Jerry's Wheelhouse

What a Week + Tribe Playoffs

2010-12-03T11:34:00.003-05:00

The unbelievable Auburn-Alabama game, the unwatchably late Boise State game, Barcelona's astonishing dissection of Real Madrid, LeBron manning up in Cleveland, and culminating in the Tribe's return to the playoffs on Saturday, it's been brilliant.

For the Tribe fans out there, it appears as though the game is not being broadcast on "TV", however their may be a stream on the NCAA's website. Visit TribeAthletics.com for the link. It's a 1:30 kickoff. Georgia Southern is the opponent and it's not the greatest draw that a #2 seed could hope to have. They lost 4 games this year, all of which were within 8 points. One loss to Navy, 2 to 1-AA playoff teams and they beat App St. in OT. They're far from the 1st round pushover that seeded teams are accustomed to facing. As usual Georgia Southern runs the option and JMU ate us up on the ground three weeks ago. It's also a rematch of the 2nd best Tribe game I ever attended -- back in 97 we went into their packed house and knocked off #1 GSU led by the other Adrian Peterson 29-28. Awesome game. Fantastic atmosphere. And, the good folks of Statesboro were more than happy to provide refreshing beverages to a bunch of guys who may not have been eligible to receive them at the time. Great people.

This Tribe team is as good as anybody in the country and they are fully capable of winning the national championship. We've already beaten Delaware and Villanova, each of which are title-winning caliber. Every game up to a potential final will be in the friendly confines of Zable Stadium. We're also fully capable of losing this game -- we're 9 point favorites, but the experts at the SportsNetwork picked us to go down. On the plus side, we sort of had 2 weeks to prepare for their offense, as we had a by last week and GSU were heavy favorites in the play-in round.

It's not easy to get 1-AA injury info, but it sounds like Callahan will start at QB and Paulus might still be a week or two away. We might also see some wildcat with QB/WR DJ Mangas behind center.

Qatar Hosts the 2022 World Cup

2010-12-02T10:48:00.001-05:00

Qatar. Seriously.

4,400 square miles. 1.8 million people. 110 degree temperatures. And all the rest of the stuff.

Ridiculous.

How LSU is Different than William and Mary

2010-11-29T18:43:00.004-05:00

Part One of Potentially Infinite:

The LSU library 30 minutes prior to kickoff...

Going to LSU

2010-11-18T22:45:00.002-05:00

This is exciting. Ole Miss-LSU. Unfortunately those bastards at CBS picked up this game for some reason, so it's not going to be the full Death Valley night experience, but I'm very much looking forward to it nonetheless.

And if anybody has a recommendation for a New Orleans sports bar for the games on Sunday, I'd like to hear it.

Who Watches Late Night TV and Why?

2010-11-15T15:08:00.002-05:00

I listened to Sports Guy's podcast on the changes in the Late Night talk show lineup last week. Its combination of opinion and Hollywood inside baseball was interesting in a detached observational kind of way, but it had no meaning to me whatsoever. I've never watched Jay Leno or Jimmy Kimmel. I've seen maybe 2-3 total hours of Conan and Letterman combined in my life. And while I realize that my viewing habits are not indicative of the country at large, I'm not sure that I know anybody who watches these shows. With Leno, that's to be expected, but with Kimmel, Conan, and Letterman...if millions of people are watching these shows, there should be a reasonable amount of overlap with my demographic.

NBC paid Conan O'Brien $45 million to go away. Jay Leno makes between $20 and $30 million per year. Evidently this is huge business.

On the podcast the guest mentioned that the median age of Leno viewers is something like 55 years old. 55! And this show is on really late at night. Shouldn't people that old be asleep for hours before the opening monlogue?

The median age for Conan was something like 30 years old. Now I understand that "youths" like to stay up late, but shouldn't they be watching Cartoon Network or something on youtube rather than network talk shows?

What's the allure here? These things always struck me as remnants from the 60's, when a 5 minute interview with the Angelina Jolie of the day was the only glimpse the public could get into her life. Now it just seems like a junket to publicize movies/books/TV shows/legislation. If you want more Cameron Diaz, you can just go to her website or buy all her movies or find a story in one of those ridiculous magazines. It's hard to imagine hearing her pitch her new film and chuckle at a few jokes will fill your Cameron Diaz yearning hole. I don't get it.

Also of note, they kept referring to Conan as some "young" guy. He's 47.

Wild Swings

2010-11-11T16:29:00.001-05:00

Three weeks ago the Giants were 3 point underdogs at Dallas. This week Dallas is 14 point underdogs at the Giants.

Why Were the Nets So Bad Last Year?

2010-11-08T21:26:00.002-05:00

An update of some of the key cogs from the 12 win season:

Two weeks into the NBA season, the free agents from last season's disastrous 12-70 team are still having difficulty finding work. Josh Boone, fed up with tryouts and promises in the US, has joined the Zhejiang Whirlwinds of the Chinese Basketball Association, where he doesn't expect to stay for long.

Bobby Simmons was waived by the Spurs...so they could sign former teammate Chris Quinn. Rafer Alston is reportedly waiting for a job offer in Europe. Jarvis Hayes still can't find work and Sean Williams is back in the D-League. Trenton Hassell is spending time with his family in Clarksville, TN, hoping for one more call from an NBA team.

The guys in the blurb above and the presently under-employed Eduardo Najera combined to play 4998 minutes for the Nets last year, or 25.4% of all minutes played by the team. Add in Chairman Yi -- 31.8 MPG for the Nets -- currently averaging 7 and 2 in 20 MPG with the Wiz -- and currently in the league exclusively for marketing purposes -- and you've got 33.8% of available minutes going to guys who aren't NBA caliber players. That's a third of the playing time going to guys who not only shouldn't be playing, but guys who should/would consider themselves lucky to wear NBA warmups while watching games on the bench.

Les Miles - Super Genius, etc.

2010-11-07T22:29:00.003-05:00

Les Miles has taken a lot of crap over the years, deservedly so in many cases. He's often aggressive, sometimes disorganized, but just like McGarnigle, he gets results. And he deserves some credit. LSU has now won close games against Florida and Alabama and in the process Miles has outcoached arguably the two best coaches in college football. He pantsed Meyer with the fake FG in Gainesville (inexcusable for Urban not to give a safe call for that attempt) and Miles tilted the game in his favor with three key decisions on Saturday.

1) The fake punt. Fake punts are gutsy and awesome when they work. Enough said.

2) The 4th down reverse. This was great. With about 10 minutes left in the 4th quarter, down by 1 point, Miles declined the opportunity for a 43 yard FG and went for a 4th and 1. Almost every other coach would've kicked the FG. It's the safe and conventional call and it wouldn't have been a bad decision. Miles felt like he needed more points and he was probably right. The call itself was thoroughly inspired - an off-tackle run that morphed into a reverse to a guy lined up in a wingback position. It's the kind of play that only Navy or old-school Delaware would have in their playbook. I don't think I've ever seen it before and evidently the Alabama defense hadn't either. It went for 23 yards and set up a TD, giving the Tigers a 7 point lead (failed 2-pt conversion).

3) Throwing the ball to preserve a lead. This is the big one and it's where many coaches drop the ball. Alabama had just scored a TD, cutting the LSU lead to 3. After the kickoff, LSU had the ball on their own 23 with 3:23 left and Alabama had 2 or 3 timeouts (can't remember exactly). In this situation, most coaches play it "safe" and run the ball three times hoping to get a 1st down and to take time off the clock. Miles did exactly that on 1st and 2nd down, losing 3 yards and taking the clock down to 2:49. At this point, running the ball again accomplishes nothing. It won't pick up the first down. It does force Alabama to take a time out, but that doesn't matter because they'll have 2:30 left on the clock to get into FG range for a tie or score a TD for a win. Even though it's late in the game, time is not really a factor. Getting a 1st down is the only valuable thing that the offense can do at that point and it's exactly what Miles tried. Calling for a deep pass from "much-maligned" QB Jarrett Lee would be considered "bold", but it should also be considered "smart". It's much smarter than running Ridley into the line and handing the ball over to McElroy, Jones, and the Bama O with tons of time on the clock. To his credit, Lee stepped up and drilled the pass, but Miles is the one who gave him a chance and for that he deserves credit.

Other Stuff:

- Surprising: The Raiders are 4th in the NFL in points scored per game. The Titans are first.

- The Titans are 27th in the NFL in 1st downs per game.

- Based on yardage, San Diego is #1 in the league in offense and #2 in the league in defense. They're 4-5.

- Phillip Rivers is ridiculous. 327 yards per game, 8.9 yards per attempt. Today he was 17/25 for 295 and 4 TDs throwing to S. Ajirotutu, P. Crayton, K. Wilson, J. Hester, R. McMichael, R. Mathews, D. Sproles, and M. Tolbert.

- Poor Buffalo.

- I sure hope Dallas repeats this week's effort level next Sunday at "New Meadowlands Stadium"

- Who knew that a stadium could feel so empty and lame because it doesn't have a corporate sponsor?

- In every 1:00 game, coming back from a gamebreak, one of the announcers said "The Detroit Lions are really close to becoming a really good team in this league."

- Huge win for the Tribe. Down to our 4th-string QB, we didn't call a pass the entire 2nd half and still beat New Hampshire on the road 13-3. A top 2 seed is in sight with wins @JMU and vs. Richmond.

Various

2010-11-01T21:12:00.002-04:00

The most interesting player of the young NBA season -- Miami's Double Canadian Joel Anthony. His lines thus far:

Game 1: 24 minutes, 0-1, 1 point, 4 boards, 2 assists, 4 blocks
Game 2: 23 minutes, 0-0, 0 points, 4 boards
Game 3: 18 minutes, 0-0, 0 points, 3 boards, 1 block
Game 4: 17 minutes, 1-1, 2 points, 7 points, 1 assist, 1 block

That's 2 shots and 3 points in 82 minutes. Twice as many blocks as points.

I took a quick look back to see how close anybody has come to registering more blocks than points over an entire season and sure enough, the closest guy from last year was our very own Joel Anthony with 109 blocks and 218 points last year. The other guys closest to the neighborhood were JaVale McGee at 101/386 and D-League star Hasheem Thabeet with 89/243.

I'd imgaine that Anthony's shots per minute pace is an all-time record low, although proving that hypothesis would be a tremendous waste of time.

- It sure seems like Mike Shanahan opened up an unnecessary can of worms with the McNabb/Grossman kerfluffle. Unless he was trying to light a fire under McNabb or create a diversion for the result of the game, it's hard to see what he was thinking there. Did Grossman really give them "a better chance to win" the win the game at that point? He's coming in cold off the bench and he's still Rex Grossman. And even if he did give them a better chance to win, how much better? And is it enough to offset all the crap the team is going to have to answer this week. Washington is not a tough media town, but they can still sink their teeth into a QB contoversy. It's just weird...

