I missed last night's mercy kill of the Mavericks last night in Denver, and will miss more NBA action this weekend due to going to site contributor Dirty Davey's wedding, but the wire feed has this juicy little moment.
Cuban, who skipped Game 5 to attend an awards ceremony in Las Vegas, had written in his blog this week that the Nuggets' families and friends could sit in his private suite "when the series returns to Dallas."
Can they still sit there to watch the rest of the NBA playoffs, Cubes? And why, exactly, are you opening up your suite to punks and thugs, anyway?
We all know, by the way, why you don't watch the game there -- no cameras.
I shouldn't be so hard on the Cube, however, since he gives NBA Fans so much. Mostly in the form of an annual holiday when his team is eliminated...
Tonight in Dallas, the only guy on the Mavericks' roster who didn't more or less embarrass himself at the end of Game Three ensured that there would be a Game Five. Dirk Nowitzki poured in 44 points, 19 in the fourth, including the go-ahead tough make with 65 seconds left. The series moves back to Denver with the Mavs still more or less drawing dead, down 3-1, but at some point, some NBA team is going to have to blow a 3-0 lead, and this Nuggets team does have some Quitter DNA in it, at least prior to the Chauncey Billups transfusion.
Having said that.... it's not going to be these Nuggets, who led most of the game, and have led most of the series. They also have a legitimate crunch time assassin in Carmelo Anthony, who dueled Nowitzki with a career-high 41 points his own damn self.
And in the part of the game that the rest of the non-Association world cares about, yes, there was ugliness -- seven technical fouls, multiple flagrants, a dumb elbow from Anthony and even concerns that civilians will be messed with, all thanks to the bad loser act from Mark Cuban after the Mavs got jobbed at the close of Game 3. Denver will be highly motivated to avoid another trip to Texas, and Nugget Fan will be more than inspired to bring his A Game of Ugly for the incoming Mavs. At least Cuban won't be there, thanks to a highly convenient prior commitment in Vegas. Classic move on his part to light the fuse and walk away.
Still, in a series that seems good on the surface, but kind of nasty underneath -- who, exactly, am I supposed to root for here? Cuban? Furious George Karl? The collection of Nuggets reprobates? -- it's good to see Nowitzki have a decent day. What with him being involved with a grifter, no one would have blamed him for taking his owner's lead in crying over the Game Three ref job. I still think the Nuggets are winning this series, probably going away, but at least Nowitzki will be able to leave the year with some semblance of pride.
Major League Jerk finds an even more rotted tooth than the Bad Tooth. If you're missing your quota of Mass Hate from me this week, by all means click, and take pity the poor Boston fan/columnist, needing his small comforts of shadenfraude on a Sunday in May when his NBA team gets back to even in the Final 8, his MLB team wins a tight game against their division rival, his NHL team won a playoff game, and his NFL team moves another day closer to a year where they'll win their division in a walk. Clearly, they needed to bask in the misery of a team and fanbase that isn't even in their freaking league to somehow get through another day in their vale of tears.
In other news, the temperature in their collective asshole is 75 degrees, with light humidity and a strong southerly breeze. The weather is always nice it's the reason why they spend so much time there!
It's good to see that the fans at the new Yankee Stadium can still fight each other, rather than have their staff do it for them. I am a little disappointed that the spectators didn't chant "E-C-W! E-C-W! E-C-W!" after the flying kick, though.
An unprovoked Mark Cuban confronts Kenyon Martin's mother to tell her that her son is a thug or a punk. Happy Mother's Day! You know what else he is, Cubes? A member of a team with a playoff pulse. Also, a member of a team who doesn't have a complete asshat for an owner. The only way this story gets better is if the Angry Yellow Man decides to take matters into his own hands in Game Four. Does God love us all that much? Only time will tell.
(Kudos, by the way, to embattled Dallas forward Dirk Nowitzki, for having oceans more class than his owner. With luck, maybe this will enrage the UFL commish enough to move him.)
Update -- God does love us, and Kenyon's said, "I'm going to take care of it." The quote continues, "By violently assaulting him until his smarmy little head leaks brain juice out of his eyes, ears, nose, mouth and a new hole I'm going to call 'Kenyon's Fun Zone'." Oops, I'm sorry, that last part was just in my own mind.
