Victorino (hmm, I'm starting to detect a, shall we say, Boston-esque pattern here). The night's events pushed the Mets out of first, though they've got this Johan Santana guy pitching for them tonight, so it might not be a long stay out of the penthouse. (For now.)
Add it all up, and you have a late August in the city... and yes, you can mostly wear any hat you want (my blogging companion last night was wearing a Phillies cap), since the home town teams have more or less lost the audience already, and no one who is anyone is still in town and working in the week before Labor Day. New York, my friends, is ready for some football, rather than the continued sobfest that is the final season for both stadiums.
Here's a fun fact: the Mets' pen has blown ten (10!) leads in the ninth inning this year, and 22 saves overall. Good grief. Which means that in about 8% of their games, they've been less than three outs away from sealing the deal, and that's got to just have them walking like zombies by now. Last night's euthanasia finally came when Chad Coste singled home Victorino, making a winner of Rudy Seanez in the 13th. (Say this for the Phils: they don't quit. They may not be very good either, in that they never are, but in a short series with Cole Hamels, the resurrected Brett Myers, and the mostly strikes of Moyer and Cupcakes Blanton... oh, who am I kidding, they're also going nowhere fast. But at least their bullpen is, well, a bullpen.)
The Mets will be losing meaningful games longer than the Yanks will, but when your team can't close or hold touchdown leads in baseball, you'd be staring hard at Mssrs. Manning and Favre, too.
Here's today's link, which required more research than usual, and has perhaps the single best moment that I can imagine to summarize the whole of the existence of the Detroit Lions, in that Scott Mitchell is a Legendary Lion. No, I'm not kidding. Go, by all means, and wonder.
A quick h/t to longtime friend of the blog CMJ Dad for this one... a story of Jericho Scott. That's him to the right. He's nine years old and throws too hard for Little League, so the league is going to fold his team, rather than let him pitch. No, seriously.
You see, facing some other kid's 40 mph heat when you are a beginning player is too scary for beginners. And yes, there's conspiracy theories afloat that he's being blackballed for not joining the league champions. This is a libertarian wet dream of a movie deal right here.
So the other teams, rather than, um, play and try to hit the kid, just quit. It's the safe thing to do, and much more accommodating to the long-term goal of having the kids enjoy themselves while playing ball.
The obvious knee-jerk response to this is to commence the face and head slapping (yours, then with more luck, theirs), but I'm going the other way on this. I played one year of Little League, stunk on ice, and was afraid that some kid was going to kill me pretty routinely.
The lessons that I learned from that experience were priceless, and those were that I sucked at baseball, and that it would be better for all concerned if I found something better to do with my time. (Namely, hockey, the sport for people who have no vertical leap, depth perception, or fondness for one's shins.)
Look, as a parent, I can understand the desire to shield your kids from crushing failure, but the parents for this place need to embrace the opportunity. By getting shamed and stoned at age nine, they stand to save years of Little League fees, and help to break little Chase and Aston of their unrealistic dreams early. Goodbye, private college. Hello, plumbing school. Scott's parents should farm him out as a service...
"We have 130,000 people on our waiting list. We could charge anything and still fill the stadium." - Giants owner John Mara, as quoted in the NYTimes today, on WFANThis link is worth the firewall, if only for the shadenfraude you'll feel at New York Fan's considerable and escalating expense (the Mets, Yankees, Giants and Jets are all getting new pleasure palaces soon). Everyone get on board with their love for New Stadiums!
Tonight, I'm going to a confab of sports bloggers in an NYC watering hole. It'll be my second event in four days (third in five, if you count poker) where I'm face to face with people who also contribute to my online life as a sports blogger. When I'm there, I'll do what I always do in a quasi-work environment: put on my best fake smile and slowly convince myself that Networking Is Enjoyable, that I've got something in common with other people who write for fun, and that, gosh darn it, there's at least ten other things that I should be doing for this here blog to make it more successful, in addition to, well, filling the wordhole.
Realistically, the best of those things would be to find a previously untapped video of a skateboarder lighting themselves on fire, particularly if they have nice breasts.
What's going on out here in Blogfrica, for those of you that care about such things (which is to say, well, the people I've seen three times in the last five days), is that we're slowly taking over for offline print media types. Hey, we might as well... it's not like the press boxes are going to be torn down at all of these stadiums, and with your local newspaper reacting to a declining market share by giving you less and/or charging you more, it's not like those people are going to be coming back with a vengeance. The CPMs (that's advertising talk for the rate that we make from the number of eyeballs that we display to) keep creeping up, and the demographics favor us, in that no one who is settling down at a college dorm right now is finding five new media sources by flipping through the periodicals at the library.
So what's next? Well, it'll consolidate. Anonymity will be replaced by named writers. Coarse opinions and naughty words will fade into the lesser known sites, or be confined to a few notable exceptions. Bloggers will be slowly corrupted by the soft touch of public relations and insider access. How, after all, can you savage the team when it might cost you the private box and one-on-one interview that set your site apart from the great unvetted? And within three to five years (remember, Net time is faster than real time), we'll be reading more and more like what's always been out there, for good and for ill, only with no editors and for less money. It's not like the World Wide Lemur holds the copyright on compromising for a bigger market.
So why go, especially when the siren call of someone else paying for the liquor isn't that big of a deal for me? (I'm remarkably stupid that way.) Well, hell, they asked me. They seem nice and all. Hanging out with sports bloggers is, by definition, hanging out with opinionated sports fans with more than a touch of wit about them. Maybe I'll get some ideas to fill the bloghole (hey, like this!), people for my poker table, or my upcoming NBA auction fantasy league. All in all, possible goals.
You may note the absence of one very real and tangible goal from this that list that many other people have: making a living from blogging. I don't have that one, because I gave up unrealistic dreams of employment when I stopped having a rock band. (Oh, and also because I actually do write for fun.)
Besides, if you do this for a living, you either have to find fiery skateboarders or go to lots of private boxes and hold your tongue. Neither of which I'm very good at, really.
Which means that life at the Tool will continue as it has to know, with the fake name, the access that anyone with cable can duplicate, and the audience that is dwarfed by titty and death. Game on!
Something is troubling me, folks, in regards to the recent rash of Favre and Strahan and Clemens (i.e., the end of career issue player), and that is this: at what point did Going Out On Top become the be-all and end-all of every well-publicized athletic career?
Being a nerd from way back, the first that I remember reading about this was the legendary Browns of Otto Graham's era, the ones from the first great threat to the NFL in terms of a rival league. Graham was the best quarterback of his era, and he retired at the end of a great run of Browns championships. (You see, there is value in pre-Lombardi NFL history: by knowing it, you can write phrases like "great run of Browns championships" without flinching or giggling.) Ever since, we get this from any number of quasi-important players.
As an Eagles fan, I dream of a championship. If it should happen this year, should Brian Dawkins retire? Well, of course; he's close to the end anyway, and last year was borderline ugly at times, with him really not performing to his level. Fine, then, B-Dawk gets to go out on top. How about Donovan McNabb? Well, no... in that if there is an Eagles championship, you'd have to think that he was a main cause of it, and you'd like to see the team be as good the next year. Or Brian Westbrook? He'd be 30 then, and wouldn't it be better if he could... You see the point. At some level, going out on top just means a much nastier word, a word that no one wants to embrace. Quitting.
Consider your own career for a second, in relation to the anointed. Are you going to be able to retire on top? My guess is, well, no. You'll retire somewhere in the great uncharted middle that is most cubicle life, assuming that the whole endeavour isn't farmed out to Bangladesh, and it will be. After that, you'll consult and cobble until you can manage something else. That's because for us, our career is very closely tuned to our lives, unlike professional athletes.
Everyone is, on some level, what they do and what they think. Pro athlete is attractive as a career profession and as a role model, because (for the most part) what they think is positive; if you don't think you are going to succeed and win, you aren't going to make it to the top level, even as a loser.
This is also why it smacks of artifice (at best) when an athlete picks their time to go, rather than just, you know, do the work and let someone else make that determination. No one else in our society makes their own determination to quit: the most celebrated entertainers never bail out despite innumerable threats, and it's rare that you see a celebrated CEO leave on anything but his shield. Media moguls like Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone cling to the jobs until they are no more; so do, for the most part, Supreme Court justices.
There's really only two classes of people that try to game the system and be above every other monkey with a tax bill to pay... athletes and lottery winners.
And this is yet another reason why it's OK to hate on both.
(Ed. Note: Strahan, probably in the absence of what he'd consider to be meaningful cash, decides to stay in a Grecian beach and/or the Fox television studios in LA. Hey, maybe the Giants can coax Tiki Barber back to rush the passer instead...)
So the Lemur is all a twitter about the possible return of Michael Strahan to the Giants with the loss of Osi Umenyiora. I'm not going to weigh in on the inevitable will he or won't he or should he or shouldn't he; that's what the Lemur does, after all, and I'd hate to step on the toes of longtime athletes in mid-bray.
But I will note this... only in New York, and for this situation, does this story get such obvious play. The Giants say they are just going to move Mathias Kiwanuka back to the down position, away from linebacking duties, and start something called Gerris Wilkinson in the newly available linebacking slot. If they are really going to back up the bank truck and pay Strahan the money they weren't willing to pay him last year, they've got a funny way of showing it.
As an Eagles fan, I'm all for Strahan continuing to be retired, in that the Giants with fewer pass rushers are a lot more fun to deal with. But it's also hard to imagine that a man who had checked out can come back and still provide the same performance.
There's also this: Umenyiora was a beast last year, but he was also an overrated one, thanks to his career day against Winston "Turnstile" Justice in the win over the Eagles on MNF. Take away that night, and Umenyiora is just another good pass rusher, rather than an utterly dominant one... and even if he and Strahan had both returned, they weren't likely to do so at the same level.
Combine this with the loss of Gibril Wilson to the Riaders (OK, admittely for a comically overinflated contract, as is The Raider Way), and you've got a lot going wrong for the defending champions before the season has even started.
There is one saving grace, however. The Giants have a cupcake schedule (Skins at home, Rams on the road, Bengals at home, then the fourth week bye) for the first month, when Strahan is presumably losing his Greecian beach flab, or when they're still teaching Wilkinson how to play the position. If you're going to have injuries, better early than late.
(Oh, and there is also the nice idea of Strahan coming back, eating their salary, providing no value, and staying off my television. A man can dream.)
Sad news from the Continent tonight, as blogosphere darling and marginal NBA big man Rod Benson is taking the Euros and running to France.
This isn't really a case of the exchange rate costing the Association another talent; I have no idea if the Boom Man is actually good enough to play in the Association; he hasn't really gotten the chance. But on some level, you'd like to see him in the big leagues, if only to encourage a fellow blogger... and for heaven's sake, the man can rebound and has a sense of humor. It's a national disgrace that he didn't get a job at the top level.
Your link is here, and I've got to say that the more time that I spend considering this trustafarian bag of douche, the more I truly dislike him... and I'm not even a Cardinals fan. We're talking about a guy with more opportunities than any of us are ever likely to see, and what does he do with the opportunity? Drink with underaged co-eds. Fail to rehab from injury. Shown no evidence towards game planning or professional development.
Sure, sure, sure... he's just in his third year. There are plenty of quarterbacks that failed early that turned out to be more than acceptable -- Jim Plunkett, Steve Young, Tony Romo, etc., etc. But the difference is that each of the other guys were in impossible situations, with terrible skill players, and usually in ferociously competitive divisions. Leinart plays in an NFL West that's basically the WAC of the NFL.
If I were a Cardinals fan, I think I'd well and truly hate this guy. There really isn't anyone on the Earth who is squandering their potential and looking good while doing it. We've had more than enough trustarians in this country, thank you.