- ...but not as weird as the Randy Moss saga. What can you say about that one? After all these years he may have finally out TO-ed TO. Evidently, if Bill Belichick can't get a guy to focus then Brad Childress doesn't have much of a chance. And how about that challenge by Childress on the crystal clear intereption in the first half? There may have been worse challenges in NFL history, but I can't remember one.

- In a non-snarky way, let's give it up for Brett Favre. The guy is 41, has some kind of a broken leg and still played pretty well. Even with all the extra-curricular "stuff" I'm going to miss Brett Favre when he's gone. He's got more than his share of on- and off-field baggage, but the guy was fun to watch for a long time and in a way his mistakes made him more interesting. With Favre, there's a pretty good chance "something" would happen every time he dropped back to pass. It sounds like he's going to come back from his chin injury, but he just doesn't look the same this year and it feels like he's going to go out with a bit of a whimper.

- Giants and Rangers playing for the the world championship. Like a really weird dream come true for this guy.

- Tribe Football is holding steady at #3 in most of the major polls after last week's close loss to UNC, although that doesn't mean much at this point. We still have tough games @UNH, @JMU and vs. Richmond to wrap up the regular season. Both QBs, RB Grimes, RB Riggins and TE Gottlieb were injured in Chapel Hill and it's possible that we'll be starting our 3rd QB at New Hampshire (coming off a bye). One win should get us in the playoffs, two will guarantee a bye and three will give us a top 4 seed.

- And finally, let's give it up for modern television -- we've been able to watch five of William and Mary's eight football games so far this season. That's incredible.

Still a Bold Prediction...

2010-10-29T12:41:00.003-04:00

...Even a day later....

Something called "Cartier Martin" will lead the Wizards in scoring on their opening night.

Real-Time Prediction

2010-10-27T19:40:00.001-04:00

A savvy Celtics team throws tonight's game in Cleveland to ignite a media firestorm around the Heat.

Some Observations

2010-10-24T22:22:00.002-04:00

- First, the TNT NBA debut featuring the Heat is on Tuesday, not Thursday as I indicated in my previous post. Thursday would've been better.

- There seems to be some sentiment that there aren't any dominant teams in the NFL and that might be true. One piece of evidence used to support that position is lack of undefeated teams. This is a little misleading. It should be noted that what seem to be the top 4 teams at present -- Jets, Pats, Ravens, Steelers -- had four games against each other in the first five weeks. Against all other competition, those teams are 16-1.

- Miami is 0-3 at home and 3-0 on the road. Each of the three home losses have been at the hands of one of the teams mentioned in the previous bullet.

- The Giants will be the last team in the league to play a divisional opponent when they take the field at Dallas on Monday night. This is the latest that a team has played its first divisional game in NFL history. (I just made that part up, but it might be true)

- What's up with the Chargers? They're probably not very good, but still, this feels like a good time to bet on them to win the division. Their pre-season O/U was something ridiculous like 11.5, so anybody who has the under might be able to cash out rather quickly.

- What's up with the Saints? This one is more confusing -- San Diego has been on a downward trend for a few years now. Their running game and defense have been steadily deteriorating and the only thing masking it was their awful division. New Orleans is a bit more difficult to figure out. Teams favored by 14 shouldn't lose games that are over in the 3rd quarter. Either Drew Brees has a secret injury or he's tanking the season because he's just such a nice guy that he wants another city to experience the joy that he brought to New Orleans.

- The league leaders in interceptions: Charles Godfrey (4) and William Moore, Dante Parker, Earl Thomas, Alphonso Smith, and Nate Allen (3). What team do any of those guys play for? And which of them is a guy that I just made up? The NFL...it's got a lot of players.

- For the record, those were the top 5 on the main ESPN stats page. There were a few more well known guys tied for 2nd -- Aqib Talib, Cedric Griffin, and Leon Hall.

- Poor Buffalo.

- Mike Singletary is building one of the more iron-clad cases for dismissal that we've seen in the past few years.

- The Lions are 1-5 with a +6 point differential.

New Post

2010-10-20T20:49:00.002-04:00

It's time for a new post and I've got nothing in mind.

- I'm still going to provide reviews for every new hour-long network TV drama. This is one promise that I'll be keeping.

- Baseball: More watchable than it's been in years. The reason -- great pitching. Not only is it a legitimate plot device, an enticing spectacle of skill, more importantly it makes the games go much, much faster. Fewer pitching changes, shorter innings -- it all adds up to holding the attention of the smart-casual fan. It's hard to remember a post-season that featured this many pitchers that can be unhittable with some regularity.

- Hockey: The season has started. And it will continue.

- NBA: It actually seems reasonable to make a hanging out and drinking night out of the the TNT's opening night, featuring the Heat and the Celtics. This is unheard of. Miami is going to be a show like we haven't seen before and the ratings are going to be incredible.

- Concussions: They're happening. And ESPN has been showing them on loop all week. It's a serious issue and deserves the attention it's receiving, but somehow the ESPN-ization of anything is able to create a backlash among blogospheric types.

- Speaking of backlashes and serious issues: It feels like the snarky revolt against breast cancer awareness has to be building somewhere. Really, shouldn't one week of pink uniform augmentations be sufficient?

- Crustiness: I've got a problem with the Conan blimp. The blimp over a sporting event should be a fixture. Evidently Goodyear couldn't cut the mustard with enough consistency so we've had to accept MetLife and DirecTV. That's enough. We can't be renting out blimps for short-term promotions. It's just not the way that things are done.

- Dick Stockton: Is far too senile to call NFL games. He'll make a baker's dozen factual errors a half.

- Anthony Kim: Allegedly withdrew from a tournament because of a night of heavy drinking in Vegas. Nice.

NFL: These Games Don't Mean That Much

2010-10-15T18:13:00.003-04:00

Seriously, they don't. I understand the need to extrapolate narratives from what we see. I really do, especially with the NFL, which is so massively popular and only has games once a week. But it's worth recognizing that the first half of the season just isn't that meaningful.

OK - so there are a few things we know: The Bills and Panthers are terrible. The Jets, Steelers, and Ravens are at least pretty good. It might be meaningful to be 0-5 if you're in a good division. But other than that...it's all up in the air.

This thought occurred to me I noticed that my excitement/disappointment meter was barely registering on Giants games. There are several reasons for this and I think one of them is that I internalized the results from recent years.

2007: Giants start 0-2, looking like the worst defense in the league. They need an excellent goal line stand to escape Washington with a win. They were up and down throughout the year, looking like a typical middle of the road team. Result: Super Bowl - greatest sporting moment of my adult life.

2008: Giants roar out of the gates, going 11-1, topping power polls and looking like world beaters. They sputter down the stretch after Plax's sweatpants incident, but still hold the #1 seed in the NFC East. They look lifeless in a home loss to Philly in their first playoff game. Result: Massive disappointment.

2009: Giants again roar out of the gates, going 5-0, by beating Dallas in a really good game their stadium opener and dismantling four inferior opponents. Again, they're topping power polls and looking like world beaters. By the end of the year, their defense, which looked extremely promising in the first 5 games, had transformed into a historically bad unit. They close out Giants Stadium in week 16 -- still in solid playoff contention -- with a 41-9 loss against a Carolina team that had nothing to play for. Result: Embarrassment.

And we don't have to go back nearly that far to demonstrate this point.

- Remember when the Texans were at the top of the power rankings? It was about 2 weeks ago. Now they might suck.

- Remember when the Giants were coming apart at the seams and Coughlin might be losing the locker room? Also 2 weeks ago. Now they might be as good as anybody in the jumbled NFC.

- Remember when the Bears were 4-1? They are. Right now. Does anybody think they're good? Throw the 3-1 Bucs and the 3-2 Jags in that mix as well.

- The 49ers are 0-5 right now. Their next 2 games are vs. Oakland and at Carolina. Would it be shocking if they won both? And if they do, would they be favorites to win that division? They might. People will be talking about, that's for sure.

Overreacting is part of the deal in sports -- fans, media, etc. It comes with the territory and a crusade to limit overreactions isn't exactly novel. What might be novel is a crusade to stop regular-reacting. And that's what I'm proposing. No drawing conclusions. No looking forward. Even viewing these games through a rational lens won't help in projecting what's going to happen. Injuries, momentum, scheme adjustments, fatigue, some would say parity (not me though) -- all this stuff causes the landscape to change quite a bit over the course of the year.

Now this is not to say that teams are definitely going to change course. The Steelers might end up going 14-2. The 49ers might really suck. Last year the Saints started out smoking hot and won it all, despite some hiccups at the end of the season. It's just to say that it's going to change -- and it's not going to take until Christmas for massive fundamental shifts to occur. It'll happen by Halloween.

And one prediction, just for the hell of it -- Hakeem Nicks is going to be a top 5 receiver in the league by next year.

Your Hastily Assembled 2010 Ryder Cup Preview

2010-09-30T10:07:00.017-04:00

The 2010 Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor begins at 4:30am tomorrow. Much like the ground everywhere on the eastern seaboard today, I’m moist.

Of the 24 players in this year’s Ryder Cup, 11 are first timers making this a difficult to predict competition. Recent history says that Europe should be the favorite, having won five of the last seven events. In addition, the U.S. has won the Cup on European soil only two times in the last 30 years (’93, ’81).
Here are this year's competitors:

THE AMERICANS
Captain
Corey Pavin – Had a reputation as a tough competitor in his hey day. Of late there was a minor controversy over his captain’s picks as Pavin is a big time God-squader and he selected three guys who are prominent members of the Tour’s weekly Bible study (Fowler, Cink and Johnson). The criticism probably isn’t fair as Cink and Johnson would have been more notable if they had not been selected.
Assistant captains: Paul Goydos, Tom Lehman, Jeff Sluman and Davis Love III (US Captain in 2012)

Team Member (I’ve listed these guys in order of how confident I am in their ability to score points this weekend.)
Jim Furyk – Rock solid in the Ryder (unless he’s playing Sergio, who he is 0-5-0 against. Thankfully Sergio is an assistant captain and not a participant this year.) and is currently at the top of his game.

Steve Stricker – The best putter in the world for the last several years, and it may surprise some to know that he’s the #4 ranked player in the world.

Hunter Mahan – Was a stalwart of the victorious 2008 US Team and has loads of talent. His play of late has not been his best.

Phil Mickelson – Arguably the most talented golfer of this generation or ever. His game is not well suited to match play.

Tiger Woods (Captain's Pick) – I expect big things from Tiger this weekend. And Rory McIlroy’s comments stating that everyone on Team Euro is relishing a chance to face Tiger because of the state of his game? Not. Smart. That said, Tiger’s Ryder Cup record is disappointing across the board.