I did what NBA detractors say you should always do with Game 3 of the Mavs vs. Nuggets series -- turned it on at the end of the third quarter. (Blame it on Mother's Day prep, and the fact that watching Mark Cuban gives me hives.)
So I tuned in at 80-79, just in time for the Lemur to tell me how the Nugs have ran the Mavs out of the building in the fourth in each of the earlier games, and it looked like more of the same as Carmelo Anthony exerted his will on both ends. But Melo giveth and Melo giveth away, and his bad turnover got the home team back in it. The Denver bigs were also in big foul trouble, with Birdman Anderson fouling out with nine minutes left, and Nene replacing him with five.
I have to say, I'm relieved to have missed a lot of this one. When the game has 80+ free throws and the teams are never more than six points apart, that's old-time Pistons basketball, and when you add that to reaction shots of Mark Cuban, that's not exactly what I think of as an afternoon well-spent. But at least the fourth quarter had some flow and drama.
In crunch time, Chauncey Billups crushed the Mavs -- he had 32 tonight -- as part of the continuing proof that Jason Kidd can't guard anyone, but at least he can punish people in the post. Both teams got the D up late, with matching turnovers, and with 1:28 left, Anthony got called for a foul on a loose ball on the floor, his fifth, on a fairly weak call; the subsequent free throw put the lead back to three at a time where the Mavs looked fairly lost on offense. Billups then missed from point blank range, and Nowitzki missed badly on a shot that would have been a dagger. Nene then showed his previously dormant chops on a baseline spin move to cut it to 1. Jason Terry then made a corner three with 31 second left to make it a four-point game, and you start to think this series was going to go longer. But Carmelo Anthony had other ideas.
The Syracuse man converted to get it back to two. Dallas called time to run the highly innovative play of Give It To Dirk And Hope; Kenyon Martin's defense forced a miss there, and the Nuggets got the board with 6.5 seconds left. Dallas, and this is critical, had a foul to give. The Nuggets inbounded to Melo, and as he rolled around the top of the arc, Dallas's Antoine Wright committed a foul... but the refs didn't call it, and 'Melo kept playing, rising up to hit an off-balance three that was absolutely huge. The last play og the game was Dirk missing again, and just like that, it's 3-0 Denver, and all over except for the crying (from Josh Howard and Mark Cuban, who admittedly is an old hand at feeling aggrieved by the refs).
Now, I have to say, I've got no sympathy for the Mavs on this one. If you're going to foul a guy, you need to make it more obvious than what he did to Anthony. You also probably need to go tell the ref in the dead ball before it happens. And if Nowitki can do anything in the fourth -- he ha 33 and 16 tonight, but none when it mattered -- the road team isn't close enough to steal it.
As for the Nuggets, they continue to look like an interesting dark horse, except for the fact that Kobe Bryant treats them like he treated that girl a few years ago. (Hey-o!) If they can sweep the Rockets and the Lakes get taken deep by Houston, maybe they can steal the first game on the road and make it a series. But since Yao Ming is now out for the rest of the playoffs due to a broken foot, I'm thinking it's looking more like two fast series in the West. And that's not such a bad thing, because less Mark Cuban on the television is just good for everyone, really.
Mark Cuban has found a new way to get fined; criticizing refs on his Twitter page. Shaquille O'Neal gets controversy for using the service at halftime, and asking people to accost him in public. Baron Davis just told the world he's got an ulcer on his page. (Finally, a Clipper has something in common with their ticket holders. That, and the soul-crushing losing.) Charlie Villaneuva has been candid about his coach's displeasure with him on Twitter. Many teams have committed to official feeds.
And that spine-crackling yawn that you just emitted from this knowledge? Well, I'm on the record as loving the Association, but I'm with you on this one.
Personally, I'm one of the far too many Rapidly Aging Americans who use Facebook; I do so for the same reasons that people used to use Reunion or MySpace, which is to say, to look at pictures of women I knew in high school. (Yeah, like you use it for anything else.) That, and trying to casually amuse people, or generate a few extra folks for my poker game, or blog posts, or whatever.
I do not care, and never will, about the not very illuminating or interesting lists or quizzes or applications that people use in the course of their Facebook day. Nor, for that matter, am I all that interested in the building blocks of your thought process, which is to say, the real grist of what Twitter is about.