Here's today's link, and yes, consider me among the many that was well and truly ready for this stuff to move to the side. Especially after my Eagles took the Patriots apart (albeit in pre-season), with some actual special teams explosiveness.
But don't worry, Olympics. I'm sure that we'll care again in four years, when the Brits try to have as secure of an event without having a docile populace and police state powers...
No, this isn't a political post. But thanks for thinking it...
Today in Beijing, the US Olympic squad put order back to the universe with a close but not absolutely terrifying win over the Spaniards. The Games served as a coming back party for Dwayne Wade, who led the way today with 27 points and seems to be ready to end that single-year futility in Miami.
Perhaps the close game in the Final will convince some folks that Olympic basketball is now an even keel kind of thing, and that the US should not just be expected to roll over the world. But the simpler fact of the matter is that as long as there is an athletic gap between us and the rest of the world -- i.e., when the nasty dunks and alley oops are all coming from guys wearing the US laundry -- the public expectation will remain that we should just wipe the floor with these guys. Despite the fact that, well, basketball is about more than jumping well, and the NCAA tournament proves that every year.
For now and the future, we should think of the US Men as a #1 seed in a single elimination tournament, in a game that the world is increasingly interested in playing. Within my lifetime, we might not even be the #!1 seed any more.
(Oh, and for anyone that really feels relief and pride and amazement over this, um, get a grip. It's just hoop.)
Tonight in Trenton, the Shooter Family went to its first minor league baseball game, a walkover from the first-place Trenton (a Yankee outfit) over the last-place Reading Phillies.
I'd tell you more about it, but short of the forgotten Victor Zambrano shutting down the feeble Phils, there wasn't much of the game that made an impact on me. Instead, it was more the surroundings (I was in a luxury box thanks to a blogging companion who shall remain one of the guys from Hugging Harold Reynolds), the nice little place that is Trenton's Waterfront Park, the inflatable kids' play area, and the post-game fireworks.
Everyone had a good time, and Trenton's got a very nice honor role of past alumni, and you can't help but be charmed by the simple pleasures of minor league baseball. A half hour before the first pitch, we were taking a service elevator up to the luxury box, and the elevator operator told us to listen for him during the game, in that he was doing color for the first three innings, play by play in the fourth through sixth, and color through the close.
I also have T-shirts older than him.
You can see why people like this, and it's not a good idea to underestimate the economics. Two dollar parking is a smile-inducing moment in comparison to the MLB gouging, ten dollar tickets are even better, and all of the merch was cheap, too. Concessions were similar in price to MLB, and the kid area set me back a bit, but in terms of a 3.5 hour night out with the family, you couldn't do much better.
Oh, and the Shoooter Youngest likes fireworks, and yelling. "Baseball!" a lot. So, there's that.
(Oh, and for the record, I remain opposed to the idea of baseball games where the wins and losses don't matter very much, and dream of a world where there are no minor league affiliations, and relegation for teams that tank to AAA. Moving on...)
From PETA, who as the photo to the right shows, just might be finally getting the hang of this whole PR thing...
1. Citizens Bank Park (Philadelphia Phillies)
2. AT&T Park (San Francisco Giants)
3. Safeco Field (Seattle Mariners)
4. PETCO Park (San Diego Padres)
5. U.S. Cellular Field (Chicago White Sox)
6. Busch Stadium (St. Louis Cardinals)
7. Comerica Park (Detroit Tigers)
8. Coors Field (Colorado Rockies)
9. Turner Field (Atlanta Braves)
10. (tie) Tropicana Field (Tampa Bay Rays)
(tie) Chase Field (Arizona Diamondbacks)
Really, Philadelphia is the most vegetarian-friendly? I'd have thought that it would be Milwaukee, now that their fat load of a first baseman went off meat, while ours still grazes... but then again, they did bring in CC Sabathia. And lust after racing meat.
Want to live to be 91, be an Oscar-award winner, appear on The Simpsons and make huge coin? Do what Ernie does! (Admittedly, probably from the inspiration of some other web site.)
In my Ad Age today (sorry if the link gives you a firewall), this tidbit... Nike is getting into bed with murderer, thief, and George Bush enthusiast Don King to promote the upcoming foregone conclusion Roger Federer vs. Rafael Nadal match.
Um, tennis, Nike? You do realize that the guy you just hired is one of the biggest balls of filth on the planet, right? That he's taken the Fifth Amendment about his connections to the Gotti crime family? That rumors of jury tampering, realities of dozens of lawsuits from ex-clients, and the blood of at least two men is on his hands?
Oh, I know, all PR is good PR. Hey, you got this link, didn't you? And maybe you'll really hit the jackpot and have Federer or Nadel found over the body of a young boy, both naked except for their Nikes, and using the blood of the slain to paint a swoosh.
Then again, that probably won't be new to anyone who has been to your Third World factories.
Yay, PR!
So in prepping for the NFL season, I keep coming back to the situation in Arizona, where the Perpetual Cardinals Could Surprise Story is being undermined by Anquan Boldin demanding a trade, and coach Ken Whisenhunt starting Kurt Warner in a preseason game ahead of the supposed future of the franchise, Matt Leinart.
In case you don't follow the more off-field sports blogs, Leinart was photographed at an underaged keg party in the off-season, helping some fine young things like a helpful freshman pledge, rather than like a guy making tens of millions of dollars to play in the NFL. He also found time for the absolutely necessary hot tub trip, which shows that his ideas of debauchery aren't exactly original.
This lead to many athletes (as well as a celebrated Buzz Bissinger meltdown on the HBO Costas show) to decry the sudden paparazzi-like influence of One Nation With A Cell Phone Camera, and the Evil, Evil Blogs That Publish Those Pictures.
You see, we in Blogfrica had crossed a line that should not have been crossed. Leinart was perpetuating no crime, said the glibertarians, and it didn't seem right to splash his face all over the Internets for some harmless fun. We're very, very bad people to show you images like this one, and to make money from the ad impressions that they generate. He's not a celebrity; he just plays football for a living.
Never mind the fact that underaged drinking isn't harmless, especially if you were the parents of one of the sweet young things. Or the fact that Leinart has fathered a kid out of wedlock before. (While one might suspects that it would have happened from an experience similar to the one photographed, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say the relationship just went wrong. Oh, and that he was forced to engage in unsafe sex.)
Or that at the time of Beer Bong Gate, he was supposed to be in rehab from a season-ending collarbone injury, and hence, you know, working.
Um, people? It's not coming to come as any great surprise to you where I'm going with this, right? Yup... I Cry Bullshit. (Or, at the very least, Shenanigans.)
You see, it *does* matter what these guys do off the field, and here's why -- coaches have this thing about trusting guys with bad judgment. If Leinart had kept his nose clean and stayed under the radar, he'd have been showing good judgment -- the same good judgment that he's generally lacked in not leading the Cardinals to a winning record in his time there, despite a piss-poor division, a steadily improving talent base (especially at the skill positions), and the bump that the new home stadium should have given that team.
The same good judgment that would have his quarterback rating up above the Detmer level. He's not that much far above it now, other than some good moments in games against pretty weak defenses.
While we're talking about judgment, maybe it would have been better for him to declare early, especially since he was all of one class short for his last year in sunny California. So instead of going first overall, he went lower the next year, as scouts started to whisper about his commitment to the game and the fact that USC QBs tend to be system washouts in the pros (Rob Johnson, anyone?).
It might have also helped if he not had a lengthy holdout that opened the door for Warner, who for all of his fumbling and holding on to the ball flaws, does know the system and prepares for an opponent..
Is anyone else seeing a pattern here?
It matters because all of this has led Whisenhunt, correctly in my opinion, to dally with Warner as his quarterback instead of The Franchise. In your roto league, Warner, despite no assurance that he's going to get the majority of the snaps, is going ahead of Leinart. (Not that either is going very high, mind you... and if Arizona had a clear #1, he'd be a top 10 pick.) That's because roto guys remember numbers, and when Warner gets the snaps, he produces. Leinart, not so much.
In the world we used to live in, we as fans (and fantasy players, which, admittedly, is a big reason why anyone cares who about the quarterback situation in) would have much less information on what's leading Whisenhunt to mess around with The Future like this.
We'd be pillorying the coach for his stubborn refusal to live with the necessary growing pains are breaking in a young quarterback.
We'd be convinced that, just like always, the Cardinals were succumbing to their franchise DNA and squandering young talent.
We'd also be wrong. The problem with Matt Leinart is Matt Leinart. Blogfrica just exposed the truth, which is what journalism should do, and made everyone aware of the depths of Leinart's commitment to being a winning player.
And that, my friends, is not awful, though it may very well be new.
Yes, yes, yes, wrong to speak ill of the dead and all that... but, um, now that Gene's dead, are we sure that he's not going to be a more effective presence at the bargaining table?
Amidst all of the eulogizing, isn't anyone going to point out that he got treated like a sock puppet during the strike, and that the health and pension plans for the older players were revolting. The Lemur is talking him up with the usual hagiography, but I'm not buying what they're selling here. If the NFL had a truly good union, contracts would be guaranteed, just as they are for every other major sport. (Especially for the NFL, given the very real chance of injury on every single play.)
Your link is here, and some of these names, I guarantee, will make you smile. The top slot may surprise you... or, well, might have, had I not included the small give away in the image choice. Anyway, go check it out...
Gordon Giricek, the semi-warm body that the Sixers got in the Kyle Korver salary dump who was last seen providing bad bench minutes for Phoenix in their first round loss to the Spurs, goes to Fenerbahce, the top team in Turkey. He'll make twice what the Spurs were looking to pay him to warm their bench.
Unlike many of the Euro exports, I'm not going to decry the loss of Gordon; he flat out stinks on ice. He's one of those classic oversized Euro swingmen that look good when they line up an open three, who you can take off the dribble simply by caring about it. The fact that he was passed around by teams faster than a Japanese condom tells you all you need to know; he won't be missed. (Though, of course, he may be back.)
So the Olympics are getting better ratings than anticipated, and driving a tidy little payday for NBC in what, if not for the rush of political ad spending, would be a historically brutal year for advertising. (It's what happens in an economy where everyone takes it without lube from Big Oil, and the housing bubble pops -- but as the President says, it's very important that we give more time for those stimulus checks to work. Vote for the guy that's most like him!)
Anyhow, this has led the World Wide Lemur -- and for those of you that are new to the site's peculiar nomenclature, that's also known as the home of the Mouse, the covert destroyer of all things good, the murderer and corpse-raper of what used to be known as Monday Night Football, and the people whom I will not will not ever write for, no matter how many commenters think I'd cave for the cash (ESPN) -- to announce that they're going to get into the mix for the rights to televise London 2012.
Now, I don't much care who is going to televise things that I'm not going to watch, and I suspect, neither do you. (Witness our mutual lack of interest in the news that Emeril is switching networks, or that Oxygen is going to produce an all-nude version of "The View" to help turn more men gay.) But what the Lemur said about their decision to do so was telling... that sports is in their blood and what they do, dammit, and that they couldn't imagine televising all of the events via tape delay and packaging them the way that NBC is doing.
On my train this morning were two people who I couldn't imagine coming to this site in a month of Sundays. They were a man and a woman in their mid 40s to mid 50s, wearing the slightly graying hair, slightly padded clothing, and slightly spotted hands that await us all. For the first ten minutes of our trip towards NYC, they talked about Olympic beach volleyball. They both liked it, with the man filling the woman in on the parts of the match that she missed, in that she turned in before the game was over.