Stewart Cink (Captain's Pick) – Solid, experienced, great long iron player, and one of the most interesting guys to follow on Twitter.

Rickie Fowler (Captain's Pick) – Fowler is 21 years old, but by all accounts is very mature. He’s the most controversial of Pavin’s picks. I would have gone with Anthony Kim here, but I don’t hate the Fowler pick.

Zach Johnson (Captain's Pick) – After playing horrifically following his Masters victory, Johnson was arguably the hottest American on the PGA Tour for the last four months. When he struggles, its his putter that lets him down.

Matt Kuchar – Your 2010 PGA Tour money list leader. I really want to like Kuchar. His name is fun to say, he won the US Amateur, which is mainly match play, and he’s been playing great. But there’s something that never feels quite right...like he’s dying to fall apart.

Bubba Watson – Now starts the list of guys who I worry about. Bubba Watson is flaky. Aggressively flaky. He’s had no less than two incidents where he wrote down the wrong score for a playing partner and almost had them disqualified from a tour event. He’s southern…he’s folksy…and hopefully he’s got a little bit of what J.B. Holmes and Boo Weekly brought to the table in ’08.

Dustin Johnson – Considering all he’s been thru at the US Open and the PGA this year, God only knows the state of Dustin Johnson’s nerves these days. He hits the ball a mile, makes tons of birdies, and his penchant for blow up holes won’t hurt as much in match play. That said, I expect little from him.

Jeff Overton – Who? Has never been in my kitchen.

THE EUROS
Captain
Colin Montgomerie – Mrs. Doubtfire could never win the big one. Let’s keep it that way.
Assistant Captains: Sergio Garcia, Tomas Bjorn, Darren Clarke, Paul McGinley

Team Member (Listed in the order they appear on the website)
Luke Donald – Controversial captain’s pick (selected over Paul Casey, who is ranked #9 in the world), but his Ryder record has been awesome.

Ross Fisher – You may remember him as the guy who had a huge lead at the Open Championship and crapped all over himself. I’m hoping that turns out to be what my 8th grade English teacher would call a “harbinger.”

Peter Hanson – Finished touring with Isaac, Taylor and Zac and is fully focused on golf now.

Padraig Harrington – Was the hottest golfer in the world a couple years ago. Now he’s a captain’s pick. He’s been playing like garbage and he still sounds like a leprechaun. He's got a loose swing and when he is "off" he can be unbelievalby bad.

Miguel Angel Jimenez – “The Mechanic.” In a tight competition with Rory to see who can look more like Sideshow Bob. He’s getting a little long in the tooth, but he can still get it done at times.

Martin Kaymer – 7 PGA tour wins, including this year’s Players and PGA. He’s very, very good and has no real flaws in his game. Several years back on a flight to Wales, Braniff inadvertently put his sense of humor on a flight to Stuttgart and it hasn’t been seen since.

Graeme McDowell – Another major winner from this year. His dick-target goatee can be distracting.

Rory McIlroy – He’s crazy good and generally seems like a cool kid. The Tiger comments were out of character and ill-advised.

Edoardo & Francesco Molinari – Rode to Wales on a single vespa powered only by their mutual sense of self-satisfaction.

Ian Poulter – Easiest guy to hate on the Euro Team. His outfits generally look like someone spilled a big glass of gay on the Preppy Handbook. He has absolutely killed the US in the Ryder. He’s probably one of the 10 best players in the world.

Lee Westwood – #3 in the world rankings, phenomenal Ryder Cupper, is still looking for Chester Copperpot’s treasure.

Prediction: I like the U.S. to hold on to the Cup in a tight one. Everyone has focused on all the young guys on the U.S. squad, but the Euro’s actually have six Ryder rookies to the U.S.’s five. The one wild card is the weather. Generally, bad weather is a big advantage for the Euro’s simply because they are more experienced playing in it. I’m excited to see Tiger’s approach to this weekend-—this is a huge opportunity for him to redeem himself in the eyes of many. Anyone on team Euro who says they aren’t intimidated by Eldrick anymore? I ain’t buying it.

Seperating the Chaffe from the Chaffe

2010-09-28T21:03:00.002-04:00

I've worked my way about halfway through the list of premieres and haven't seen anything outstanding or anything else nearly as horrendous as Outlaw.

Running Wilde

If you like Gob Bluth, you might like Running Wilde. If you liked Gob Bluth’s “B” material, you will love Running Wilde. Short story, Gob lives in a castle and does nothing all day. He has a middle-eastern neighbor living under the same conditions and the two of them together are actually pretty funny. For the past 20 years, Gob has pined for a hyper-do-gooder (Kerri Russell), who he hasn’t seen since high school. It’s the thoroughly beaten through the ground premise of the self-centered guy trying to prove that he’s “good” and “caring” and “humble” to win the affections of a chick that doesn’t seem to have that much going for her other than being kind of hot.

Gob has his classic Gob mannerisms and delivery and he has a few funny lines, “No, you inspire me. Raising a child in the rain forest. I mean, that’s where they make all the nannies, but…”

Aside from the Gob character, the pilot leveraged liberally from Arrested Development. It has a narrator (Russell’s daughter, "Puddle") who gives us the following: “On the night of the party, Steve (Gob) was worried he made a huge mistake.” We also have a cameo from Tobias Funke, playing Russell’s eco-terrorist boyfriend while speaking exactly like Tobias Funke…again, minus the “A” material.

The pilot delivered a few sniffles of laughter and two or three genuine chuckles, which is probably better than 90% of all sitcoms, but I don’t think it’s a keeper. There was one excellent back and forth between Gob and his neighbor, played by the guy who does Brian Butterfield (some weird internet thing that Greg showed me last night (ngs)). The biggest problem the show is going to have is that Keri Russell simply isn’t funny and she gets a lot of camera time.

Verdict: Amusing, but not of the standard that I require in comedies.

Blue Bloods

Blue Bloods is a cop show starring Tom Selleck and Donnie Wahlberg. The end.

The Rest

I’ve watched three programs that fall squarely in the adequate zone and I've decided to give each of them a 2nd chance for various reasons.

Detroit 1-8-7 started off on very shaky ground, picked up some momentum in the second half of the pilot, and finished with a bang by killing off what appeared to be one of the main characters. Bold moves like that get 2^nd chances.

Undercovers appears to be a homeless man’s version of Alias, but it did feature some interesting settings and a few slick action sequences. On its merits, the pilot probably didn’t merit any additional commitment on my part – it’s riding on JJ Abrams’s name and high production value.

The Event is Derrick Favors. Or possibly Tedd Ginn, Jr. They’re going for something big. It’s very likely to be a disaster, but when a show like this works the payoff is huge. It’s the style of programming that I want the networks to produce, so we’ll give it a second day in court.

We'll address these programs in more detail after 2nd viewings.

Still to come:

Lone Star (we're giving it two episodes)

And a whole bunch of crap....

Chase

The Defenders

The Whole Truth

No Ordinary Family

The Wisdom of Crowds and Las Vegas Lines

2010-09-28T00:07:00.003-04:00

My football pool has 107 people who have made picks every week, which is a decent sample. It's safe to assume that while few of these folks are professional gamblers, most of them are football fans of one kind or another. I was curious to see how successful we are as a group at picking games, so I took the average correct picks for each week. There are no ties and 16 games per week so far.

Week 1: 8.1

Week 2: 7.2

Week 3: 7.7

Total: 23.0 out of 48

As a group we've made a total of 5,136 picks at 47.9% accuracy. It will be interesting to see how closely we track to 50% as the year proceeds. Based on this rather limited set of data, it seems that the people who make the lines know what they're doing.

Outlaw: The Worst Show I Have Ever Seen

2010-09-22T21:38:00.004-04:00

This is not an exaggeration. It's possible that as a child I may have sat through a show as bad as Outlaw, but I feel thoroughly confident in saying that I have never seen anything worse since at least the early 90's.

We're introduced to Smits in the 2nd scene. He's the focal point of a raucous blackjack table in the main area of casino. He's happens to be a sitting Supreme Court Justice. Sure. He's also reliably conservative and therefore very evil. There's a big death penalty case coming up to the court shortly, so his attractive clerk informs security that he's counting cards. The Supreme Court Justice is promptly dragged away by security. Smits chews out his clerk, "That was a six deck shoe I was beating! Nobody beats a six deck shoe!" There's also this at the casino entrance:

Evidently both Smits's penchant for gambling and his whereabouts are matters of public record, as a group of protesters has assembled outside the casino to berate him for what they assume will be his decision to vote in favor of the death penalty. One particularly saucy protester bursts out of the crowd to initiate the following conversation.

“You’re gonna let Beadle die aren’t you?”

“Let me guess, ACLU”

“Yeah, card-carrying member”

“You know before you go BURN A FLAG in protest, a jury unanimously convicted him of killing a cop”

(30 seconds of arguing)

“How about picking up a copy of the Constitution!”

Then he screws her. Intercourse style. And while she's sleeping he watches a documentary about his recently deceased father, a liberal human rights activist. The narrator of the show, in the most venomous tone possible informs the audience that Smits is "arguably the most conservative justice on the Supreme Court." Smits is on the verge of tears.

At some point Smits hops into a car in a scene that looks like a some kind of shady drug deal. But it's actually much, much worse. It's a man even more evil than Smits himself, a Republican Senator, who demands in no uncertain terms that Smits "had better vote with us this time, or else." He follows it up with "We put you there. We can take you out." and wraps it up by suggesting that Smits hire a bodyguard. I don't know much about the inner workings of the Supreme Court, but....
Back at the court, Smits announces that he's voting against sending the convict to the chair and that he's stepping down from his position. He promptly works his way into a law firm and decides to start working on an appeal for the very case that he just ruled on. Seriously, this is all happening. His top two clerks go with him -- from the Supreme Court to the new office in his kitchen -- they also bring in an obnoxiously slutty PI who says things like "you want to get in my pants, don't you" as an introduction and "I just like your meat" in response to being offered some food at a BBQ. Her most impressive accomplishment probably came as part of a convoluted side investigation where the team needed to determine the temperature of the crack house where the victim's body was found. She walked into an important looking government building after telling her companion "I'll just show them my boobs. They're nice boobs" and somehow she found out that it never got about 70 degrees in the basement of this building...10 years ago....

Then there was this from the opening statement during the appeal trial:

Smits: ….and we will introduce new evidence that proves…

Judge: Excuse me. There is no case that allows you to introduce new evidence on an appeal

Smits: There is one case your honor. This case. Beales. In Beales, the Supreme Court held that federal law does not prohibit the introduction of new evidence on appeals when that evidence can prove the defendant’s innocence.

This is the opinion that Smits himself wrote. Unfortunately, the ploy didn't work, but the team was given enough time to find another back door to introduce new evidence. In a stroke of good fortune, it was an opinion written by the very judge that was hearing this case.