So why do so many NBA guys do this?
1) They have too much free time. Seriously, at this point in the season, there isn't much in the way of new scouting or coaching going on. It's all about either qualifying for the playoffs, finding out about bench guys, or just playing out the string for the benefit of your statistics. There's a reason why scoring goes up late in the year; there's a tacit quid pro quo of guys more or less going easy on each other.
2) They are young enough to embrace any new technology. Your mom uses e-mail. Parents use Facebook. Twittering is basically a public text messaging service; it rewards a lack of forethought or editing, and that's right in the wheelhouse of folks who are less likely to have set habits and schedules.
3) It's a fad. Kobe Bryant notwithstanding, there really aren't very many NBA players who have been on Shaq's teams that have really disliked the guy. He may be a defensive sieve now, he might have squandered some of his talent and opportunities from not taking his conditioning seriously, and he's left untold thousands of points on the table from being a free-throw liability. But he seems fun to be around, and he keeps the media away from you. So when he starts doing something, other people are going to check it out.
4) Easier to be second than first. Who, really, is going to crack hard on a Twittering NBA guy now? You'd have to crack on Gilbert Arenas first, for opening Pandora's Box with the blogging, then the half dozen folks who've already done this in the last month.
My only real question is this... what will it be next month? 24-hour Web cams carried on the players? Bathroom updates? A cortical implant that will allow us 24/7/365 thought access? Non-inquiring minds do not want to know!
Word on the wire last night that the UFL -- you remember the UFL, don't you? It was one of those things that insufferable idiot Mark Cuban was going on about -- is all set to start its first and last season this fall. You've got a four-team league in New York, Vegas, Orlando and San Francisco with name coaches (Jim Fassel, Dennis Green, Jim Haslett and Ted Cottrell).
They'll play on Thursday nights on Versus, also known as the channel that you don't watch the NHL on, have a six-game season, and wrap things up on Thanksgiving. They're also going to try to get noted dog-killer Michael Vick to join the festivities, just to give the train wreck watchers that will go to see this thing something juicy to heckle.
Now, say this for them... at least they've got name-brand coaches. I know that whenver I'm choosing to watch a new minor league during the busiest time in the sports calendar (seriously, you've got World Series games along with the NFL, NBA and NHL during this time, along with college football and, well, saving your money to get through Christmas), I want to know that it's being coached by someone who I'm familiar with for past spectacular failures. And with Denny Green on hand, we'll be sure to tune in for those post-game press conferences, just to see if the media (which is to say, three bloggers, two of them drunk) can get him to say his catch phrase, Gary Coleman-like.
Could they, say, have played their freaking games in the yawning six-month gap when the closest thing you get to NFL football is Mel Kiper Jr. and the same-old same-old coverage of Gosh, It's Hot In The Summer In A Training Camp? Hell no. Could they have rolled out more than four teams, and put them actually close together, so that they could tap into that good regional hate that people have for each other in the DC to Boston megalopolis? Nah, let's just do it in Orlando instead, which is Iowa City with heat and humidity. Personally, I can't wait to see the team names and logos, because with this amount of brain power shone to date, I think we're going to get something truly special. As in short bus special. (Oh, and nice timing with the economy on this. At least you won't have to fight the NHL for airtime, since that will probably be closing up shop by then anyway.)
Which leads me to the final three questions...
1) Can't you boys just admit that you're hoping to backdoor your way into an NFL expansion franchise now, rather than actually pretend that you're launching a legitimate enterprise?, and
2) Given that you're all showing about as much intellect and marketing acumen as the XFL -- hell, you're in the same exact cities! -- how, exactly, did you get to become millionaires again?
Moondog weighs in on something I've been pimping for awhile, i.e., the effect of the economic slowdown on our little sports sandbox. His focus is domestic, but it's kind of intriguing to see everything at once, and he's also done some good research on individual sport attendance numbers and naming rights. (Oh, and if you're wondering about the health of your specific sport's advertising, here's a simple test. If infomercials are shown during the telecast. Instead of, say, liquor and gambling.)