Now, this -- honestly -- is the Olympic demographic. People sucked in to watch a little sporting drama with an easy enough storyline, with no fear of seeming dramatically out of their element, because for heaven's sake, who is an expert on beach volleyball? My 8-year-old can understand it in five minutes, there's precious little in the way of Judging, and no one is going to make you feel unqualified to watch it in a blizzard of Volleyball Outsider-style arcane statistics. (If there is a Volleyball Outsiders, I'm sorry... not for insulting them, but for the general health and well-being of the species.)
Are these people going to care that beach volleyball in London will be LIVE? Probably not. In fact, they're probably going to hate it if it is, since that means that games will be on at 10am, just like Wimbeldon, but on a weekday. Will they care that the telecast will be with more ESPNish commentators, or perhaps more innovative / nausea-inducing camerawork? (A small note to the beach volleyball people: get a camera on the ball. If you can combine a scantily clad athletic woman with an arm motion that indicates violence in a tight high definition close-up, I guarantee Monstrous Web Traffic.) Probably not. They'll watch, or not, if it's on and if it's convenient and if it's compelling.
Not because it's live or because it's a Lemur Production. (And oh, this just in... there's no guarantee that the world will find the Olympics as compelling in 2012 as they did in 2008. And if you don't believe that, go ask the people that telecast the Athens Olympics in 2004, the ones that did so well in the ratings that the Beijing Games flew right under the radar. You can find them down at the methadone clinic, muttering bitterly at the television.)
Here's your link, and seriously... there's nowhere else to go but down for this guy.
I'm also loads of fun at parties, what with the sunny outlook on life...
The following fit no theme and serve no purpose other than to satisfy the hordes of you who still seem stuck for a name, but hey... if you are this far into the process without a name, you're probably hosed anyway. Take a name and get back to your draft prep, rook. (Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes -- all of these should fit in the standard Yahoo! team space.)
Pop Up Blockers
Jon Gruden's Offenses
The Back In Motion
Manning Family Secret
No Coast Offense
Wacky Wiccan Wyches
US Olympic Football
Lorenzon Food Bankers
Post Game Spreaders
Joe Gibbs Forgets
The Hate Starts Now
The Cardinals' Year
Jobbing For Pay
Covering Her Spread
Fred Death Train Lane
Unintentional Ground
Special Team Holding
The Hoying Position
Very Long Snappers
Fearing The Turk
This link was forwarded to me by the Five Tool Ninja, and it's kind of astounding. Resist the urge to close it out until you get through at least some of the opera soprano hip-hop.
Memo to Andy Reid, Jeffrey Lurie and the rest of the Eagles' brain trust... look, this sad and constant mewling sound from the fan base for a big-name wideout? It's never going to go away until you, well, get another one. You've given #5 just one guy that anyone would consider this in his time here, and I understand he went crazy traitor loco and ruined you forever about stars at the position and all, but it's time to turn the page.
Oh, and growing your own isn't going to work, at least not in this media market. The way to grow a #1 is to have one in the first place, and then have the #2 learn and compete and grow from him, a la Reggie Wayne and Marvin Harrison.
It's completely OK to import one. The Giants did with Plax Burress. The Patriots did with Randy Moss. And yes, I know, you tried to get the latter and he didn't take your money, but that doesn't mean you can just pack your tent and hope that Don can do for Reggie Brown what he did with James Thrash and Todd Pinkston in the day. (In case anyone has any doubt that Don is the best QB in the history of the franchise and a worthy HOF QB, please consider that he got to multiple NFC championship games with... *that* as his starting wideouts. Chad Lewis was the best pass catcher on those teams. Scary.) The conference was weaker then, Don was more of a threat to run, and the world was different, in that teams didn't run so many plays from shotgun, making your WRs mission critical.
So, there's this Boldin fellow in Arizona. He's unhappy. He wants a trade. The Cardinals say they won't trade him, but we all know that an unhappy WR can move mountains.
We also know that while the Eagles don't absolutely need him to win their division, he'd make things a hell of a lot easier, in that he'd actually provide the team some small amount of, you know, margin for error. Look at the picture again: Boldin is catching a ball that he shouldn't have any business catching. When is the last time any of your current WRs did that? (Answer: about the last time that Eagles fans weren't puling for a #1 WR.)
So... why not just get us what we want and shut us up?
Ed. Note and Update... Kevin Curtis, the ostensible #1, has a sports hernia and will miss at least the opener. Having had one of these myself, I wouldn't count on him for at least a month.
With Curtis out, Reid said the team would not pursue a trade for another receiver. Greg Lewis and Hank Baskett will split time in Curtis' absence opposite the team's other starting receiver -- Reggie Brown. -- AP report
Um, yay. Really, yay. Because the guys that weren't good enough to start can definitely step up to 1/2 status. GAHHHH....
On top of the latest dominated loss to the Blue Jays and AJ Burnett, who has made a year out of his starts against the worst offense that a ridiculous amount of money can buy...
There's this small nugget of joy from Osaka: Hideki "Fat Toad" Irabu, the sloppy uncle to Kei Igawa among tragic Yankee pitching imports from Japan, arrested for being drunk and disorderly in a restaurant. (There was a problem with his credit card. One suspects that the problem was that the card had the name "Hideki Irabu" on it.)
In a classic case of burying the lede, it turns out that Irabu still lives with his mommy. No, I'm not making that up. Dude is 39 and made (according to Baseball Almanac) over $15 million in his 6-year MLB career with the Yankees, Expos and Rangers (and that's not even counting later days money in Nippon Ball), and he's still eating from the high chair and sleeping with his stuffed animals. (Trust me, the other places I could go to in that last sentence were much, much worse.)
I realize that His Toadship also pitched for two other teams, Yankee Fan, but no one remembers anything about that. In the words of the Wu Tang Clan, It's Yours... and it's the icing on the cake of what's turning out to be a delightful year for Yankee Haters. Now, all we need is for the Rays to hang on in the East, and the Sawx to lose the wild-card, and MLB will enter a golden age of light, reason, and utter irrelevance to ESPN. And, alas, A's fans. Paradise Not.
Anyway, getting back to the Toad... the husky sized Hat Tip to H/t, With Malice, the go-to blog for all things Pan-Asiatic.
(Oh, and in case you were wondering what finally caused the Yankees to miss the post-season this year? It's me. I've got three of their hitters on my roto team. America, you're welcome.)
Here's your link for the day, and for the record, no, I'm not. (How do I know? Well, the Shooter Wife ran the Leather Crown to the trophy shop today to get the plate happening. That's love, dammit. Very helpful love...)
Oh, and don't miss the link, because it's a good one, and you'll be able to forward it to at least three people you know. (Hi, Truth!)
I'm not much for the Olympics, but I always love me some bird flipping. Nice work from NESW on the more true version.
The Sixers have signed 35-year-old contract punchline Theo Ratliff to a one-year deal. When last seen, the Rattler was providing deep bench minutes for the Pistons in their playoff with Boston, and he's not, you know, good. Plus, at 35, he's not getting better, or less brittle. But at least he does something (weak side shot blocking -- note, not on the ball defense) well, and from your back-up center, that's better than nothing.
The biggest bonus from having Theo around is that he provides a warm fuzzy nostalgic feeling from the 2000-01 era, when he led the charge for a while before getting hurt and turning into Dikembe Mutumbo. 
(And you would have won a nice chunk of change taking the parlay pick that both heads of that hydra would still be in the Association eight years later. Nothing on this Earth can kill Mutumbo, because everything on this Earth is just waiting for it's chance to Sex Mutumbo.)
Oh, this is just too funny... four months after getting religion, drafting wideouts early, and having last straws pulled, guess who's come crawling back to wayward wideout Chris Henry?
Why, it's the Cincinnati Enablers, er, Bengals, fresh off injuries to their big two of TJ Houshmanzadimjiad and Ocho "Poor Man's Terrell Owens" Stinko. What's the over-under on Henry's next arrest following his celebration on rejoining the team? (I'm thinking... Friday. But it's always hard to judge how Vegas is going to go on prop bets.)
I'd like to take a small moment here to thank the Bengals for making the life of the sports blogosphere easier. Our hordes will soon be cranking up tons of "Brokeback Mountain" style "I can't quit yew!" Photoshops of both men. Me, I was going to go for a more film noir treatment, with Henry as the Barbara Stanwyck-style femme fatale, but that's why this is a relentless unpopular blog. Henry just doesn't have the hips to pull it off, sadly, though Lewis as a doughy patsy pantload is just dead on. Anyway...
When Marvin Lewis has his obituary written on his Bengal Bungling -- and feel free to start on that now, and avoid the Thanksgiving rush -- Henry's fingerprints will be all over it. (Don't worry, he knows the procedure.)
What's telling here is that in the four months that Henry has been loose (on the streets! hide the kids!), no other team has swooped in to take the talented and troubled playmaker away. The reasons why are simple: in addition to being Locker Room Poison and an Active Embarrassment, he's also just not that good. As a #3, he can make plays; ask him to do more than that, and it won't happen. He'll also block about as well as he gives back to the community.
Here's how good Henry isn't... you'd think that the Bengals' division rivals would have stowed him on a practice squad, just to make sure he couldn't come back and haunt them again. But no. As a matter of fact, no team -- not even the Raiders, who would seem required by law to show interest -- wanted him. The Browns, Ravens and Steelers *want* him back on the Queen City Convicts. It does foster a certain air of, you know, Not Winning.
This, despite Henry's public statements that he'd like to play for the Saints or Cowboys. Jerry Jones may be batshit loco, but he's not that batshit loco. As for the Saints, that team knows disasters when they see them, and felt no need to import. (What, too soon?)
Oh, and BTW... Henry doesn't even help them for the first month of the season, which is when you'd really need the guy with the injuries... because he's been suspended Yet Again.
And just to add to the (Very) High Comedy, here's the money quote from Starvin' Marvin, just a few short weeks ago, when someone asked him if the Bengals would sully themselves with First and Ten To Life...
"I'm not interested in bringing him back. I don't think (it would be) productive for our football team. You have to be a productive part to be an NFL player, and there's responsibilities to being an NFL player. It's a privilege. It's not a right. There's a lot that comes with being an NFL football player."One wonders just what the responsibilities to being an NFL football coach are... and just how much longer Lewis will know them. Buy your tickets now, Bengal Fans!
Fantasy football season, as you might have read on this blog or elsewhere, starts in earnest in the next couple of weeks, and as I start the hundreds of hours of draft prep (never too early to start intimidating my fellow league mates), something struck me -- the inclination to draft (or should I say, re-draft) players from past years.
Part of this is simple intellectual laziness. I know, or at least I think I know, a lot about these guys already. I've developed some fondness for them. Take, for instance, Hines Ward, the possession guy in Pittsburgh's scheme who has always distinguished himself from the rest of his wideout brethren by being an incredible team player and blocking presence. (He's also distinguished for having mixed ancestry and other football blogs that think that's somehow funny. Sad.)
You know what you're getting from Hines -- 5 catches a game for 70 yards and the touchdown every other game. End of the year, you're looking at 70 catches, 1000 yards, 6 to 8 touchdowns, minimal headache, a reasonable WR3 in any offense. For the most part, you can start him every week with confidence.
Or can you?
Ward's getting older, and spent a lot of last season hurt -- more or less a first for him. He lost a lot of the red zone attention to Heath Miller. The deep balls now all go to Santonio Holmes or some other burner off the bench. The Pittsburgh running game will be (shh) much better this year, despite the loss of Alan Faneca, because Faneca didn't actually play all that well in his walk-off year, and because Rashard Mendenhall is a hell of a lot better than Najeh Davenport. He's probably better than Willie Parker, too, and if he is, Parker can go back to the change-of-pace back that he was when he was really exceptional. Ward could easily play as well as in previous years and have fewer yards and touchdowns, and that's assuming he stays healthy, which is rarely a given for players who are as physical as he is. Fantasy leagues are lost every year on over-reliance on known quantities like Ward.