The episode concludes with Smits tracking down the crime technician who worked the scene although she never testified at the trial for some reason. Bear in mind this is something like 10 years after the guy was convicted. She takes the stand at the appeal and informs the court that the victim’s husband’s glasses were at the crime scene and that he threatened her. So she took the glasses and moved into a church in Massachusetts. Smits produces the glasses from an official looking plastic bag. He claims the victim’s blood is on them. They’re customized with a hearing aid...just like the hearing aid on the glasses that the husband wears now.

Some chaotic bickering between Smits and the prosecutor ensues. He wraps up the trial with something along the lines of “we need rules…but when the rules put an innocent man behind bars, there’s something wrong. There’s something wrong with us if we let them.” He goes on for a few more lines and the next thing we know the defendant is a free man outside the court hugging his wife and kids. No blood test. Nothing from the judge.

I feel like I'm almost shortchanging this because there's so much bad stuff that I've neglected to mention. Almost every scene -- every line -- is downright horrible. Bad dialogue, bad acting, characters that make no sense at all, dozens of inconceivable plot strands jammed into 43 minutes. I mean...Scooby-Doo had tighter plots that were more realistic. It's simply inconceivable to me that a show like this can make it all the way through the production process on to a major network in prime time. People worked hard this thing. Lots of money was poured into it. And even though I'm wildly out of touch with the viewing tastes of the general public, it's very, very difficult to believe that a single person would consider Outlaw a good program.

I'd suggest that all of you take the time to watch it, just as a reminder of how bad something can be.

And just to top it off -- As Smits's team is walking down the steps of courtroom after the appeal, his partner asks, "how does it feel to be an outlaw?"

Hawaii Five-O

2010-09-21T23:59:00.002-04:00

In the pilot episode, the writers of Hawaii Five-O made the bold decision to tackle the thorny, yet topical, issue of terrorism....Irish Terrorism. The show begins with the Main Guy (not Jin or Tweeder) as a member of some elite military unit that devoted massive amounts of resources toward tracking a terrorist to South Korea. Irish Terrorist. They captured said Irish Terrorist...but with a twist. This Irish Terrorist Unit was still violent and well-funded enough to execute a plan in which they simultaneously hunted down Main Guy's father and were holding him hostage. They called Main Guy on his cell phone (in the Korean jungle) to inform him they had invaded dad's house and proposed the classic terrorist deal - your dad for our terrorist. Irish Terrorist.

Of course Main Guy, being the stubborn sort, refused the terms. However the terrorists had an ace up their sleeves. Irish Terrorists. Apparently they were well-funded and militant enough use a computer to trace Main Guy's cell phone to his exact location in Korea and they were able to view the transport convoy in real time with the aid of what would appear to be a satellite dedicated for the use of this terrorist cell. Irish Terrorist. And you'd better believe that these terrorists didn't stop at tracking. They also managed to place a heavily armed chopper in the air less than a mile away from the vehicle carrying Main Guy and Head Terrorist. Irish Terrorist. A battle ensues. Blood is shed on both sides of the Pacific. And the stage is set. By Irish Terrorists.

Aside from the absolute absurdity of the Irishness of our terrorists, Hawaii Five-O appears to be a watchable program.

Pro: Cops above the law. President Logan's wife has recovered from her pill addiction and been elected Governor of Hawaii. Aaron Pierce did not appear in this episode and it's unknown whether he's currently acting as her husband or her chief of security. Martha has appointed Main Guy to "rid her island of these people," and has evidently granted him unlimited authority and funding to accomplish this task. This arrangement allows Main Guy to operate as he sees fit, so he can arrest suspects without probable cause and beat them while in custody as his prime information extraction protocol. So we're filling a bit of the Jack Bauer gap. And we're able to bypass TV time-wasters like search warrants, crotchety police chiefs, and evidence collection. So this is nice and it lets the show flow a bit more freely than the typical police drama.

Con: Main Guy is no Jack Bauer. Far from it. He's just "a guy" and he just might be a terrible actor. The character hits the check boxes - advanced military training, complete disregard for running head-on into a cloud of bullets, laser-beam focus on mission objectives, uncanny ability to string together clues, etc. But he very much lacks "it". He's an empty vessel and I fear that he's going to prevent the show from reaching its potential.

Pro: Hawaii. It's easy on the eyes and it's a setting that's exotic and interesting. The intro from each commercial break features landscapes, beaches, and it's all very nice to look at. This matters, at least a little bit.

Con: Episodic. I know this is the way of the world and it's probably more profitable for the network, but in my opinion a show instantly disqualifies itself from becoming elite by wrapping its plots in one episode.

Pro: Scott Caan. The guy has good delivery.

Con: Jin and Grace Park. The jury is still out on the two celestial members of the task force, but they didn't bring much to the table in the pilot. Jin is the nice guy who was pushed out of the police force, landed on his knees a job at a souvenir shop (or something like that), and accepted an offer to join Main Guy's team without putting too much thought into it. Apparently they were star quarterbacks at the same high school. Sure, why not? So far he's basically your average reliable dull guy who's along for the ride.

We're supposed infer that Grace Park is playing the standard sassy broad role because she punched a surfer who stole her wave. Again, not much charisma on display in the pilot and it's not clear exactly what she's selling other than looking nice in a bikini. At this point, Tweeder is LeBron in the '09 playoffs and I'm not sure he's got what it takes to put this whole team on his back for an entire season.

Potential For Growth: Medium-Low. There's room for the characters to become a bit more interesting, although that's far from guaranteed. There's also space for recurring guests to add some spice.

Verdict: Mildly entertaining. Visually pleasing. Regular cop show with a nice setting that might push it over the watchable line.

Plan: Worth giving it at least a few more episodes. Far from appointment television though.

The TV Schedule

2010-09-20T19:36:00.002-04:00

I haven't watched an episode and I'm already regretting this decision.

Monday:

9 PM

The Event (NBC): After the cancellation of FlashForward, NBC tries their hand at a Lost derivative. Note, I won't be recording this episode until it's replayed on Saturday night because of MNF and....

Lone Star (Fox): Possibly the only show I'd choose to watch if I hadn't planned this stunt. A suave Texas con man with a heart of bronze lives a double life and has two really good looking wives...possibly two knives as well.

10 PM

Chase (NBC): An utterly generic crime drama where the only person capable of catching wily criminals is a very attractive woman. Again, this one will be replayed on Saturday night.

Hawaii Five-O (CBS): Hearing good things about the Tweeder-Jin combo. This one has potential to be a "not a bad way to kill 43 minutes" type.

Tuesday

9:30

Running Wilde (Fox): "A playboy tries to woo a humanitarian." Sure to disappoint, but it's got Will Arnett, so I'll give it a day in court.

10:00

Detroit 1-8-7 (ABC): Has the appearance of an thoroughly forgettable police drama. Could be saved if Christopher actually played Christopher.

Also, 3 hours of various flavors of NCIS on CBS. Yikes.

Wednesday

8:00 Undercovers (NBC): It's JJ Abrams, so it deserves a chance. Looks like the standard spy show with ongoing sexual tension between the main characters. Undercovers. Eh? Get it?

10:00 The Whole Truth (ABC) and The Defenders (CBS): Sweet fancy Moses. Dueling courtroom dramas...Jim Belushi....oh boy

Also, a 2 hour SVU. Yikes.

Thursday

Thankfully no new shows qualify under my criteria because there are some real dregs on the docket. 30 Rock returns, which is nice. So does the mildly watchable Fringe.

Friday

10:00 Blue Bloods (CBS): How did a show with Tom Selleck, Donnie Wahlberg and Bridget Moynahan get stuck in this timeslot?

Also, the 2nd episode of Outlaw...doesn't bode well for Jimmy

And...ABC is showing the 1986 movie "Peggy Sue Got Married". What the hell is going on here?

20 Minutes of Writing

2010-09-17T15:26:00.003-04:00

It's football season, so I figure I should get something up.

- Florida-Tennessee: Always great. Always the beginning of the real college football season in my opinion. CBS college football music. Based on the 2nd half of the Oregon-Tennessee game last week, this should be an opportunity for the Gators offense to get into gear.

- Congrats to USA basketball. Durant gets all the credit, but there were lots of contributors. Andre Iguodala was fantastic as the defensive/rebounding/glue guy -- pretty much the Kobe Bryant role from the '08 Olympics, minus the part about taking over offensively in the 2nd half of the gold medal game. Lamar Odom was huge - for a mercurial guy, he really worked his ass off on the boards and the defense end. Russell Westbrook was dynamite off the bench. Eric Gordon hit some big 3's. Guys like Derrick Rose and Rudy Gay played within their means and didn't object to taking a back seat to when necessary. After some the disasters in the early 2000's, it's great to see these guys working hard and playing completely unselfish basketball.

- "World", that was your chance. The players didn't like to hear it, but that was a B team. We played one close game in the entire tournament and that should be the worst team that we bring to an international competition for a long time. Possibly even more importantly, the FIBA 3-point line is moving back a few feet. That's going to be a big problem for the "world". The easy 3 was 2 things, 1) The great equalizer. Just like in the NCAA tournament, the short 3 gives less talented teams a chance. 2) Familiarity. The international guys play with the short 3 all the time. They're used to it. We weren't. I think this affected us more on the defensive end, where our guys weren't programmed to instantly assess the risk of giving somebody an open 21 foot jumper. Plus, now all their guys are going to have to learn to shoot it from really deep.

A couple of observations from watching NFL Shortcuts:

- Don't overreact to the 49ers-Seahawks game. I watched this one on Shortcuts and it was a classic misleading score game. San Fran had the ball inside the Seattle 10 three times and came up with 6 points. Seattle didn't move the ball at all in the 1st half and needed a PI call to extend their 1st scoring drive. Somehow they ended up with 14 1st half points on 82 yards. First play of the 2nd half was a pick 6 off a tipped ball and it was 21-6 and the game was out of control.

- Sam Bradford looked pretty good. His stat line will show 3 INTs, but one of the was on a hail mary at the end of the game and one was on a desperation 4th down play on what seemed to be the Rams last drive. Derek Anderson...not so much. Fifteen targets for Larry Fitzgerald. Three reception. His model professionalism is going to be seriously tested this year.

I really like Dallas (-7) at home against Chicago, Green Bay (-13) home against Buffalo, and San Diego (-7) home against Jacksonville. I'm sure I'll get at least one of those right.

Fall Project #1: Find New TV Shows

2010-09-15T19:29:00.004-04:00

With the dual objectives of bettering myself and adding some leisure to my already leisurely life, I will be embarking on the following initiative: Watch every 1-hour network series premiere this fall. Yup, all of them. Sure, I could use a standard screening process to filter out the unwanted nonsense, but that's not the kind of guy I am this week. And for your benefit, I will be reporting the results of this experiment, right here, in this very blog.