Great in-depth piece as to why the NFL Network sucks. Some of the descriptions of the network are a little over the top -- I've seen enough of their programming to know that they really aren't all that great, if only because when you hire Bryant Gumbel and Deion Sanders, you are not getting the whole hang of this journamalism thing. But if the distribution issue had been dealt with, they'd be just an ordinary thing, rather than an active embarrassment. Anyway, go, pack a lunch, wallow, and if it's behind a registration firewall that you'd rather not deal with, feel good about having lots of free time back in your life. Why not click on some ads, Mr. Free Time Guy?
Nick Underhill wallows in the misery that is the last 20 years of Pirate baseball. It's an important counterpoint for this next week of Steeler Happiness.
Busted Coverage collects 14 priceless moments from Mark Cuban's, well, troublesome relationship with cameras. The fact that the man showed up on "The Simpsons" a few weeks ago more or less proved to me that both entities are permanently over the shark.
And finally, PSAmp.com, your go-to site for Pittsburgh Steelers and Mini Ponies (yes, I'm serious) with this spectacular ode to Yinzer Supremacy. It will take, if not quote your breath, well, *something* away...
This link is much more understandable after you view this YouTube clip.
And now that you know... enjoy the link that's equal parts slamming an idiot in Josh Howard, and the other half slamming the state that he lives in and the times that we endure, in that the Union is clearly threatened by a nonsensical moment from a nonsensical player. (Oh, and bonus points to Mark Cuban, who thinks this whole problem can be blamed on... you guessed it, cell phone cameras and YouTube. Cube's brain isn't what it used to be, folks.)
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...
Here's today's link, and the bonus coverage... the thing that Cub Fan really has to be scared of is that their time as an MLB+ team may be on loan. Sam Zell, their repugnant owner, picked a curious at best time to get involved in a dying medium when he bought the Tribune, and while this mostly just means that he's a very good candidate to turn the franchise over to some other billionaire for a marked-up profit sooner rather than later, there's no guarantee that the next ownership group is going to have incredible pockets, either -- and right now, the Cubs spend like the Yankees, only without the same media empire to help pay for it.
There is no really good reason to spend a lot on the Cubs payroll. They've got a decent enough farm system to be a .500 team, and you're not selling any more seats or having a huge jump in advertising revenue from a winner. The team isn't trying to get a new stadium from the locals by going into a Win Or We Move run. And the more they spend, the more they pay into revenue sharing. Unless you're really just committed to a championship, it's not defensible... and the people who own them next might not have that commitment. (Which is why Cub Fan is really, really hoping for Mark Cuban, and will hold his nose for all that entails to get him. Boy, if you think they're unlikable now...)
So what you have, right here and right now, is a good old-fashioned sprint from the general manager, not that I can blame him for such things. Ted Lilly's contract is actually a bargain under those conditions, but that doesn't mean he's really going to be very good, and Jason Marquis is a poor man's Ted Lilly. What they really needed was for Carlos Zambrano to be a Cy Young candidate and Rich Hill to be a dominant #2 starter. Z hasn't been that and now he's hurt, and Hill's utterly lost in the minors. The offense and bullpen have better than imagined, but the offense is doing it on Geovany Soto and Ryan Theriot -- in other words, a catcher who probably will wear down with workload, and a second basemen playing shortstop who is very likely hitting over his head. (Also, if Edmonds continues to give them a stick, he'll be overcoming years of decay and injury build-up. Let's just say that if you have him in a fantasy league, you're including him in every possible trade package right now.)
They aren't going to turn into a bad team. Lee, Soriano, Ramirez and Fukudome ensure that they'll continue to hit above the average. But right now, they're playing +.600 baseball with a rotation that just doesn't seem to be more than .500, and a defense that is (significantly) less than that. They may be able to win the division by just playing .500 ball the rest of the way (especially if Poo Holes is out for a long time for the Cards), but if this is a top 5 MLB team... well, I'm just not seeing it.
And the fun thing about Cub Fan is that he's not seeing it, either.
In the last of a 4-game marathon session today, the Hornets took a hammerlock on their series with the Mavs in a game that, finally, should make it clear to even Dallas Fan that their team is a lot closer to the lottery than a serious playoff run.
With 4.5 seconds left in the third quarter, Jason Kidd was able to get in front of Chris Paul just enough to help him roll an ankle, for his first foul of the game. It's telling when your point guard who is getting killed isn't even picking up fouls; either he's too slow to get there, or just doesn't give a damn. And from watching this game, I'd say both.