The point, and trouble, in fantasy football is that the lifespans of players can be over in an instant, and that's independent of even catastrophic knee injuries. There are no sure things at any level, just lesser amounts of risk. Ward's attraction as a player has been his relative lack of risk in a boom or bust position; even in his worst games, he usually gives you a few points, and sometimes he gets touchdowns in bunches.
Owners in fantasy leagues fall somewhere on the callous/sentimental scale in regards to comfort picks. The folks who draft more towards their home team obviously fall towards comfort, whereas the any port in a storm crowd goes to callous. This also leads to the disgust shown by non-players, who can't understand how you'd root for a guy on the hated Other Laundry, especially the Most Hated Laundry. (Me, I tend to shy away from Most Hated Laundry myself, though not entirely -- if you get Role Player / Emerging Star from Most Hated Laundry, you can mitigate the guilt by thinking that he'll only get numbers in the event of injury to Most Hated Star. Call it the No TO, Yes Patrick Crayton rule.)
As in all things, moderation is important. A team full of guys and laundry you hate, or have never owned before, is also not likely to be optimal; you're drafting from a dogma there, rather than for value. Plus, you'll hate your team. I also tend to try to stay away from the One Basket approach, where you have the QB/WR tandem, or the RB and his handcuff. The simple fact is that handcuffs are comfort food as well, a seemingly no-cost insurance policy that prevents you from throwing up your hands in despair if Star Player goes down. But what most people don't realize is that if/when Star Player goes down, you're still screwed even if you have the handcuff... because you've been sitting on the sidelines with that roster spot while others have been taking advantage of the increased flexibility to take more chances on waiver wire finds before the handcuff became useful.
Plus, there's the simple matter of the handcuff itself. Most of the time, they don't perform at Star Player's level; if they did, they would have had the job in the first place. We remember all of the guys that took advantage of the opportunity, while forgetting all of the guys that were roster space killers. It's the insurance policy that insures losing.
So, as you prep for your own league, or (because it's more or less the same thing) think about any bets that you might lay down this season, consider the importance that comfort plays in your decisions, and whether or not you're doing the smart thing, as opposed to the comfortable one. Chances are, the harder path might be the better one.
Oh, and if you can get Ward as a WR3, he's probably still worthwhile. Besides, you'll smile, as always, when he lays some mouthy cornerback out on a sweep.
Your list is here, and as a blogger and a football fan, I'm kind of pissed off about it. We don't need another low margin, low talent, low excitement game manager. If you're going to lose -- and dear God, Bears Fan, you are going to lose, in double figures and more -- why not go down with someone who is clearly the cause of all of your woes, rather than a guy who is just going to be a passenger on that bus?
It's kind of like how the NFL has evolved away from wacky coaches like Jerry Glanville and Sam Wyche. Dammit, I demand my losing teams to be more entertaining than this!
And finally, this. By dooming Rex to the ashcan of history, we dishonor the memory of ex-Dolphins quarterback David Woodley, who (and this is true, at least according to Wikipedia) died from complications of liver and kidney failure following a history of alcohol abuse. Dammit, Lovie Smith, why are you denying Woodley his due as the worst quarterback in the history of the Super Bowl? He needed that!
Shouldn't you be more worried about getting your car off the blocks in front of your trailer, whether you'll still be able to afford corn for the moonshine still now that the prices have gone up, or whether Luanne is gonna have the baby?
(Seriously, if Chris Kaman -- Chris Kaman! -- is the difference between gold and failure for the Redeem Team, you all can come shoot tin cans in my backyard. Failing that, um, STFU...)
Update... the US pulled off a 106-57 squeaker against the Huns. Kaman came off the bench to give the Kaiser 6 points, 4 boards, 4 turnovers and 2 personal fouls. Germany is 1-4, and not liable to get a medal of any sort. And the number of people who cared about Kaman playing for the Hessians just dropped to... well, the Kaman Family, I'm thinking. Moving on...
Here's a spittake moment of cowardice for you this morning... according to Seattle coach and marine mammal Mike Holmgren, his daughter Calla was recently booted from her fantasy football league for having "inside information." (I'd link you to the Lemur, but it's all of a three paragraph AP story, and AP Hates Bloggers, so screw 'em both.)
Now, I've been in a lot of fantasy leagues; I even commish three of them. And you know what you do with people who have "inside information"? You take their money and try not to laugh. Because "inside information" usually means "wrong information"... or, at the very least, information that tends to be wildly exaggerated in its importance.
What, exactly, was Ms. Holmgren alleged to have known that gave her team the edge? That Shawn Alexander was more worked over than gum that's been left on the bed post over night? That Matt Hasselbeck was going to have a bounce-back year because his line was better and his schedule was worse? Or that the Seahawks can only show up at home? Gosh, I knew all of that stuff, and I didn't even win either of my leagues last year. Calla must be playing with utter idiots.
Let's call a spade a spade here, because that is what we do: Calla's league mates are scared of losing to a, you know, GURL. The Internets tell me this would be called Eurotophobia, or fear of female genitalia (booga booga!), which is a fine word for us all to remember, especially now that the college football season is starting up again, and the blog's readership is rapidly approaching the Stalker Townie demographic...
But for heaven's sake, you Calla-tossing morons, if you can't beat someone who has half of her DNA given to her by a guy who could only get one Super Bowl win out of a prime era Brett Favre and Reggie White, you're probably too stupid to be reading this, anyway. All of the inside information in the world about DJ Hackett's injury status (this just in -- he's hurt!) shouldn't really, you know, sway a league.
No, if you want True Fear of Fantasy Football Cuckoldom, you can roll down my predicament. Yes, the Shooter Mom is now in my league, which either means I get to be the Bad Son and beat her, or get taken to the woodshed for old times' sake. Either way, I'm pretty sure the trash talk will be impressive. (Hi, Mom!)
Tonight in Texas, your Tampa Bay Rays were ahead 7-3 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. At the plate was Josh Hamilton, 2 for 4 in the game, the tying run, hitting .302 with 28 home runs and 112 RBIs; perhaps, this year, the most dangerous hitter in baseball.
The Rays walked him. Intentionally. To force in a run, and put the tying run on first base, and the winning run at the plate... in the form of ex-Phillies OF Marlon Byrd (.290, 8 and 34).
Unfortunately for the Rangers, Hamilton didn't pull the Kelly Leak trick (Bad News Bears, original) of swinging at the intentional pitch. Because the Rays' closer of the moment with Troy Percival out again, Dan Wheeler, got Byrd swinging, and that was the ball game. Tampa stays 4 up of Boston in the East, with the second-best record in the AL and the third-best record in all of baseball.
Plus, they get major cojones points for their ability to do, well, anything to get a win... including adapt to the bandbox environment of Texas, and insult Marlon Byrd in a way that he probably hasn't felt since he was in Philly...
The bad year for legendary Braves starting pitchers from the 1990s continued this weekend, as Tom Glavine seems to have torn ligaments. Combine this with his less than encouraging numbers before the snap (2-4, 5.54 ERA), and you've got the ingredients for Later Stew.
One hopes that he really is done, is only for the nice numerical poetry that is 304-203 (career won-loss record), and the idea that he could go into the HOF in the same year as stablemate John Smoltz. That'd be sure to get all 38 Atlanta Braves fans nice and pleased... but if anyone is thinking that they are going to be joined by the third horse in the dynasty, Greg Maddux has other ideas.
For the year, the man is 6-9 with a 3.99 ERA and a 1.22 WHIP, which is to say, he's still a very reasonable back end of the rotation starter. You also get the feeling that when he goes into the HOF, he'll want to do it all by himself, as the greatest right-handed pitcher of his half century... at least, now that we know that Roger Clemens was a low down dirty cheater. 353 up, 223 down, and he's still got an outside shot at 400...
Hamed Haddadi, the star center for Iran who has been enjoying a strong Olympics so far, has said he'd like to play in the NBA. Given that he's 7'-2", 254 pounds, and has been averaging a double-double with some blocked shots against the world's best players, one suspects that more than a few clubs could use him. (The team that has come up most is Memphis, who obviously has fond memories of Pau Gasol going through their heads when they see Haddadi run the floor.)
There is, however, one problem. U.S. law.
A federal statue prohibits a person or organization in the United States from engaging in business dealings with Iranian nationals. To get around this, the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control must grant a license. (This would seem to give the Toronto Raptors a heck of an edge if they were interested.)
Now, is US foreign policy really depriving US hoop fans of a chance to watch top-drawer talent? In all likelihood, no. The Olympic game is just too different, and while Haddadi has been the only real threat on his team in the tournament to date, it's far more likely that he's a small sample size flash in the pan. Big Euros have this nasty wake0up call when it comes to the rough and tumble of the Association, especially in that uppity American types really seem to love dunking on them.
But really, wouldn't it be better for all concerned if he were able to ply his trade over here? The Grizz would have a player worth checking out, the league would stretch its impact into the Middle East, and fundamental reactionary type who tune in via satellite would get an eyeful of the Great Satan's Whores, aka the talent on the sidelines during breaks. It's a win for all concerned!
Your link is here, and for the record, this really was inspired by the Rollins interview and the subsequent blogger reaction to try to arrange blind, annoying optimism and support for all Phillies events, known as Campaign Cheer.
Um, guys? Trust me on this... baseball players wouldn't get the joke. Your meta comedy would be completely lost on them. It's not something they're going to engage in, really. Sorry to disappoint.
Jannero Pargo, last seen as the Hornet taking all the crunch time shots in an elimination game against the Spurs, becomes the latest valued NBA talent to take the Russian petro-dollar. He joins Moscow Dynamo, where he'll team up with Bostjan Nachbar in pining for groupies that don't outweigh him, but $4 million a year can make a man put up with such indignities.
This isn't just a case of Pargo chasing the bucks; the Hornets went too hard after Celtic James Posey to have the bucks to take care of him. But the drip-drip-drip that is the rest of the world tapping into the US talent pipe is getting louder...
I'm going to cross a small line here and bring in a few personal moments in this one, which will also get Mildly Political (but not wholly whiffing from sports). Y'all have been warned; feel free to skip and/or print it out and take it with you to the can.
In the early parts of the 1800s in the United States, a doomsday cult developed in the MidAtlantic and New England states that eventually became so popular, it reached near mainstream acceptance. The Millerites, as they were called, studied the book of Daniel, always a good source for this kind of thing, to do the math, then determined that the end of the world was coming up fast. So fast, in fact, that they were able to predict it to the day. (Odd, that it's never a long time from now.)
Tens of thousands grouped on what the faith's elders called "Ascension Rock" to greet the incoming cherubim, only to go home shortly after dawn when nothing happened. (Yes, to be in the crowd must have been like being an Eagles fan during one of the NFC championship game home losses. I hate my brain.)
Amazingly, the church was able to regroup all of its followers and grow with the story that they had simply made a counting error, and that the Apocalypse was definitely coming this time, like the Great Pumpkin, just one year later. In the weeks coming up to the big event, farms lay fallow, cows were not milked, people stopped bathing or eating or doing anything other than waiting. I'm thinking the crowd reaction to the second straight whiff was less than happy.
After the second straight no-show, the faith disbanded, and finding anyone who wanted to admit to their Millerite faith was like finding a Red Sox fan who still thinks they should have kept Nomah, Pedro and Manny. More tellingly since then, no doomsday religion has made the tactical error of calling their shot on the Apocalypse. It's always close (how's next Tuesday for you), but never on the calendar. Heck, maybe it already happened via a Rapture of the nice folks. I work in marketing and advertising, and haven't really missed anyone, but that's no proof.