Premiere Season begins in earnest next week, but Jimmy Smits gets us started tonight, in Outlaw, 10 PM on NBC. According to the guide,

"Supreme Court Justice Cyrus Garza decides to step down and go into private practice; aided by his legal team, Garza tries to save a client condemned to death."

This sounds terrible. Who steps down from the Supreme Court at Jimmy Smits's age? According to IMDB, they've already got 5 episodes in the can. If the show is as bad as the poster, it wouldn't be shocking if episodes 4 and 5 never see the light of day.

After this trash, we'll have as many as 10 new shows on debut next week.

This Is Not A Catch

2010-09-13T10:19:00.002-04:00

This Calvin Johnson ruling is one of the most outrageous calls I've witnessed in the NFL. It may be the case that the officials interpreted the rule correctly -- If that's the case than this rule is an absolute sham.

1) Johnson catches the ball and has one foot down in the end zone. I've seen TDs given right here. It happened in a Giants game - a defender knocked the ball out of the receivers hands at this point and it was called a TD.

2) Two feet down. Control of the ball. Catch. Touchdown.
3) Prior to rolling over, his knee went down. His ass is down. He still has control of the ball.

4) Second knee down. Control of the ball. 5) He's practically out of the end zone at this point, as he releases the ball from his possession.
How in the world is that not a reception? It's so clearly a catch that under a reasonable set of rules, no coach would even consider challenging the play. During the game, the announcers were talking about the "process of the catch." This new piece of terminology doesn't make much sense to me, but even granting that the catch has a "process", this process involved Johnson catching the ball, getting two feet on the ground, falling down, and rolling over. Look at how far he moved during over the course of those pictures. He controlled the ball while covering almost 5 yards of ground. Two feet, two knees, ass. All down on the ground with control of the ball. This is absolutely mind-boggling.

Your Extremely Official 2010 Redskins Preview

2010-09-09T16:44:00.002-04:00

The cyclical nature of the Redskins offseason pursuits is more predictable than the monthly fluctuations in the need for feminine napkins at a sorority house. The Zorn years so closely resembled the Spurrier years it was comical—the irrational early excitement, the bumbling, the embarrassing loses, the incompetence, the remarkably inept press conferences, culminating with a pathetic dead man walking coach at the end of year two. Similarly, the Shanahan and Gibbs years seem to mirror each other, both peppered with talk of “what a pro” this guy is and talk of how “everything is going to be different around here” and the downright certainty of Super Bowls upon Super Bowls to come.

Paraphrasing a once great statesman…”Fool me once, shame on you. Fool … fool … you aren’t going to fool me again…” Sure, Mike Shanahan is an upgrade over Jim Zorn, but a look at his record as a head coach without John Elway is…sobering. More important to the future of the team is the departure of Vincenzo Cerrato, who is now busying himself selling stereo speakers out of the back of a white unmarked van on the side of the highway. Bruce Allen seems like a swell guy, but his addition is not nearly as important as the subtraction of Cerrato—and, according to several reports Allen’s role in the personnel side of the house is limited at best, i.e. if Shanahan wants to sign someone Allen’s secretary helps Mike find their agents phone number. Those disparaging remarks about Shananhan and Allen notwithstanding, I’ve continued to waver between optimistic and resigned to this team sucking for all eternity during this offseason. Pretty standard actually…

That said, let’s see where this team has gotten better…and worse…

Improvements
Quarterback: Donovan McNabb is a significant upgrade over Jason Campbell, and getting significantly better at the most important position on the field is always a good thing, or so I’m told. Over the last five seasons, McNabb has missed 17 games due to injury—not an overwhelming number, but enough to make you wonder how many he’ll miss this year as a 33 year old.

Offensive line: The Skins patchwork offensive line was one of the league’s worst last year especially following season ending injuries to Chris Samuels and Randy Thomas. This year they will start 4th overall pick Trent Williams at LT, Derrick Dockery at LG, Casey Rabach at C, former Viking Artis Hicks at RG and former Saints Pro Bowler Jamaal Brown at RT. On paper, that’s a major upgrade. The question marks are Brown’s health (the reason the Saints parted with him so easily) and Williams’ inexperience, as he looked shay at times in the preseason. Still, the o-line should be better.

Defensive line: What’s going on with Haynesworth is its own issue, but purely from a talent perspective the Redskins d-line is improved--the additions of Carricker and Keomatu being of particular importance.

Problems/Issues/How They’ll Fuck This Up:
Conversion to a 3-4 Defensive Scheme: I never played football, but from what I can gather the conversion from a 4-3 to a 3-4 involves a major overhaul of your defense both schematically and with regard to personnel. In addition to the expected growing pains from the switch, the Redskins also seem to have created personnel problems where they didn’t have them or need them. Andre Carter was run out of San Fran 5 years ago because he couldn’t play OLB in a 3-4…and now that he’s older and slower…this seems something other than a stroke of genius. Likewise, moving London Fletcher from the Mike LB in a 4-3 to an ILB seems to marginalize his value. On the DL front, they should be okay, regardless of what happens with Haynesworth.

The Secondary:
It’s shitty. DeAngelo Hall gets a lot of picks and also gives up a lot of big plays. Carlos Rogers can probably be classified as a bust. And the Redskins safeties are just not very good. This sounds bad.

Wide Receivers: Santana Moss (31 yrs old), Joey Galloway (38 yrs old), Devin Thomas, Anthony Armstrong, Brandon Banks, Roydell Williams. That’s really the list.

My prediction:
The Redskins went 4-12 last year. I think this version of the Skins is more talented and will be better coached than that team. So, I think they’ll win 7 games instead of 4. 7-9 for Shanahan year one. Looking at their division, you would have to say they have the least talented roster…though I could see the Eagles being sneaky bad this year. If the Skins are better than 7-9, it will be because the offensive line ends up being very good and the 3-4 pans out…and if those all happen maybe they could win 9 or 10 games…but I’m just not seeing it. The one interesting thing is the amount of turnover on this roster—23 new players on the 53 man roster, and of the 22 starters on offense and defense, 8 will be new this year.

Vapid Week One Preview

2010-09-08T21:51:00.001-04:00

In awards format…

Most Vindictive Scheduling: The opening night extravaganza. Sending Minnesota back to the site of one of the more painful losses in recent memory is just cruel.

Greatest Crowd Reversal Potential In NFL History: Jaguars take a 17 point lead into halftime, beating up Kyle Orton in the process. The crowd is mildly enthused. Orton pounds a few Jaegers in the locker room. After the opening kickoff, one Timothy Eugene Tebow strides into the huddle, clapping his hands, headbutting his offensive linemen. Tebow leads the Broncos down the field, bowling over an LB as he crosses the goal line. The Gators fans in the crowd tear off their Jags gear. A deafening Tebow chant goes up in UltraCom Field. Note: this matchup would've won "most pointless game" without the unlikely Tebow sub-plot. These teams are both mediocre in ways that aren't remotely interesting.

Worst Opening Day Game of All-Time: There may have been matchups worse than Cleveland at Tampa Bay, but when you throw in the horrible uniform color clash, I don't know how you can sink much lower than this one.

Easiest Bet: Miami (-3.5) at Buffalo. The Bills are seriously horrible.

Best Game (to watch): Colts at Texans. There are bigger games, but this one projects to be the most entertaining.

Three Yards and a Cloud of Mud: Atlanta at Pittsburgh. A lock to hit the over on boringness, it will be a medium-stakes showdown of mistake avoidance.

Worst Haircuts: Mats Stafford at Jay Cutler.

Best Week One Idea: Spinning off the NFC West. Arizona at St. Louis and San Fran at Seattle. Nobody wants these teams polluting our league. We all know that one of them will get a free pass to the post-season, but let's just continue to keep them self-contained in a little round robin for the duration of the regular season. You guys have fun with your little "division," tell us when you're done and we'll send you one playoff ticket around Christmas time.

Most Brash Dancing, Cocky Head Nodding, and Overall Arrogant Celebration: Ravens at Jets. If Vince Lombardi could see this one… Could we work TO and Ocho in here somehow? They could just hop on the train in Boston Sunday afternoon.

The Only Good Game in the Late Window: Green Bay at Philly. They've only got the NFC West pile of poop for competition. That's a bit of a bummer.

Something Seems A Little Off

2010-09-07T18:06:00.003-04:00

I'm not really one for railing on the NCAA - sure they've got problems, but they also have quite a few challenges and a scope of responsibilities that is far more broad and diverse than they get credit for.

On the other hand, if the rumors are true....

Heisman Confiscated:

Heisman Retained:

Can You Believe It’s Already September?

2010-09-02T11:08:00.002-04:00

Nope, me neither. Really, I can't.

As many of you know, today's date is September 2, 2010, or 9/02/10. Sports Guy and Matthew Berry are releasing a big 90210 podcast today, which should make for some interesting listening. If I were a full-time blogger, I would've compared all of this weekend's college football games to a character or event on 90210. Alas, I am not, and am thus unable to justify such an increase in effort for the marginal improvement that such a gimmick would've provided.

Thursday

Presbyterian at Wake Forest, 6:30, no TV: Presbyterian's mascot is the Blue Hose. That is all.

Minnesota at Middle Tennessee, 7:30, ESPNU: Notable for two reasons. 1) Who is scheduling Minnesota's games? Road trip to Middle Tennessee? Aren't you in the Big 10(-ish)? 2) The line moved from MTSU (-4.5) to Minnesota (-2.5). That is some serious action.

Southern Miss (+14) at South Carolina, 7:30, ESPN: Is it just me, or does every Thursday ESPN opening game involve some combination of (xx) Carolina (xx) and (xx) Mississippi (xx)? I swear this is one of the underreported traditions of modern college football

Pittsburgh (+3) at Utah, 8:30, Versus: Caution – real football alert. This is a legitimately interesting game between two teams that have BCS aspirations. We can all hope that it will be more competitive than their actual BCS game. And after a several year lag, Versus is finally coming through for me. Biggest game of the day.

Saturday

Miami at Florida, Noon, ESPN: Awesome. Hold on….Miami (OH) at Florida. Gators favored by 33.

A set of afternoon rivalry games that are mildly or barely watchable depending on one's appetite: Illinois (+12.5) vs. Missouri: 12:30, FSN || Colorado (-12) vs. Colorado State, 1:00, Mtn || Kentucky at Louisville, 3:30, ABC/ESPN

William and Mary (-8) at UMass: 3:30, Some kind of Comcast Channel: Brief Tribe Preview coming at some point.

UConn (+3) at Michigan, 3:30, ESPN/ABC: Ehh…

Purdue (+11) at Notre Dame, 3:30, NBC: Perhaps Brian Kelly can arise the echoes from their prolonged slumber.