The Hornets won this game on more than Paul, though. They won on Peja Stojakovic hitting the wide open shots that Paul got for him. They won on David West being able to go 1 on 1 on Irk Nowitzki (the D was non-existent), and eating the lunch of every Dallas big man who tried to guard him. And they won on Byron Scott outcoaching Avery Johnson, simply because Avery Johnson might be the biggest over-coacher in the Association. The Bugs just made the Mavs look slow and old all over the floor, and it isn't just Paul; it's also useful bench guy Jannero Pargo and livebody Julian Wright. In what passed for crunch time tonight, the Hornets didn't have a bad matchup anywhere on the floor.
For the Mavs, hope is not looking strong, as noted pot enthusiast Josh Howard was horrible, Jason Terry didn't give them the same boost that he did in Game 3, and I couldn't tell you who their best player was, because they didn't really have one. Dallas has also lost 8 straight road playoff games -- so the chance of this one going longer than 5 isn't looking too great. A pity, too, since the Hornets lack playoff experience. It's clearly killing them. (And no, I don't give them a chance in hell against the Spurs.)
Also noteworthy late -- Jason Kidd's picked up a flagrant 2 on a Pargo drive, earning him an ejection. It was deserved: he put the left hand around Pargo's neck and yanked, and if there was a greater exclamation point on how that trade hasn't worked out for the Mavs, I can't imagine it. The Mavs would have been better off with Devin Harris (not that Harris locked down Paul, either) on both ends of the floor right now, because Jason Kidd is simply a terrible basketball player now. (Also, after Kidd's assault, the refs forgot about giving the Mavs' anything close to a call.) This series is over.
Two final points: Kudos to TNT for breaking out the Matt Geiger tape of the last time the Bug Franchise won in Dallas. I can't get enough Matt Geiger footage, really. And what the hell has happened to Mark Cuban's hair? Either the dude is pulling it out over this series, or just losing it from worrying about bloggers. Either way, it couldn't happen to a nicer freak... and man alive, as I'm writing this and wrapping things up, a Dallas fan gets ejected from jawing at the team and Cuban in particular. It's a shame, Cubes. Watching you cry at the end of a first round loss was becoming such a nice little annual tradition.
As the recent speculation has shown, I may need a new NBA go-to guy to help fill the bloghole. Here's my top prospects.
1) Pat Riley. From stabbing his coach in the back for a championship run to failing to ignore the de rigue Shaq Smack as he's leaving town, the man with the hairstyle from the mid '50s and '80s is slowly but surely rising in the ranks of Embarrassing Old Men.
With his Heat now dogged by the "injury bug" that always envelopes terrible teams and organizations (perfected by the pre-Nellie Warriors, and practiced by half of the Eastern Conference last year in the hopes to get Durant or Oden), and the clock ticking down on when Dwayne Wade will engineer one of those Unhappy Star Trades, Riles really needs to hang it up before anyone does the math and realizes that he's, well, doing a terrible job.
No one seems to be paying any attention to the breathtaking mail-in job that the Heat players are doing this year (tonight's half-time score: 50-30), but honestly... they are so bad, they don't even have a player you can own in roto leagues right now. I can't remember ever saying that about a team before.
2) Larry Bird. The hick who can't GM worth a lick is only the third worst star player / GM in the league, since Isiah and McHale both remain employed, but those teams haven't managed to shoot up the neighborhood the way that Bird's men have. Bird gets special bonus points for not only franchising the perpetual disappointment that is Jermaine O'Neal, but also keeping him forever, making sure that his millstone doesn't have any real trade value, either. And if the Pacers somehow stagger into the 8th spot in the East for a 3-and-flush effort against the Celtics... well, really, are the Pacers better off, given who is at the helm, with some balls in the lottery hopper? 3) Mark Cuban. But the prize will, in all likelihood, go to the man who has done nothing for the past 2+ years but damage to his reputation. From the perpetual puling in the Finals to the refs giving ever call to Wade (he probably had a point, but he made it so badly, no one cared), to the courtside crying against the Warriors last year, to this year's hair-pulling fight with sports bloggers... well, let's just say that I'm beginning to think that Mavs' fans might be pining for the return of Ross Perot, really.
And maybe, just maybe, they'll lose tonight to the Warriors and find themselves out of the playoffs. Gosh, could we still have a playoff season in the NBA without being able to root against the utterly unlikable Mavs?