A few weeks ago at my monthly poker game (seats available, email me), someone brought up the Left Behind series of books, and how he started seeing spooky parallels to current events. The LB series, in case you are unaware, is a series of novels that start from Revelations-style predictions of future miseries, then shows how they might come to pass in a more modern skew. It's wildly popular in its niche market, and as a matter of record, I've actually written ads for it, because when work asks me to make them money, that's what I do. Anyway.
The group more or less moved away from it pretty quickly, but seeing how it was the first time the books were ever discussed near me without a sense of irony or commercialism, it didn't go very far. People read what they want to read.
Earlier this week, in an IM conversation with a friend about politics, I learned that his mother thinks that Barack Obama is the Antichrist. Hmm, well, wow, I thought, and tried to commiserate with how difficult it must be to have a parent who is working with that kind of delusion. Seriously, if Obama's the Antichrist, I'd have expected Hilary and Bill Clinton to have exploded into flame in, like, February. Give the A-C some credit here.
The Shooter Mom, like most women of her generation, strongly preferred Hilary but will vote for Obama. She also has any number of close relatives of her age group who like to forward her all of those e-mails you've been hearing about, where Obama is perceived as, well, the Antichrist.
Now, I don't want to get into the particulars of Obama-McCain here; I'm pretty sure that most regular readers of the blog know where I am on that. What I'm looking to touch on more is this need that many of us have for it to be The End of Days.
Whether it's (I'm going to make regular reader CMJDad very happy here, not that he's still reading) global warming, the specter of an Obama, Clinton, Bush or McCain Presidency, the Eagles failing to sign a true #1 WR, gasoline and grocery and local taxes going up while the value of your home goes down... there's always going to be people losing their stones over it and thinking Life Will Never Be The Same. I'm pretty sure you get this at work, too, especially in a down economy. Coping with the uncertainties of an uncaring world is damned deadly difficult, and whether your coping mechanisms are vice or virtue doesn't really change that.
But what's really going on, at the heart of Apocalyptic thinking, is fairly profound selfishness and self-centeredness.
We all know that we're going to move on from this consciousness at some point, and that the amount of time we have left is more or less uncertain. We can influence this with good choices and better luck, but it's mostly just that -- an influence, not a real control. What happens next is entirely subject to your beliefs, but Life Will Go On Without You...
Unless, of course, all life ends with you. Which is the sad little comfort of Apocalypse, isn't it? No loneliness.
It is easy for me (and in all likelihood, given the site's demographics, you) to go down this thought path. By the numbers, many of us probably haven't used more than a third to half of our time. Maybe I'll feel differently when I'm looking more realistically at 80 to 90% gone, and strange-sounding people and dire predictions coming at me from every source of "news." I'd really like to hope not.
The Apocalypse is upon us, folks, because it's always been upon us. It's there, in the back of our minds, all of the time. It's that part of you that throws a rod over someone cutting you off in traffic, or making you wait at the supermarket. It's the knowledge that without us, work would suffer, our loved ones would fall apart, and the won-loss records of sports team and political candidates has something (anything?) to do with our hopes and dreams.
They don't. They won't. For the most part, we're just not that important. Get over yourselves.
And be happy anyway. It's not the end of the world.
Today's story is about Giants coach Tom Coughlin being the subject of an FBI investigation about being blackmailed by a former co-worker over a sexual relationship.
Now, normally, I'd be all over this kind of thing, since it gives me the opportunity to make fun of the Giants, and imagine what kind of hijinks would happen for Coughlin. But as much fun as it is to imagine the Yosemite Sam-esque sexcaspades... no, I just can't do it. (Or, well, won't. I'd like to eat again in this lifetime.)
Fandom splits between fantasy sports (callous bastards) and true fans (naive idiots). The former hates it when a team seems to overpay for anyone, least of all the hometown hero who has been there for years. The latter thinks that it's just great to have the hero get paid, because hey, it's not their money, and he's been so great and we love him.
In that BDub is, IMO, the best running back in the history of the franchise, and could still be in his prime, it's hard to argue with this. So I just won't.
I have no real idea how $21 million over three years with $13 million guaranteed translates into the big picture of the NFL, and the nice part about being an Eagles Fan is that I don't really have to know, because the team manages the cap so well that large-scale veteran sell-offs aren't common.
Of course, so is staying so far under the cap that we routinely wonder about What Might Have Been, had they only spent the money to get the Star Wide Receiver that solves all problems, fixes the weather, and makes us all lose weight.
Dammit, Westbrook's overrated!
So Boston Fan, showing the age-old short term vision of the fan, seems all kinds of OK with the Manny Ramirez trade, because the Sox have been pounding the ball for the last week. (Plus, it ties into that incredible racism that we in the sports blogosphere just can't get enough of. Woo hoo, easy comedy!)
Jason Bay, it turns out, is a good player after all -- against all odds. Hey, why believe the career statistics, because playing in a Very Special Media Market like Boston just destroys players with weak clutch performances and media troubles, like, well, Manny and JD Drew. Hey, wait a minute...
The simple fact is that playing in Boston *isn't* all that difficult anymore, because the organization makes things easy with exceptional talent evaluation. If Mike Lowell struggles, he doesn't take the same hit that others would in MLB+ markets, because there are many other plus players to make the shortfall less critical. If Alex Rodriguez fails, the world ends for Yankee Fan and the team. It's just that simple.
Of course, they will forget all about Bay's usefulness if he fails in a meaningful moment in the playoffs... but he's really not the focal point here. What's happened is that David Ortiz has finally played like David Ortiz in the last few games, and when he's on his game, they are just going to score a lot of runs. The trouble will come later, if at all.
On some level, 142 ejections (and counting) is a remarkable milestone for Bobby Cox. The fact that the guy still cares enough to get tossed is kind of amazing, given that he's the modern-day Connie Mack in terms of longevity (he's now working his 23rd season in Atlanta, and his 27th overall).
The guy is also 67 years old, for Pete's sake. Which leads me to wonder just how he's getting run, really. Is there such a timeliness to his profanity and insults, or does he more or less just get out there and ask the umpire to run him as a favor? Seriously, Bobby, tell us your secrets. Consider history.
Hey, do you care about the Olympics? Me neither. But scandal? That's good eating. (And count your blessings, in that I've managed to avoid writing about how Brett The Jet has a fatigued arm, to match all of the media honks who've been... no, dammit, not going there....)
List away, with all of those jokes that will get the blog banned from certain domains. Shame the government can't do the same thing about the, you know, air.
The insurance-shilling Neanderthals will be spotted frequently across the cable-sports behemoth's media properties over the next year as part of a novel integration deal between Geico and ESPN that casts the cavemen as fantasy-football salesmen, as well as stars of a series of vignettes promoting the network's flagship "SportsCenter" program. - Ad AgeGenius. Because there's nothing that 18 to 34 year-old males like than force-fed corporate shill crapwork that isn't funny, sexy, or cool... for a product that everyone is forced to have, but no one feels really good about buying. When I think fantasy sports, I definitely think car insurance spokespersons!
Yes, the wrestler isn't happy with bronze (he felt he was wrongly disqualified by the judges). Of course, the real word for bronze is "Second Best Loser", and on a greater point, why doesn't this happen more often, really? (H/t, World of Isaac)
A quick note about the Sixers locking up swingman Andre Iguodala before someone else says it out loud... yes, by all means, it's too much money for a guy who should be the third-best player on a championship team and I almost fell asleep typing that.
Now, quick question time... who was the best player on the 2004 Pistons championship team? Your starters were Rasheed and Ben Wallace, Prince, Hamilton and Billups. Let's say, for argument's sake, that it's Hamilton (and that Iggy is better than Andre Miller and Sam Dalembert, and worse than new guy Elton Brand).
So, is Iggy better than Rip?
AI, age 23 -- 19.9 ppg on 45.6% from the floor, 72.1% from the line. 5.4 boards, 4.8 assists, 2.1 steals, 0.6 blocks per game. 32.9% from 3-point range, playing 39 minutes a game.
Rip, age 23 (with Washington) -- 20.0 ppg on 43.5% from the floor, 89% from the line. 3.4 boards, 2.7 assists, 0.6 steals, 0.2 blocks per game. 38.1% from 3-point range, playing 35 minutes a game.
Well, maybe yes, maybe no -- they are dramatically different players, and Rip's real value is undercut by the fact that high percentage scorers always look like empty calories. Besides, steals can be a misleading defensive statistic, since they frequently come from bad positional defense. But it seems to be that Iggy is well within the Rip range at this point in his career.
So, given his age, durability (he's missed six games in four years), the fact that he's never gotten in trouble with the law or his coach, and is three flaws away (handle, three point shot, free throw percentage) from being a plus player in every aspect of the game... well, isn't that worth the risk?
If the Sixers are going to become a traditional championship team, they need Thaddeus Young or Lou Williams to become one of the ten best players in the Association. If they are going to become a simply tolerable team, the kind that's always in the second round of the playoffs with a puncher's chance at sneaking a title in a year when other teams have injuries, they needed to sign Iguodala to this contract.
So, um, they did.
That doesn't make them stupid, clueless, short-sighted or limited. It just makes them what they are -- a franchise without a true superstar, but with a more than reasonable chance at playing good basketball for many years to come.
Considering what Sixers Fans have had to watch for most of my adult life (i.e., terrible basketball interrupted by one great player against the world acts in Barkley and Iverson), we'll take it. Gladly.
Oh, and we'll take his ability to do this, too.
Why write about a team I hate? Becuase no one else wanted the job, and I think they're going to end the year with unhappiness. So why wouldn't I want to write about them?
Anyway, go click, enjoy, and remember all the good soul-crushing playoff defeats the Cowboys have endured this millenium. It'll make you feel warm all over.
As promised, the actual Leather Crown of the Leather Crown Cult -- truly the finest trophy in all of Fantasy Football Christendom.
Your opportunity to possess it still exists, but you must survive the gauntlet of the live draft and the season. If you are the last one standing, you get to possess this spectacular Dork Artifact... but heavy lies the head that wears the Crown, cause, um, you'll have to win the league again to keep it. (We wouldn't want it to be stupid or something.)
In other news, I still have openings, I still hate event planning, and until I get what I want (i.e., 12 owners), I'm going to be all kinds of bent about it, especially after I had any number of people tell me no thanks for baseball, but dammit, I want in when you do football. Driving me up a wall, it is.
Well, the downside of being fungible is when you're the fungi, and that's never been more true than for the well-traveled Feely. I'd say more, but, well, he's a kicker. Click already.
Here's a good sign that everything is going to Hell In A Handbasket in my old home town... a rash of grill thefts to sell for scrap metal. This, on top of a rash of manhole thefts to sell for scrap metal.
Tailgaters are advised to to invest in a good bike lock and chain, because nothing stops theft like a chain. Either that, or you can switch to those plastic and cardboard grills that I've read so little about. (H/t, Eschaton)
You have to love people who, when truly upset, say words like "Malarkey" and go for the gas tanks.I haven't seen Tom Petty used this well since "Silence of the Lambs." Bonus points for the Fathead, but the fact that the dog didn't relieve himself on the pyre keeps this from True Greatness...
Seriously, NFL quarterbacks? Don't you realize that when you whore yourselves out to metrosexual photo shoots, you insult the great gods of football karma, not to mention the much greater god of homophobic opposing defensive linemen?