Richmond (+7) at Virginia, 6:00, ESPN3,
possibly some kind of Comcast Channel: Mike London debuts against his old team. UVA attempts to remain a top 3 program in the Commonwealth.

Washington (+3) at BYU, 7:00, CBSC: The first game after the declaration of Mormon Independence featuring Jake Locker. Solid TV #2/3 game that will slip through most cracks.

LSU (-5) vs. UNC, 7:00: ESPN, Real football alert #2. According to CFN, UNC has the top 2 NFL draft prospects. LSU appears to be somewhat down this year (again), so if the ACC wants to be taken seriously in the national championship conversation, this is one that they have to win. The line opened at even and has gone up to 5, probably because of the agent-driven shenanigoats involving some of UNC's top players.

Late Night: Cincinnati (+1) at Fresno State (10 PM ESPN) and Wisconsin (-18) at UNLV (11 PM Versus). Versus is going to dominate the post-1 AM window.

Sunday

SMU (+13) at Texas Tech, 3:30, ESPN: Should've been a Jones/Leach shootout if young master James hadn't been trapped in the closet. At least we'll get to see what Tubs has planned for that offense.

Monday

Navy (-7) vs. Maryland: 4:00, ESPN: Watchable local derby that should be played every year.

Boise State (-2.5) vs. Virginia Tech, 8:00, ABC: I a surprising turn of events, the two Maryland NFL stadiums host the only two college football games of the day.

This one is the first of the 10 games that will be dubbed "the game of the year" by pundits. And you can see their point because Boise State is the team that's most likely to become a compelling story this year. Looking around the college landscape, we see the usual customers pegged to compete for the NC, but none of them are all that interesting. Last year we had the inevitable Florida-Alabama showdown, the Big 3 QBs (until Bradford got hurt), etc. It was set up for big storylines. This year we've got the same teams without the mega-stars and USC isn't bowl eligible. It's a not so bold prediction that for Boise State, this is a play-in for the national championship game. This is by far their toughest game and they seem to have the media machine firmly behind them if they win. The support for "the little guy" has been building for years and this year's version of Boise State will reap the benefits if they perform on the field.

The Tale of Rhett Bomar

2010-08-30T23:11:00.001-04:00

Seeing as Rhett Bomar was the only healthy QB in Giants camp for a week or so, I had the opportunity to ponder the short, but interesting career of this guy with a short, but interesting name. Many of you are probably familiar with his story, but here are the facts of the case, in case a refresher is required.

2004

Bomar topped the QB rankings as a HS senior and committed to Oklahoma
Bomar redshirted his first season at OU in 2004, sitting behind Heisman Trophy winner Jason White

2005

After White's graduation, Bomar lost a pre-season QB competition to Paul Thompson, but took over the starter's job following the Sooners' week one loss to TCU
Bomar started the final 11 games, setting an OU freshman record with 2,018 yards, leading the team to wins in 6 of the final 7 games and collecting an MVP award in the Holiday Bowl victory over Oregon

2006

Sam Bradford, a 3-star recruit, commited to Oklahoma
Prior to the 2006 season, Bomar "worked" a no-show job at an Oklahoma car dealership, "earning" $18,000 of dirty booster cash
Bomar was booted from Oklahoma transferred to Sam Houston State; Thompson took over at QB at Oklahoma
Oklahoma won the Big 12 with an 11-2 record and lost the famous Fiesta Bowl to Boise State

2007

Sam Bradford took over the QB job, posting 237-341 (69.5%) for 3,121 yards, 36 TDs, 8 INTs
Oklahoma won the Big 12 with an 11-2 record and lost to West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl

2008

Bradford won the Heisman, posting 328-483 (67.9%), 4,721 yards, 50 TDs, 8 INTs
Oklahoma won the Big 12, with a 12-1 record and lost to Florida in the national championship game

Post-College

In 2009 Bomar was drafted with 151^st pick by the Giants. His rookie contract included a signing bonus of $185,000
In 2010 Bradford was drafted with the 1^st pick by the Rams. His contract included $50 million of guaranteed money

So what happens if Bomar didn't take the job or just didn't get caught?

We know a few things: from 2006-2008, Oklahoma was absolutely loaded – most of the team is in the NFL right now, many of them high draft picks. As good as Bradford was – and he was very good – he had one of the easier QBing jobs in the country. Aside from his injured shoulder, this his biggest knock coming into the draft. He was rarely under pressure and his receivers were frequently wide open.

We know that Bomar has talent, although he's probably not as good as Bradford. Bomar gets a slight edge in arm strength and a major edge in athleticism, while Bradford seems to be far more accurate and is likely a better decision maker. So we'll stipulate that Bradford is all around a better QB.

Of course that's all based on what we know now. What about then?

When we're talking about "then" we have to consider the issues of incumbency (who had the starting job) and perception (recruiting status), both areas in which Bomar was way ahead of Bradford. It's safe to assume that Bomar would've started in 2006 and it's not much of a stretch to say that he would've performed at least as well as Thompson. When 2007 rolled around, OU would've had a big-shot junior starting QB coming off a conference championship backed up by a little-known redshirt freshman QB. Would Bradford have beat him out? Would there have even been a QB competition? What would the reaction have been if Bob Stoops decided to start an unknown freshman over a guy who's been successful for two years? Heck, at that point, it's hard to see how Bomar wouldn't have been on the pre-season Heisman lists. At that point in the hypothetical, I see Bomar having a very similar career arc to Matt Stafford and it's not like people in Athens were calling for Stafford's head.

It's hard to see Bomar being displaced in 2007 – remember that the team was stacked – and it's hard to see Oklahoma losing many games with that squad, so when 2008 rolls around we're back in the same spot. They've got a successful rising senior QB. He'd start again and in all likelihood, he would've done fairly well. With a great track record and a fair amount of individual talent, Bomar almost certainly been selected on the first day of the draft – probably in the first round.

The NFL life of first round QB is a quite a bit different from that of a fifth round QB. The first rounders basically have to prove that they can't play – look at how much rope Matt Leinart has been given as example #1. The fifth round pick gets some mop-up duty in the pre-season and has to bide his time until an injury or some other fortunate circumstance gives him a chance to prove he can play. Now he's struggling to hang on as a backup, when he could've been handed a starting job for a couple of years.

And how would this have affected Bradford? He still had two years of eligibility after Bomar hypothetical graduation, so there was time for him to prove himself. And from what I've read, he'd always had his heart set on Oklahoma, so he probably wouldn't have transferred or left the team. It's pretty safe to say that he wouldn't have been the #1 pick in the draft this year, though. It's almost a certainty that he'd be in Norman right now, rather than St. Louis. And maybe Tim Tebow would've won a 2^nd Heisman in 2008.

So, would Bomar have been better than Bradford? Almost certainly not – it's almost impossible to do surpass what Bradford did in college (Heisman, #1 pick, ridiculous stats, etc.) But it's probable that Bomar would've been good enough to keep a very good job as QB of Oklahoma and parlay that position into massive collegiate success and a far more desirable entry into the NFL.

The morals of the story: don't get caught doing something bad, the QB position is far more susceptible to the whims of fortune than anything else in sports, and always leave a note.

And for those financially inclined, the #1 pick of the 2009 draft earned $41.7 million of guaranteed money. If we make the rather bold assumption that Bomar was on track to be the #1 overall pick, he could've broke even on this whole deal by investing his $18,000 at a rate of return of roughly 1,200%

The Mildly Interested Observer’s Guide to the 2010 Midterm Elections

2010-08-26T11:17:00.008-04:00

Yes, yes, I know everyone’s been all keyed up about the 2010 midterm elections. Can Dino Rossi finally win statewide in WA? Are Sharron Angle and Rand Paul too crazy for Nevada and Kentucky respectively? Rest assured: all those questions will finally be answered.

But for the idiots who frequent this corner of the googles, let’s point out some low level sports/reality TV celebs who are running for office this time around.

Candidate: Clint Didier
Political Party: Republican
Claim to Fame: Redskins Tight End during Gibbs era
Office Being Pursued: U.S. Senator from Washington
Chance of Winning: None. Didier didn’t make it out the GOP primary, where he lost to Dino Rossi, who has a decent chance of knocking off current Senator Patty Murray (D)

Candidate: Stormy Daniels
Political Party: Undecided/Independent/Insane
Claim to Fame: Erstwhile porn star purportedly being propped up by Hustler CEO Larry Flynt
Office Being Pursued: U.S. Senator from Louisiana
Chance of Winning: None.
Chance of Making Tons of Jokes About Front Runner Incumbent Sen. David Vitter’s prostitution solicitation misstep: 1000%

Candidate: Jay Riemersma
Political Party: Republican
Claim to Fame: U of Mich and Buffalo Bills Tight End
Office Being Pursued: Congressman from Michigan
Chance of Winning: None. Lost GOP Primary

Candidate: Sean Duffy
Political Party: Republican
Claim to Fame: He was the lumberjack from Wisconsin on Real World Boston, and he subsequently married Rachel from Real Work San Francisco, and then they had 19 kids and he decided to run for Congress

Chance of Winning: Good. He’s running for the seat held by irascible and retiring Appropriations Chairman David Obey—a seat Obey has held for a mere 42 years. Duffy is a surprisingly good candidate who has a firm grasp on issues.

Candidate: Jon Runyan
Political Party: Republican
Claim to Fame: Dirty offensive lineman for the Eagles, among other teams.
Office Pursued: U.S. Congress in NJ
Chance of Winning: Mild long shot. He’s running in a traditionally Dem leaning area (Toms River); however in this political climate a decent GOP candidate could probably win this seat. Sadly, Runyan is not a decent candidate. So far, he’s proven to be a bit of a buffoon.

Candidate: Keith Fimian
Political Party: Republican
Claim to Fame: W&M Alum and TE for the Tribe in the Early 80s
Office Pursued: U.S. Congress in Virginia
Chance of Winning: Toss up. He is challenging Gerry Connelly in Fairfax/Prince William Counties, and this is his second time running for the seat in two years. Conolly got 55% of the vote in ’08, but in this political climate Fimian has a good shot.

Soccer Team of The Day: Young Boys

2010-08-17T20:51:00.004-04:00

Based in Bern, Switzerland, BSC Young Boys boasts a hilarious name, a fairly cool jersey, the best jersey sponsor in all of world soccer, and a stadium that hosts the largest solar panel in the world. To sweeten the deal, they're headquartered in the Wankdorf district. Also impressive is the stunning lack of originality of their founders. After hosting a game against the Basel Old Boys Club, they decided to form their own club called Young Boys. I guess it's a good thing they weren't playing against a team from the SVU unit of Basel's police force.

Young Boys were in the spotlight today, wankdorfing their way to a 3-0 lead over heavily favored Tottenham in the first leg of a Champions League Qualifier under the panel. Spurs fought back to cut the margin to 3-2 despite looking terrible all game and now appear to be a good bet to advance after the 2nd leg in London.