Seriously, Cubes, what good does it do you to engage in baiting the blogosphere with your locker room ban, and equating the entire output of all of the writers as one monolithic product o' gossip? Once again, sloppy generalizations from someone who should know better (see Costas, Bob) come into play.
Sure, some of us are just going for cheap laughs. Others are going to geek it up with Moneyball-esque stat work. Still more are going to be little more than talk radio (which, I'm noting, you don't seem to be willing to bait so openly, maybe because you've got just enough sense to fight only when you've got numbers).
Most of us don't need (or, in my case, want) locker room access to do what we do. Nor do we need to be baited by a dot-com billionaire, Ayn Rand-lover, egomaniac celebrity dancer and remarkably insufferable human being. Why don't you just go back to starting a new football league, not buying a baseball team, or following around Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for media coverage?
In any event, Cubes, I'm sure you'll give me and mine plenty more to write about. Just not so much about, you know, basketball.
Your link is here, and on a more serious point, if Dirk Nowitzki is really out for any length of time, there's no way the Mavs should be able to hold off the Warriors and Nuggets for the last spot in the West.
They haven't beaten a team with a winning record since the Kidd trade, Avery Johnson has actually played Tyronn Lue instead of Kidd in crunch time (for the simple reason that Kidd might be the worst point guard in the league on offense in the half court right now), and the Cube has been seen and heard having screaming matches with his coach. Good times!
And if they make the playoffs, they're an auto-out... and that's whether or not Nowitzki is on the floor. At least the Nuggets might give someone a scare.
Mark Cuban announced on his blog Blog Maverick that he and a few other “smart people” are investigating the idea of creating another professional football league, the UFL. He points out his feeling that demand outweighs supply for this product and there is room for another professional football league. My first reaction was he’s probably right. Until I kept reading to discover that he wants to compete against the NFL.
Here’s a quick recap of how he sees it:
1. The NFL needs competition so regulators don’t look at them as a monopoly. Nice try Mark. I’m sure the NFL will agree that they want/need competition and not try to crush your league. Just ask the World Football League, the USFL and the XFL.
2. Wants to fill the league with players picked in lower rounds and older players who have been cut for salary cap reasons. Wow – sounds like some pretty good talent to go watch. I guess he wants the UFL to be the Wal-Mart of sports leagues – “Everyday low prices at the UFL!”
3. There are large markets in the U.S. that currently do not have NFL teams that would love a professional team. There are also a lot of people who would love to date Jessica Alba. But setting them up with her sister is nice, but it’s still not Jessica Alba. And looking at the top 25 cities that currently don’t have football teams you get – LA, San Antonio, Columbus, Austin, Memphis and El Paso. So those would be your top 6 markets to start the UFL. And where would these teams play? Sun Bowl Stadium? The Citrus Bowl? A bunch of old, crappy stadiums because an owner of a team isn’t going to build a new stadium for the UFL.
4. Play games in the fall on Friday nights. Reading this makes me wonder if he’s been sitting around with Ricky Williams brainstorming ideas on how the UFL will work. Big problem here on many levels:
You’re going to try to compete directly with the NFL during their season. You don’t have the marketing dollars to do this.
Friday night in the fall for 75% of the country revolves around high school football. It’s big. Probably too big, but it’s big. Have you not heard of this? You live in Texas for God’s sake. There is a book and TV show with the same name, “Friday Night Lights” about high school football on Friday nights. Get a clue Cuban.
Guys would rather hook on with an NFL team, even if it’s the practice squad with the hope of working their way into the lineup, then go play for the Memphis Federal Express or the Old El Paso Zesty Fiestas. You move this to the spring and you have a better chance.
The craziest part of this is Cuban wanting to create a league to compete with/rival the NFL. That just isn’t going to happen. Creating a minor league (and really that is what the UFL is) that doesn't try and go head to head with the NFL gives you a much stronger chance. Create a partnership with the NFL where you work together instead of against them is a clearer path.
But in the meantime Mark, continue the brainstorming with Ricky. Pass the Dutchie on the left hand side...
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I missed last night's mercy kill of the Mavericks last night in Denver, and will miss more NBA action this weekend due to going to site contributor Dirty Davey's wedding, but the wire feed has this juicy little moment.