Giants Fan, remember, he won a Super Bowl for you. So that means you just have to lie back and enjoy it as he takes advantage of everything he's got coming to him. The Stetson-style ads, the supermodel dalliances, the wince-inducing endorsements, the inclusions among the world's most beautiful people, and the steadily increasing knowledge that no matter what, he's going to give people like me a never-ending amount of ammunition for snark. And since my QB (Donovan McNabb) is way past the event horizon for He's So Dweamy, I don't have to worry about anything more than the Chunky Vomit endorsement.
But by all means, Eli, work in some more mousse...
My first experience in watching people play cards was, and I suspect this isn't entirely unique, an episode of "Happy Days." (It is the special doom of my life to remember, and admit, to such things.) In the episode, Richie loses his money in a crooked card game, only to have his father save his bacon by successfully using what they refer to as "The Hoboken Hustle" gambit. In it, you profess ignorance and sucker your opponents into overconfident betting, especially on small pots. Then, with the trap baited, you cut them off at the knees when the pot is meaningful.
As always, these fit within the Yahoo! standard game limit, and only for truly confident (overconfident? naturally) players.
Kickers Early and Late
Nothing But Head Cases
Yahoo Default Rankings
Preseason Importance
2007 Will Repeat
Small College Only
Acadmeic Achievers
Genius Level Math
There Will Be Grit
Astrology Matches
Ouija Draft Board
Magic Underwear Men
God's Will Be Done
Guys The Truth Likes
Simple point, really... with the GOP convention going to Minnesota, the Twins get to play 13 straight road games against the Angels, Seattle, Oakland and Blue Jays, all because the Republicans will be taking up the stadium.
So Barack Obama, a White Sox fan, gets to help his team, since the ChiSox are 4.5 games back as I write this. Minny is also five games under .500 on the road, though one suspects that if they can't do better than that against the dregs of the AL West, they really aren't a division winner on talent, anyway. (Personally, now that they've finally gotten rid of Veteran Bad Presence Livan Hernandez, I think they'll be fine.) And as a final bonus, rabid Twins Fan (there are some, right? I see y'all waving Homer Hankies from time to time) can now really hate both presidential candidates for either imperiling their team, or rooting for their rival. Yay, us!
So the local affiliates in Green Bay... have announced that they are going to do everything they can to telecast New York Jets games this year. Because, well, there just isn't any better team in the AFC to see!
Who needs to see Super Bowl champions like the Patriots, Colts or Steelers? Who would want any part of last year's intriguing playoff teams like the Chargers or Jaguars? Why see any games from AFC teams that are relatively close to Wisconsin? Dammit, there's a 4-12 team with a Man Genius on the loose here!
Seriously, Wisconsin? It's time to get a grip. San Francisco didn't move heaven and earth to telecast Chiefs games when Joe Montana moved on. Minnesota didn't need to see Daunte Culpepper's Dolphin games. Philadelphia didn't get any more Steelers games when the Duce got loose in Pittsburgh. And so on, and so on.
Packer Fan, you've got a defending Final Four team with the best talent in the division. Your ex jerked you around, gagged in the playoffs, and is genuinely, startlingly old. Move The Hell On.
If only for the fact that Jets Fan thinks you're pathetic right now. And, well, that's not a good moment for anyone, really.
According to Peter King over at SI, Mark Cuban's fledgling football league (because, in between winning nothing with the Mavs, trying to buy the Cubs so he can entice another franchise with false hopes and bombast, and messing around with Yahoo's board to see who can bring in the least amount of shareholder value) is thinking hard about...
drum roll please...
Michael Vick!
Now, Lord knows, there will be more professional football in your life at some point. The simple fact is that every year, the public grows less and less tolerant of the eight months of dead time that the NFL makes its fan base endure. It is not the #1 sport in the US; it is the number one through three sports in the US. MLB and NBA are not rivals; they are sideshows. The country begins and ends with football.
The UFL may or may not be the league that breaks through, though, to be honest, I'm not seeing it. Friday Night Football is a fine thing for high school, but it's kind of a dead zone for actual television viewing... and that's the night that the league is supposed to play. During the fall is the best time of the year to be a sports fan, between the MLB playoffs, the NFL regular season, the start of the NHL and NBA seasons, and the sheer rush that is Q3 / Q4 and the holidays. That's also when they are planning to play.
Needless to say, this is Big Stupid on many, many levels.
A winter / spring league, in domes and warm-weather cities, would work... provided it was domestic, didn't have dippy rules a la Arena Ball,with the rules tweaked for offense to make sure that unwatchable football doesn't happen. Sprinkle in some reasonable name coaches, a few decent names (either washed-up vets that are local to their teams, maybe some good local college players), and make sure the refs are good. Finally, relax some of the nonsense rules that people hate the NFL for imposing, make it supremely tailgate friendly, cap the salaries and don't expect to make money for five to ten years... and you may have something. Given that the Cube isn't about patience or sense, it's not going to happen that way with this league, but it eventually will.
Meanwhile, Vick. Good grief. If the league is to be paid for with sports blog hits, they'll do fine. Otherwise, not so much...
Your list today, and the lovely image (trust me, I could have given you worse) is brought to you by the guys that are sure to treat your fantasy team like used toilet paper this year... but no league is won without risks, right?
The bigger ulcer in my life is, of course, event planning. On the off chance that anyone who is reading this might want in to a fantasy league with an auction draft and keeper budget on Saturday, August 30, ping me at dmt shooter at gmail dot com already. One of these days, I'm going to remember just how much I love working out the logistics of this nonsense...
Sergio Garcia gagged another major yesterday, and no one noticed. Padraig Harrington picks up his second straight major, though he probably still has no worries about being stopped at the airport for autographs. It just goes to show you what an Irishman can do when he stops drinking for a few months.
Oh, and a small point, really... why is it that every athlete feels compelled to give the big gaudy trophy a light smooch on the side for the photographers? Tongue that baby, Padraig. She's something you had to fight hundreds of men for over four days and a lifetime of back-breaking labor. Chaste ain't cutting it; drop some trou already. Why let hockey guys have all of the hot man-on-artifact action?
But getting back to Garcia... of course, when you go around in public wearing clothes that Al Czervik would find distasteful, it does tend to distract people from actually noticing the quality of your game. The late great Rodney Dangerfield really was only a waggle away from totally predicting this clown.
Finally, this... what's your nightmare foursome? Mine's Garcia, Colin Montgomerie, and Hitler. Though I'm pretty sure that The Truth might go for Jean Van der Velde instead...
One of the nicer points in the great Michael Lewis book "The Blind Side" is that football fandom falls on a continuum. If you are more into offense and innovation, you fall towards the Bill Walsh side of life, which Lewis refers to as a kind of football leftism. If you like the smashmouth defense approach that's more in line with a Bill Parcells team, you are a right-winger. (Realizing, of course, that Walsh's teams were more physical than you remember, and that Parcells' best teams were smarter and more innovative than given credit for.)
Now, I'd like to take this farther.
If you're a football leftist, you are, I submit, in the majority of the audience, and definitely in the world of fantasy sports. (Perhaps this is even part of the reason why many fans have such an antipathy towards it.)
You can, of course, just say that network execs are more leftist, which, of course, falls into a standing litany of Red State America. However, the ratings also back it up. Ravens-Giants, also known as the worst Super Bowl in the history of the universe, tanked in the ratings. Pats-Giants, not such a problem. The XFL, a league of low scoring and hard hitting, tanked in a year, despite being closer to actual NFL product. Arena Ball, with pinball scoring and a near-total lack of meaningful hitting, will soon be in its second decade of existence.
Most people, of course, don't fall into one clear distinction, and will mostly follow their own team more than a kind of team. But I'd also submit that the kind of team that you have when you are growing up helps to inform your place in the continuum. For me, the Eagles were a right-wing club, with a defense that really seemed to prefer smashing mouths than preventing points. This might also help to explain why the fan base has been so snarly towards the Andy Reid Experience, because his defenses have never been like that.
I have no greater point to make here, other than to wonder if it makes you a better or worse fan to change your orientation depending on your team's talent. Steeler Fan last year had to feel some sort of cognitive dissonance for having a team that did best with Ben Rothlisberger throwing for his life. Niner Fan has been made even more miserable by their recent failures to score, in addition to, well, sucking. When your team stops playing in the way that it's always played, it feels like a betrayal.
Excuse me for my fantasy baseball nerdosity, but this worthless sack has cost me big time this year, and if he'd only been mediocre, I'd be in real contention for the top spot, rather than just clinging to second.
Oh, and this was after several years of thinking that he wasn't for real, based on his soft-balling ways in Oakland.
Finally, you really know when your day stinks on ice when an 8 ER day might not even be your worst start, since Mike Pelfrey had to walk and gag his way to a loss as well...
Tonight in Philadelphia, the Phillies beat the Pirates in a surprisingly close and low scoring contest, 4-2. Brett Myers went into the eighth inning, Jimmy Rollins had two triples, Shane Victorino drove in 2 runs, and Chad Durbin cleaned up the ninth for his first save of the year. Ian Snell of the Pirates was in trouble all night, but he kept his team, such as it is, in the game, and the Phils' 13th straight shutout went home happy.
Why go into such detail? Because one of the guys that I went with brought his son, who had never been to an MLB game before.
And it got me thinking about my first game, which I thought I had cold. The Phillies beat the Dodgers on my fifth birthday, with Davey Johnson hitting a pinch-hit grand slam in the bottom of the ninth... until I went on Project Scoresheet to try to look up the details of the game, and discovered that the game actually happened on my ninth birthday.
I suppose this is all to be expected, given that it's hard to remember anything too precise about your childhood, but still... four years off. Yikes. You'd think that I'd have written it down or something.
Hey, Billy Beane, is it still Business as Usual time in Oakland when you trade Rich Harden for a bag of crap? Because with yesterday's feebling at the hands of AJ Burnett and those always mediocre Toronto Blue Jays, your Business As Usual collection of Minimum Payday Only talent has now dropped 10 in a row to fall to 53-61 on the year. Only the continued putridity of the Mariners is keeping you out of the cellar. But that's OK, because this is all according to plan, right?
I shouldn't be so hard. I mean, Brad Ziegler's still throwing zeros for cheap, unlike Huston Street, who has blown more saves than anyone in the AL and wasn't dealt at the deadline for reasons I can't quite fathom. The offense is paced by the breathtaking contributions of a younger version of Jason Kendall (Kurt Suzuki, who the East Bay will enjoy for another whopping two years until his contract makes him untenable), and the always amusing Jack Cust, whose .808 OPS is somewhat undercut by the fact that only about a third of his at-bats end up requiring anyone but the pitcher and catcher. (Jack swings, misses, walks or goes yard. It's exciting!) Oh, and trade chip Matt Murton is certainly making everyone forget about Harden with his .262 OPS. Well, at least Harden as a hitter.
How about Sean Gallagher, the talented young arm they got back from the Cubs? Well, the good news is that he's striking out a man an inning. The bad news is he's nearly walking that many, too, and when you combine that with the had to cool off Justin Duchscherer, Dana Eveland and Greg Smith, it means the bullpen's getting exposed now. Toss Street and his 6 HRs in 49 IP (ouch) to the mix -- seriously, has anyone in town trusted him since the ALCS ending walk-off homer to Magglio Ordonez? -- and you've got...
Well, a bargain basement team, bereft of interesting offensive talent, that's dropped 10 games in a row and is going to find it's true level at 70 wins for the year. If we're lucky. But hey, that's all OK, because this is Business as Usual!
Look, let's make this real slow and simple for the mouth breathers... no one, but no one, should want to hear Star Quarterback talking about what God does and doesn't value. We already know that you find yourself to be super neato cool and keen and better than the rest of us non-Immortals; you don't need, and really should not want, to go down the path of giving us the 411 on what the Big Guy values.