Acceptable Reasons to Watch Pre-Season Football

2010-08-16T22:35:00.005-04:00

Or "Exhibition Games" as they used to be known....

1) You've really got nothing going on

2) Your team has a highly drafted rookie QB

3) Your team has a highly drafted WR or RB that possesses freakish athleticism. Note, this does not apply to "polished" WRs or "downhill" runners

4) You REALLY like football. Not in the "omygod I love the Steelers!" sense

5) As a pawn in a time ownership turf-war with your wife

6) You seriously need to get your gambling fix

7) Tim Tebow

8) You write a blog dedicated to covering a team. Even then, making a statement about not watching exhibition football might be the superior choice

9) You know somebody on the team who's going to get cut

10) You've been invited to a party where something good might happen that's unrelated to the game

11) Your son or daughter works for the team in a non-playing capacity. This only applies to mothers

12) You're killing time to avoid studying/writing a paper/fixing the toilet/writing a blog post

13) You really despise one of the players and hope that he gets cut/injured/humiliated. This works better for non-skill position guys

14) You bought a new TV within the past 5 days

15) You bought a new couch within the past 5 days. This must be a breathtaking couch

16) You watch with your kid who is in one of the following phases of development: a) just beginning to understand football, b) on the verge of becoming a teenager and hating your guts for the next few years, c) emerged from being a teenager and hating your guts since last football season

17) You returned from active duty since the end of the last football season. It's also acceptable to watch a game with a friend or relative who has returned from active duty

18) You're a cougar with a crush on Jon Gruden. Or Ron Jaworski.

19) You're too drunk/stoned/fat to get off the couch and the remote is beyond reach

20) 多謝美味的心靈雞湯!!!!

And That's Why We Love Golf...

2010-08-15T21:17:00.002-04:00

Crazy rules. And like the Russian police, stern, but fair.

I'm sure the ratings will be crap because Tiger and Phil weren't in contention, but that was a spectacular final round of golf. It really had it all -- tons of guys in contention, some rising stars, a nice mix of clutch play and terrible cockups, the token old guy falling short, massive controversy, a guy with a backwoodsy first name, Jim Nantz saying "Bubba really wants to get inside Kaymer", etc.

What a wild year for Dustin Johnson. I like the guy -- our sources tell us "he's a nice guy", plus he was openly dipping at the US Open. Nonetheless, the rules are the rules and they can't be suspended just because people feel bad for a player. The spectacular explosion at the US Open and now this. I'm sure he's going to have plenty of fans in his corner in the upcoming years, but I'm not sure how I feel about his black cloud hovering above our Ryder Cup roster. Plus, they've got Kaymer - I've been worried about that guy since the first time I saw him. His efficient German golf is impervious to nerves.

EPL Kickoff Saturday

2010-08-13T09:42:00.003-04:00

Despite the popularity of the World Cup in the US, many viewers will go back to ignoring soccer for the next four years. Fair enough -- we've got plenty of good sports to watch here -- but each World Cup cycle will bring some fans into the soccer fold. Many of these fans will gravitate towards the English Premier League, arguably the best league in the world, and certainly the most accessible foreign league for Americans.

-- 2 hours. No commercials. Sports Guy has been banging this drum, but it can't really be over-emphasized.

-- There are lots of games on TV. Even if you don't splurge for Fox Soccer Plus (formerly Setanta Sports), you'll have access to more than half the EPL games will be televised on Fox Soccer Channel and ESPN2.

-- HD. Fox Soccer, GolTV, and Fox Soccer Plus have all moved to HD broadcasts, at least on DirecTV. Not sure about the other providers at the moment, but they'll all get there eventually.

-- Live sports in the morning. Seriously, it's great.

-- DVR. If you can't watch it live, it's not that hard to avoid results of games being played in another country (although ESPN is has started throwing them on the bottom line so the required level of vigilance to maintain the cone of silence has increased in recent years).

-- Every game counts (but not so much that you can't miss some). Kind of contradictory, but still true. 38 games. No playoffs. Team with the most points wins. Week 1 counts as much as week 38.

-- There's lots of stuff to play for besides the championship. Kind of like college football teams striving for prestigious bowl bids, soccer has a variety of rewards and penalties that help maintain excitement for teams that won't win the title -- Champions League and Europa League qualification, relegation, and multiple cup competitions that run concurrently with the season.

And with that, I'm going to stop writing as if soccer is a novelty and start treating it like a real sport (and I will be adopting the international convention of listing the home teams first). Top games to watch this weekend:

Tottenham - Man City (Saturday, 7:45, ESPN2) -- Couldn't ask for a much better start to the season -- last year Spurs beat Man City in the 2nd to last week of the season to secure their first Champions League berth. City's response was to spend upwards of 70 million GBP of dirty oil money on top last year's spending spree in an effort to displace Chelsea as the most despised team in England. Expectations are high and Roberto Manicini is 2nd favorite to be the first manager fired at 5-1. He's already disappointed the ladies by chopping off most of his fancy-boy hair.

Aston Villa - West Ham (Saturday, 10:00, Fox Soccer) -- Notable because there are serious rumors circulating that Bob Bradley might be offered the Villa job. It's not a great job right now for a variety of reasons (financial problems, terrible timing, etc) but it would be a huge step for American soccer.

Liverpool - Arsenal (Sunday, 11:00, Fox Soccer) -- One of these years Arsenal will suffer a league-average amount of injuries and mount a legitimate challenge for the title. This year is not shaping up well, seeing as seven players are out or doubtful for the opener. Very frustrating. It's a huge season for both clubs, with Arsenal under tremendous pressure to end their 5 year trophy drought and Liverpool in a financial crisis and missing out on Champions League prestige and money due to their 7th place finish last year (only the 4th time since 1964 that they've finished 7th or lower). With Man City's spending and Tottenham's improvement, Liverpool's (and to a lesser extent, Arsenal's) comfortable place in the top tier of English football is in jeopardy. With a new manager and the possibility of Torres, Gerrard, and Cole staying fit, Liverpool might actually be fun to watch this year.

For Those Interested - Thierry Henry's Debut

2010-07-22T13:09:00.003-04:00

Thierry Henry debuts for the NY Red Bulls tonight at 8:30 on Fox Soccer Channel, oddly enough in a friendly against Tottenham. For all the hype that Beckham received upon his arrival to MLS, Henry was the far better player when comparing their primes. Henry is 12 days younger than me, so he's obviously way past his peak, but he's a guy who should draw some attention to the league. I'm curious how much he still has in the tank - he's capable of some impressive things.

Something Else

2010-07-19T11:19:00.011-04:00

I don't completely agree with this, but it's OK. And we needed a low effort update.

If you'd like to read a blog that is updated sept-weekly, check out some site that Dave writes. It's like a new mini paragraph that appears on a periodic basis. And for low-brow entertainment, check out the Carnivale Italiano. And for totally outrageous class rings, it's Josten's. Go Josten's.

TV Ratings

2010-07-11T12:00:00.002-04:00

LeBron's "Decision on ESPN": 7.3

LeBron's "Four Finals Games Against the Spurs in 2007 on ABC": 6.2

Draw your own conclusions.

Choosing Winning

2010-07-09T14:59:00.002-04:00

Early in the 2000's I was watching PTI (why?) and Kornheiser and Wilbon noted that Venus Williams was spending a lot of time on off the court stuff (possibly designing dresses or something) and hypothesized that it was detrimental to her tennis success. They went on to argue about whether or not she should be more focused on tennis. For some reason this conversation had a moderately profound impact on me. I forget which PTI joker took which side, but the thought that stuck with me is, "why does this guy get to be so critical of what Venus Williams is choosing to do with her life?" She doesn't owe him anything. If she wants to play some tennis and make some dresses, it's her life. Maybe she could've won a few more majors if she spent less time on dress-making. Why should anybody else have a problem with that? Nobody owns stock in her. She didn't make any commitments to the public or to the journalist's guild.

There's plenty of room for criticism in the world of athletics and towards athletes in particular: criminal behavior, selfishness, lack of effort, greed, even poor performance on the field. It seems that what they choose to do with their own life should be up to them. So why are people so mad about LeBron's decision to join the Heat? I understand why Cavs fans would be mad. But the general public? Don't get it. It's a guy choosing where he wants to play basketball. He's following the rules of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, just like everyone else. He made a personal career decision based on the based on his priorities and how those priorities integrate with the NBA landscape. His call. His life. Settle down.

There should be an exception to this line of thought though -- namely if an athlete's decisions blatantly contradict his words, like the guy who says "I'm all about winning" and then takes the most money to go to a losing franchise. Call that guy a liar. Fine with me.

And that's what's so weird about the backlash from yesterday. We hate that guy. The greedy guy who doesn't "really" care about winning. The guy who has to get paid. The guy who has to be "the man" to the detriment of team success. A couple years ago, people were on their knees in front of Tom Brady for taking a little less money so that the Patriots would have more room to operate under the cap. Team player. Great guy. Kobe and Shaq can't play together? Terrible, selfishness, egos out of control. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade want to play together? Also terrible? Huh?

Yesterday LeBron James decided to take less money and less glory to improve his chances of winning titles. This is exactly what people always say they want from their star players. The biggest star of them all did exactly what people say they want and he's getting killed for it.

He could've stayed in Cleveland – he would've signed a bigger contract and gained the admiration of most for his loyalty to his hometown team. He would've be "the man", the center of attention for the rest of his career. He'd also have been buried with a crap supporting cast for the foreseeable future.

He could've gone to New York – he would've been an icon in the biggest media market. He would've found the shortest path to his billionaire dreams. (Remember when people were killing him for that?) He would've been lionized by the NY press machine and the enormous Knicks fan base. He would've been the absolute center of attention in the biggest city in the country.

He could've gone to Chicago – should've in my opinion. It was a better fit than Miami and just as easy a path to a title. Despite all the talent on the roster, LeBron still would've been the center of attention and surely Chicago would've earned him more off the court money than Miami.

He went to Miami – He has to share the spotlight. It's not a storied franchise. According to the report the Knicks put together, Miami is by far the least personally profitable choice of the big four. He took less money. He took less glory. He's going to score fewer points. Because he thought it's the best place to win. And this, for some reason is terrible.

A couple other miscellaneous notes:

Legacy

This seems to be the new big thing, talking about somebody's "legacy". First of all, to all the people out there touting this "legacy" stuff, why are you so concerned about his legacy? It's not your legacy. In fact, few of us are even going to have "legacies". I could see mention it in passing, but people are working themselves up into frothy rages about this. Maybe they're right that going to Miami will destroy LeBron's legacy. But maybe they're completely wrong. What if he wins 5 titles in Miami? What if he went to New York or stayed in Cleveland and never won a title? Sounds like that would be pretty bad for his "legacy". That's the thing about legacies…it takes a while for them to develop.