His (and by His, I mean the celestial) reasons are his own, Mr. Brady. For all we know, he chose to give you the gifts that he did because He enjoys a tight spiral as a piece of aesthetic beauty. Or that He needed the people who bet on your games last year to suffer or benefit in the exact fashion as it happened. Or that He does value football so much that he just lets it play out as random chance, rather than getting in the tug of prayer war chess match. Given the number of tools that have experienced success at the NFL level, maybe he's just using the outcomes of the games to test our faith, Job style.
The point is that when you presume to speak for the motivations of the divine, you are sending the not-so-subtle message that you could only divine these meanings through your Nearer to God Than Thee intellect and insight.
And if that's the case... why, exactly, have you lost in the playoffs to Eli Manning, Peyton Manning and Jake Plummer?
Go check out the goodness at Medium Large. It's got as much relevance to sports, and you won't feel as corrupted.
So there's a piece in the Boston Globe this week about how the writer, a Giants fan, braved Central American jungles to get his hands on Perfectriot wear, so he could wear it in front of his Masshole friends. And as you're reading it, consider, for just a moment, the logistics involved, and the hard-core douchebaggery going on here -- if only for the sheer expense of getting there to do it, let alone the up close and personal experience of haggling with a disadvantaged person for their clothing.
The NFL needs to just start selling wrong attire locally, or maybe get the worst places in the world wired up so they can use eBay. Because, honestly, the world hates us enough already. (Or maybe just toss Boston and New York out of all leagues for a couple of years on general principles...)
H/t, Larry Brown Sports. Can you get a #4 jersey for the Pack or Jets with the word RETIRE on the back?
Rented "Once," a nice little movie that got an Oscar nod. Here's the best scene and song.
There’s another reason I don’t vote – I don’t want jury duty. If you’re not registered to vote, you can’t get jury duty. I know that campaign Diddy had a couple years ago, “Vote or Die,” yeah if the alternative is jury duty, I’m going to die. I’m not going to get in one of these cases where they blow the jury members’ houses up to get out of the trial, I’m cool. I’ve seen too many movies. - Gilbert ArenasUm, Agent Zero? I don't want to hate on you too much for being honest about your motivations, and maybe I'm just too stupid to hear the meta-comedy here -- heck, it's nice to read a guy who actually seems to enjoy his work and remain honest about things -- but most local governments go with DMV records, rather than voter registration records.
By the time you read this, rehabbing free agent pitcher Freddie Garcia may be a lot wealthier, if not all that great. He auditioned for some 15 MLB teams the other day in Florida, hitting 86 on the gun and looking healthy, if nto entirely hale.
Such is the state of pitching right now that he's probably going to get multiple offers from MLB+ teams, with the Red Sox, Yankees, Rays, Tigers, Rangers, Mets, Phillies, Astros, Brewers, Cubs, Rockies, Dodgers, Marlins and White Sox all seeming to have some degree of interest.
Of that list, one suspects that the Red Sox are just there to make sure the Yankees pay more for him. The Rays might have budget this year and a concern that they are burning out their young arms, but he's going to be an expensive league replacement level arm, and they've got better ideas down on the farm. Detroit should realize by now, given their bullpen woes, that they really aren't in a race. Texas is a possibility, but they won't have the budget to compete. Chicago could work out, especially given that he had success there in the past.
If he wants to stay in the NL, it's hard to imagine that he'll really want to come back to Philly, and I have no idea why any pitcher would go to Colorado unless he's being moved at gunpoint. The Mets are a possibility, and the Brewers and Cubs seem to be in a second-tier bidding war for talent. LA would be a nice stop, and might be an easy way into the post-season, given how awful the NL West is.
The most interesting thing is Garcia's timing. By coming onto the market with just under two months left in the race, he's put himself into great position to finish the year strong and increase his value. He also gets maximum interest from multiple clubs that have had the inevitable pitching wipeouts.
If you were an older pitcher, or maybe someone coming off a serious injury, why wouldn't you set yourself up with Garcia's timing? Being ready for spring training only gets you tied to a team that will overuse you, with a much greater chance of toiling for a non-contending team. If Garcia gets a big offer, count on someone else doing the same thing next year.
Today in Pittsburgh, cheap labor with a career ERA of over 5, going by the name of Jeff Karstens, retired the first 23 Diamond Back hitters he faced in what would eventually become a 2-0, 2 hit shutout win over Randy Johnson.
Karstens came over in the Damaso Marte / Xavier Nady trade, and it's not like he was utterly dominating the Snakes; he had only four strikeouts to go with one walk, and threw 72 strikes and 41 balls. This seems to be a case of a guy having a great day against a team that really hasn't played well in a long time, but it should be noted that the ex-Yank also kept the Cubs scoreless in his first start. He throws four pitchers for strikes, and on a day when some deep drives stayed in the park, that was enough.
The bigger point to make about Karstens near-miss is that it's really one of the coolest things about baseball -- that in every game you go to or watch, some part of you is aware of the potential for immortality. If anyone was watching this game beyond simple DBack or Pirate fandom, they were doing so to see if Randy Johnson could keep up his recent hot streak and get closer to 300 wins. But Karstens had other ideas.
Just under 18 years ago, I went to a Phillies game at the old Vet on a whim. They were a below .500 team, facing a second-place Giants club, in yet another season that wasn't going anywhere. (They wound up finishing in fourth place; it was the year that the Reds beat the Pirates and then the A's to win the Series.)
We only went because the seats were free as part of a SEPTA promotion, which bumped up the crowd to reasonable levels. And Terry Mulholland, who seemed like a reasonable option as a low rotation starter but nothing more, was just dominant. He was a Charlie Hayes error away from a perfect game, with Hayes redeeming himself with a diving grab of a Gary Carter line drive for the final out. It was the first and only no-hitter that I've ever seen in person, and something that I'll never forget.
That is, really, what baseball has to offer, that no other sport can deliver: the small but unmistakable chance of seeing something that you can keep forever.
So kudos to Karstens, and baseball, for reminding us of what's possible. Even in Pittsburgh, for a guy that I wouldn't bet on winning 100 games in his career, in yet another year where the home team will lose more games than they win. Shame he couldn't get the last four, too.
Brett Favre to the Jets for a probable fourth round pick, and we can all get on with our lives.
The Jets get a guy with an actual arm, and it's not like they were all that concerned with the future of Kellen Clemens, or the present of Chad Pennington. The Packers move him to a place where he'll never trouble them again. As for Favre, he'll see what it's like when the home crowd doesn't excuse your mistakes, and your skill players aren't all that great.
I'm thinking he plays for two years, and the Jets go .500, just because the division's not that good and, all foibles aside, he's still a capable quarterback. But mercy, he's going to take a lot of punishment, and adjusting to the quirky way that Eric Mangini does things doesn't sound like the way I'd like spend my 17th NFL season.
And the trickle picks up... Earl Boykins, a truly useful scoring bench guard provided you can handle over-dribbling and bad defense from a poor man's Iverson, goes for $3.5 million to Italy. Earl's 32 now and really fell off the radar in Charlotte last year, but he's a name that people are going to recognize, if only because Earl's really short for an NBA player.
Nenad Krstic, an actually very good player before recent knee injuries, and someone that the Nets will truly miss, goes for $9 million a year to Russia. Primo Brezac, who used to get a lot of minutes for the Bobcats before they had better ideas, goes to Roma, where he'll join NCAA refugee Brandon Jennings.
That makes 10 in all, and with LeBron James making meaningless news about saying yes for a $50 million payday, everyone is in on the trend. But the more meaningful point to me is this... why does everyone think this is a temporary thing? There's no reason for Jennings to come back after a year, or for any of the other players to be short-listing their new masters. Euro ball is going to be a dramatically better payday, where the ex-NBA player should be a star, and I'm assuming the season and travel has to go be easier... so maybe you get to play longer and be healthier. I'm sure some will come back, but I'm also sure that you're going to keep seeing more go overseas.
Oh, and anyone that thinks that David Stern will blow up salary caps just to remain competitive with the overseas teams? Not a chance, at least not until this actually translates into lower ratings or attendance. I loves me some Earl Boykins, but there ain't nobody deciding to go, or not go, depending on his participation.
For once, folks, it's not a list for the Carnival, but the full season preview. Go see that I'm predicting the same 11-5 year that I always predict, for reasons that you can probably anticipate...
God damn it to hell, does this man ever take a day off from his personal drama? I'd like to write about something else, but each day is a bigger and bigger tooth ache. I can't ignore it, you can't either, and if I were a Packer Fan, I think I'd be taking a poker to my eyes and ears by now. Anyway, go click, go wallow, and if Saint Brett is somehow reading this, just go, just go, go, go...
My favorite moment from this is when Vikings punter Chris Kluwe talks about how he feels he's getting grudging respect from the other players for his skills.
Um, err, no.
H/t, Deadspin...
Last night in Texas, the Yankees lost to the Rangers, and maybe the rest of their playoff hopes. Staff ace Joba Chamberlain left with a bum wing, which is just about the last thing that a team that's trying to get wins out of Darrell Rasner and Sidney Ponson needed to see. This, combined with a bullpen blowup, dropped the Bombers to 5.5 out of the division and 2.5 games out of the wildcard, and the teams that they're fighting for those positions -- Boston, Tampa, Minnesota and Chicago, and you can even count the Rangers in the mix now -- don't have their pitching problems.
The late great A's announcer Bill King refused to go to Texas in his latter years. He hated everything about the place, from the bandbox ballpark to the stifling heat, and he was old enough and revered enough to just opt out of the assignment. The Yankees might want to take up his example, as it was at this park that Phil Hughes got hurt a year ago, while he was in the process of no-hitting the home club.
The real problem for the Yanks is that their margin for error -- an offense that turned bad pitchers into hamburger and good pitchers into spectators by the sixth, because they just worked them ragged -- has been a sputtering mess for most of the year. When you pay what they pay everyday players, you don't expect the ninth-most runs in the majors. (But, of course, this is what happens when you spend all your cash on aging vets, and have no reasonable minor league vets to call up for the inevitable injuries.)
The clock is now starting to become a serious problem, too. Yankee Fan (and, to a lesser extent, Baseball Fan) doesn't usually think 3 to 5 games is a big deal in the standings, because sweeps and streaks happen. But when you look at the historical pattern for this kind of thing, teams that have leads keep them much more often than they lose them, because it's just damned deadly difficult to be a game a week better than your opponents. With less than a third of the season left -- the Yanks have 50 to go -- they needed to put the hammer down now. Chamberlain on the sidelines could very well make that impossible. (Now, if we can only get Tampa to hold on to the lead, and the Twins to make a big fat run to keep the Red Sox out... Fox will cancel the playoffs. Dream a little dream...)
Now, when you look at the following clip, you probably think it's just one more baseball slap fight. This one's in better video quality than most.
Sure, you could put it in the teammate on teammate file with Manny Ramirez and Kevin Youkilis in Boston, Dioner Navarro and Matt Garza in Tampa Bay, and Michael Bennett and Carlos Zambrano in Chicago. Those are just the ones off the top of my head; I'm sure there hav been others.
But what's really going on here is Fielder giving in to the inevitable homicidal rage that takes over all vegetarians. From Hitler to McCartney, as well as the classic passive aggressive types like Gandhi and Schweitzer, the practice of not eating meat just leads to blowouts like this. Someone slip some veal in Fielder's tofu, and all will be well in Brew Town.
(The fact that I've named my roto baseball league The House of Meat has nothing to do with this assessment.)
Carlos Arroyo, good enough to make the rotation for a playoff team (Orlando) last year and an intriguing if erratic backup point guard for Toronto, Denver, Utah and Detroit, will be plying his trade next year in Tel Aviv. Terms not disclosed, and reports vary as to whether he's gone for a year or three, but you can be sure he's not going for a pay cut.
Arroyo is 29, and most remembered, if at all, for his work in the international game, where he helped lead Puerto Rico to a 2004 upset over the US. He's also probably the best player from Puerto Rico in Association history, not that he's had incredible competition for the honor.
He's the kind of guy that roto heads were always aware of, because starting point guard is kind of like being the closer in baseball -- you don't have to be all that good to be fairly valuable. He also had the unfortunate role of trying to replace John Stockton with the Jazz, which couldn't have been an easy gig.
In the scale of Losses for the Association, Arroyo doesn't really qualify; Orlando preferred Kenyan Dooling, and signed Anthony Johnson in a clear get out of town move. But he is an actual point guard, has some skills, and has been successful enough to play 450 games in his career. The talent erosion, especially among depth players, continues.
Continuing our swing through the misery that is training camp, the big news out of Lehigh (that's where the Eagles do their business) is that guard Shawn Andrews, one of the best interior linemen in football and a two-time Pro Bowl selection, has been battling depression, which is why he's been out of camp.
Andrews was a first round pick for the Eagles in the 2004 draft as an early entry from Arkansas. As with so many of these guys, he came out early for money for his mom. In his career, he's had two significant injuries, the first being a broken leg that cost him time during the Super Bowl year, and the second being a neck injury that took him out of the Saints playoff game. The latter was a big factor in the loss, in that the only thing keeping the Eagles from scoring at will in that game was the Saints' getting to Jeff Garcia.
In short, he's incredibly valuable to the team, and without him, you don't have Bryan Westbrook doing what he does, or Donovan McNabb remaining upright. He's also never been known to draw stupid penalties, pop off to the media, or pule for more money. None of which, I'm afraid, will spare him from what's to come.
Here's the money quotes from the Philly Daily News and Inquirer, as relayed through the AP (which is enough attribution to get me sued, one suspects).
"I'm willing to admit that I've been going through a very bad time with depression. I've finally decided to get professional help. It's not something that blossomed up overnight. I'm on medication, trying to get better... I really was kind of at my end... In the state that I'm in, I would be at training camp physically, but mentally, I could have gotten myself hurt or gotten one of my teammates hurt."Andrews is in his fifth year, and he's eating a $15K a day fine to be out, which is enough to make anyone depressed (rim shot), because the absence is not excused.
One of the small points that no one remembers about the USFL, in that no one remembers anything about the USFL, is that they didn't have any preseason games. The first week was a little ragged, but not too bad, and my memory is that the league had fewer injuries during the year.
You'd think that the NFL, given the salaries involved now and the cap that means that every team is just an injury or two away from having fatal flaws, would do everything they could to avoid injury. But since the teams all bundle the games into their season ticket plans, I guess the money works out for them.
Anyway, the reason I was thinking about this was the Steve Smith swinging party coming out of the Carolina camp. For those of you who only have eyes for Saint Brett, this may have flown under your radar, but the star Carolina wideout has been suspended for two games for a camp altercation with cornerback Ken Lucas which left the defensive player with a broken nose. Lucas needs surgery, and will be out for several weeks. Frankly, given the roid rage, heat, and hyper-competition, I'm kind of amazed that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often.
I also can't help but wonder... is Smith being punished not for the violence, but the effectiveness? Did Lucas really piss him off, or is he still enraged about the quarterbacks that he had to put up with (David Carr! Vinny Testaverde! Chris Weinke!) in the non-Jake Delhomme portions of his career? How happy is DeAngelo Hall, really, to have gotten the hell away from him?
Oh, and finally this. Just how bad ass is Smith, and does the bad-assery actually more or less keep his fantasy draft position more or less unchaged, despite the sudden loss of 12.5% of his seasonal value?
(Your answers, in order.... yes, he should be, very, and you should drop Smith down at least 10 to 15 places in your queue. Which makes him a great sleeper pick, really.)
Your list is here, and boy, the research on this one took me.... seconds. Gambling ain't pretty, folks.
(And yes, there is the very real possibility that I'm just trying to intimidate the other players in my league into thinking that they haven't done enough to compete with you, and that they need to spend the rest of their time before the draft getting into the same kind of over-analyzing paralysis. It's time for Big Evil.)
Your link is here, and the only thing I have to add to the crudity (seriously, I worked in the words "dental dams", which just establishes my Lesbian Chic, I think) is this simple question... When is this going to be, you know, about football again?
Green Bay QB is a meaningful position. It's a place with good skill players and line, in a weak division, with significant fantasy league importance. In the real world, it's the helm of a Final Four team from last year. And yet, what's been involved here is so much more than that, and doesn't really have to be. It's just been the media pulling for a good story, even though (shh!) Packer Fan isn't really all that into the Saga of Saint Brett.
The guy who got the biggest ovation at Opening Day last year in Lambeau (I was there) wasn't the quarterback. It was the rookie lineman from Wisconsin that was making his first start. The jerseys that you saw walking around the yard wasn't exclusively Number Four, but an awful lot of AJ Hawk. (He's a linebacker.) They didn't cheer his every move in what turned out to be a smoke and mirrors win over the eventually 8-8 Eagles, and when I asked a number of Packer Fans point black about His Quarterbackness, they didn't strike me as True Believers. Instead, they wished that he'd do well, because he was the quarterback of their team... and if he was gone, they'd, you know, still be at the game and rooting like hell for a Packer Win.
Because that's what the media isn't getting here, along with Favre: the game is bigger than the player, and will always be bigger than the player.
And oh, by the way... if karma exists in football terms, Favre carries a clipboard this year as Rodgers wins a Super Bowl. Or he gets hurt, or stinks, or gets dealt to a team that plays terribly. Your karmic interpretations, of course, may vary.
by Tracer Bullet, Staff Writer
I'm probably just being a prick, but I really can't stand the NFL Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.
Make no mistake, I love all things pigskin-related and the Induction Ceremony is kind of the first event of the new season, so it is a good thing. But while I enjoy seeing old clips and hearing the speeches, I really don't need Chris Berman's Foghorn Leghorn act or Adam Schefter's oily charm to provide perspective.
Likewise, why the hell is there a studio team there to comment on the thing? It's old men giving speeches. That's the whole thing. NFLN could have save about $3 million if they'd just hired me.
It might be different if anybody ever had anything interesting to say. Steve Mariucci would struggle to find fault with Stalin, let alone dare to suggest that each inductee could possibly be something other than the greatest football player who ever drew breath, the finest patriot since Captain America and a combination of the best qualities of Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Seka.
I am sick and damn tired of all the Hall of Famers pretending to be the damned Brady Bunch. I realize that these guys were all great players (yes, I suppose we have to say this of Art Monk, too) but some of them hate each other and they've hated each other for decades. You can't get some tape of a curmudgeon like Chuck Bednarik saying foul things about Michael Irvin? What the hell is that huge production team good for then?
Nope, I want a bit of edge injected into the proceedings. I want someone to serve as Designated Bastard who'll say bad things about the inductees. I don't even care if he says anything fair or even accurate, so long as he's not boring. Lucky for you, I'm just the man for the job.
Fred Dean -- I always get you confused with Fred Dryer. Which means two things 1) you're career wasn't all that memorable and 2) I'd rather watch "Hunter" than watch you play football.
Darrell Green -- Playing 20 years at CB in the NFL is very impressive. But lots of guys work hard jobs for a really long time to make their child support payments too and nobody has built a Hall of Fame for them.
Art Monk -- A Hall of Famer because somebody in the selection meeting stood up and said, "Look, nobody wants this guy except those idiots from Washington and they'll keep ranting and screaming until we finally break down and let him in. So we can spend four hours debating this every year for the next 15 years, or we can just let him in now and go to lunch."
Emmitt Thomas -- Are you kidding? A 1-2 record as interim coach for on of the worst teams in modern history is hardly worthy of the Hall of Fame. Madden probably didn't deserve to go in as a coach either but at least he won a Super Bowl. Thomas has one more win as a head coach than I do and I spent the entire 2007 season on my couch and furthermore . . . What? One of the best CBs of his era? Feh. Dan Pastorini, Archie Manning and Dennis Shaw were starting quarterbacks during Thomas' career -- how hard could it have been?
Andre Tippett -- An integral member of the Patriots 1985-86 Super Bowl team -- the team that allowed the Bears to roll up 46 points in what was the most lopsided Super Bowl loss up to that point. Hey, Steve Grogan and Tony Eason were integral members of that team too and nobody is fitting them for an ugly sport coat stolen from a Century 21 office in Van Nuys. Nobody with the taint of that loss deserves to be in the HOF. Though I do think his 1971 record "Black Moses" is a masterpiece.
Gary Zimmerman -- Broncos partisans are convinced their team is underrepresented in the Hall, so maybe this will silence their incessant whining for a few years. In truth, unattractive white men with terrible moustaches really are underrepresented and his induction will help alleviate a big backlog.
In a podcast this week, Bill Simmons talked about how Ron Artest is the summer's biggest move (not Elton Brand, who went to the Sixers), because the trade makes the Rockets them the defensive force of the universe, and Brand doesn't make the Sixers anything more than a 45-win one-and-done playoff team. Oh, and that the Sixers were incredibly stupid for signing Brand.
Let's take the Brand signing first, because it somehow makes my head explode less. I've gone over this before, but what the Sixers have done is basically create a younger version of the Pistons -- not really a 45 win, one and done playoff team. Maybe they didn't get all the way there, and maybe they did -- but it's not like they had no plan, or that the plan was only to have a team with no real room to grow upward. Brand's not exactly ancient.
But even assuming that a Celtics homer's opinion can be trusted on such things, given where the Sixers have been for the past several years, is 45 wins a year really so damned awful? Trust me, the lottery years aren't more fun, and with the exception of the Allen Iverson pick, it wasn't terribly rewarding. (Don't believe me? Jerry Stackhouse. Shawn Bradley. Keith van Horn. Whoop de damn do.)
Next, Testy and the Rockets suddenly being a threat. Every year, people get seduced into thinking that a Tracy McGrady team is going to go far in the playoffs. Heck, I was among them last year, because I had been equally sucked into the idea that Yao Ming had to have a healthy year in him, if only once in his life. Testy doesn't change the fact that Yao and T-Mac can't stay healthy.
Nor can he change who he is... an overrated player, weak rebounder, and someone who's so stock raving flippo that he had beef with Yao before he even OFFICIALLY JOINED THE TEAM.
Look, I realize that NBA hounds adore guys with big reps as talented head cases, because they all think they can fix the guy (if only for a little while) and win. Hell, Dennis Rodman's got rings, so all it takes is the love of a good coach.
But for the love of Andrew Toney, just because Adelman got a decent half season and a competitive playoff against the Spurs, that doesn't make him a good coach. If he were a good coach, he'd have, you know, won a playoff series that you didn't expect him to win.
Anyway, back to Testy. Sure, he's in a contract drive. He'd have to be insane to not stay in his shoes and suck in a new team for a big deal. He's not getting any younger, and as a defensive player, he's going to have less time to be good.
He's also a guy that nearly got arrested for dog abuse. He provoked a riot. His dream as a young player was to work at a Circuit City. His rap work puts the duh in delusion.
So he's (a) not that good, and (b) not going to stay sane, and he's playing for a team where the stars can't stay healthy. So what's there to like here again?
But hey, it's new right now, so I'm running with it.
For anyone who has ever played Cobbs Creek in Philly, no, this didn't happen there...