And since when did we become so concerned about this whole "legacy" business anyway? Isn't sports about competing and winning (and gambling)? And isn't there something just a touch hypocritical about killing LeBron James for being an ego-maniac and simultaneously killing him for not giving enough consideration to his legacy when making personal decisions? The only acceptable decision-making criteria for LeBron would be a laser-focus on his legacy? What about winning, happiness, and personal satisfaction? Is it possible that 25 year-old LeBron James cares more about 25 through 30 year old LeBron James than he cares about the way the general public will talk about LeBron James in the year 2040? And is that an objectively bad thing?

Who are "acceptable" teammates?

Most people seem to concede that winning a championship requires more than one good player. Many of these people have a problem with LeBron James going to Miami to play with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh. Nobody has a problem with Kobe Bryant winning titles with Pau Gasol. So if Gasol is OK and Wade is unacceptable, evidently there must be a critical cutoff point somewhere between Wade and Gasol on the player spectrum. So where is it? Would it be OK for LeBron to play with Brandon Roy? What about Deron Williams? Chris Paul? Dwight Howard? If somebody could've laid out the criteria of acceptable teammates prior to July 1, it might have saved LeBron a lot of grief.

And why is it the responsibility of LeBron James to regulate the talent level of his teammates? Now each star player has to ensure that the rest of their team is sufficiently talented to win, but not so talented that winning won't be acceptably challenging? Why should he go out of his way to make his life more difficult? Who would do something like that? It's just so weird.

In short, LeBron James showed his hand last night. Speculation was that his top priority was to become a billionaire. The Knicks built their entire pitch around that assumption. They were wrong. He could've chosen money, glory, attention, stats, hometown loyalty. He chose none of those. He chose winning.

--------

Update after reading Sports Guy's semi-mailbag: Cleveland is going to hate LeBron. In a really impressive way. This, I understand. And I'm looking forward to the spectacle. Even back when I was thinking and hoping that LeBron would stay in the Cleve, I always thought that one of the upsides of his possible exit would be the bloodbath at the Q when he played his first game in an opposing uniform.

But they shouldn't let management off the hook so easily. LeBron played his ass off for the Cavs, especially in the post-season. Even in his "awful" final series, he averaged 27-9-7 on 45% shooting. In the 6 game loss to Orlando the year before, he averaged an outrageous 39-8-8 on 49% shooting. Guys just don't do that. If he's playing at that level and his team is losing, how can he stick around if he wants to win titles? Nobody can play better than that. The players and coaches around him didn't perform when it mattered. If they had, then he might still be in Cleveland. And a lot of that blame has to go on the management.

Latest on LeBron

2010-07-08T19:11:00.005-04:00

Sources close to the situations are whispering that indecisive superstar LeBron James is about to unveil an innovative contract vehicle tentatively named "LeSampler", wherein he will play each of the next four years with four different teams: Cleveland, Miami, New York, and Chicago. On July 8 each year, former NBA deputy commissioner Russ Granik will emerge from retirement to draw balls from a hopper in a process tentatively named "The LeBrottery". Each ball will be emblazoned with the logo of one of the teams that James has not yet played for. League officials maintain that this plan violates almost every clause of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, however commissioner David Stern has inexplicably signed off on the deal. Those close to Stern report that the head honcho justified his decision with the following statement, "Ahh.....what the hell?"

Coming into tonight, many fans and media members questioned the one hour running time of tonight's "LeDecision" show on ESPN. We've learned that the first 30 minutes will be used to explain the details of this unusual arrangement, and the 2nd half of the program will climax with Granik handling LeBron's balls to determine the MVP's employer for the upcoming season.

Here's My LeBron Rumor

2010-07-08T11:18:00.002-04:00

Everybody has one, so why not me? Plus, it's fresh - I don't believe anybody else has this one.

Tonight, at 9:15, LeBron signs a 3 year deal with Miami. He has some fun in the sun. He wins a couple of titles. Good times. At the end of the 3 years, LeBron signs back with Cleveland for the rest of his career. During those 3 years, the Cavs would have a chance to shed their bad contracts and acquire some lottery talent. They will be much better positioned to contend at that point than they would've if LeBron had stayed the entire time.

Basically, the Cavs would be "doing a Knicks" from 2011-2013. There's a pretty good chance they wouldn't win any titles during that period if LeBron stays in the Cleve. But when he comes back, they'll have cap flexibility and some young talent.

It's a win for all parties.

Disappointment

2010-06-27T20:29:00.004-04:00

That's it? When do we get to do this again? Four years? Oh…

The emptiness that American fans are feeling in the aftermath of Saturday's loss to Ghana has as much to do with ending and it does with losing. It's not necessarily that we wanted to win the World Cup as it is that we wanted to watch the World Cup. In fact, we might have even felt a little uncomfortable if we miraculously managed to win the thing.

No, what we wanted was another day out, another week of feeling the buzz of a successful and likable USA team that captured the imagination of the sporting public. We wanted to be back in the jam-packed bar on Friday afternoon of 4^th of July weekend (how perfect was that set up)? We wanted to watch another game where all of our friends and everybody we know was rooting for the same team, where we might end up hugging strangers in a moment of jubilation. We wanted more of the happiest moment in sports – when your soccer team scores a goal – the release of so much tension and anticipation in the matter of seconds. Reaching the quarterfinals or the semifinals of the World Cup would've been a massive accomplishment for USA soccer, but more than anything, the fans just wanted more games. Sadly, we were denied, and we'll have to wait a long time before this scene that we grew to love can be replicated.

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It seems that intense sports fans who are highly engaged with the interactive media and internet have two potential reactions after their teams lose a big game. Sometimes they'll be on the internet immediately, registering their disgust, insisting on firings and roster turnover, and generally bathing themselves in a highly-charged pool of blame and rage. The other reaction is isolation – avoiding the press, cringing at criticism, and trying not to even think about the game. For me, and probably a lot of USA fans, Saturday's game against Ghana fell into the latter category. The exception would the pathologically anti-Bob Bradley hyenas who seem to constitute a significant portion of the "internet" fan base and are surely out for blood today.

This was a thoroughly likable team. They're not the greatest, they're far from the most skilled, and they have several players getting major minutes that wouldn't even sniff the roster of many of the final 16 World Cup teams. But we like them, warts and all. And it was a team that seemed to be admired by many soccer fans around the world. They consistently exhibited the qualities that endear themselves to fans and spectators – hard work, relentlessness, camaraderie, selflessness, and lots and lots of pride in wearing the shirt. They didn't dive, they don't fake injuries, they only complain when they've been royally screwed over, and they love playing for the USA.

One reason for the love-in is that for most American soccer fans, there's nothing bigger in the sport than the World Cup and that sentiment is mirrored by the players. Playing for Team USA is the pinnacle of their careers, and that's not something that can be said for every team. Almost every team ranked above us is stocked with players that play in the Champions League and compete for titles in major European leagues. It's impossible to know exactly what these guys are thinking, but it's reasonable to infer that for many of them, club football is as important or more important than their national team careers. Although the guys on Italy and England are certainly disappointed in their performance at the World Cup, they get to go back to their clubs where they're huge stars and play in massive games on the world stage. When our players get on that plane to leave South Africa, they're not going back to Chelsea or Manchester United – they're returning to the relative anonymity of Watford or Rennes or Real Salt Lake. Even the guys who play in the bigger leagues are on mid-table teams with little hope of winning anything substantial. This is slowly changing and there are a few exceptions, but generally the point holds. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that guys from other countries are mailing it in – only that there's a difference between "an important tournament" and the absolute biggest moment of one's career. Our guys love playing for the USA—you could see it clearly throughout the tournament and after that loss they were devastated in a way that we don't often see from professional athletes.

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Looking at the game, there are some logical complaints that can be issued – clearly Bob Bradley got it wrong in starting Ricardo Clark over Maurice Edu in midfield. Clark was one of the main culprits for the first goal and generally hasn't shown very much that would support starting him over Edu in this game. Our central defenders were manhandled to some degree on both goals and Tim Howard deserves some blame for the first goal, where his positioning appeared to be a step off, allowing for too much space at the near post. There's always a lot of material that can be broken down over 120 minutes of soccer, but for me the explanation is very simple. Ghana made shots and we didn't. Their two goals didn't come from dazzling buildup. They didn't dominate the game. They converted on two half-chances with excellent individual efforts that resulted in goals. We had similar chances, maybe even better ones. From memory, we had Findley on a one-on-one with the goalie from an angle where their keeper made a great save. We had Feilhaber from close range, who couldn't get enough elevation to chip the goalie. And we had Altidore on a similar type of half-chance to which Ghana scored both their goals. None of our guys converted. Their guys converted twice. Shooting and goalkeeping. Their attackers hit the target and their keeper made the saves.

People like to say that football (American) is a game of inches. In some cases, that's true, but compared to soccer, football is a game of miles. All the preparation, the tactics, the passing, the tackles, the runs off the ball – they're all absolutely crucial – but they're all viewed in a completely different light if Tim Howard stands a foot to his right on the first goal, or if Feilhaber elevated his shot a few inches over Richard Kingston. This was a game between two evenly matched teams that played an evenly matched game. Shots on goal were 6-6. USA had 20 total shots, Ghana 16. Corner kicks were 5-4 USA. Possession was 51/49 USA. After 90 minutes the game was a draw, which was a fair result. It's a common practice to use results to write a narrative about the game, or even a larger one about the team or the program. Some of these narratives will make some good points, while others will fail by attempting to extrapolate a major story from a few events. In the end, Ghana scored twice due to a combination of a few seconds of excellent individual play on their part, a few mistakes on our part, and the goodwill of chance. In an evenly matched game, a few breaks will determine the outcome. Yesterday it broke their way.

So there's no more Team USA for us to watch and it's a shame. It really was a lot of fun to see people rise in anticipation when Landon Donovan has the ball at his feet with open space in front of him. It was phenomenal to see the bar erupt when we put the ball in the net (which we did in all four games, no small feat). Our guys only play one really big tournament every four years, so we're never going to see Donovan and Dempsey at the height of their powers on this stage again. It's the last World Cup for Carlos Bocanegra and Steve Cherundolo.

Like I said, there's plenty of blame to go around, but I can't muster up any anger even for a guy like Ricardo Clark, who isn't one of my favorite players and made major gaffe that led to a goal when he makes statements like this:

"That was totally unacceptable for a player with my experience and caliber," said Clark referring to the way he was unable to control a pass from Michael Bradley and lost possession. "I take full responsibility for letting my teammates down and I should have done better.
"This is on me. If that hadn't happened, then things could have been different. I told the coach that it was my fault and that I was sorry."

I just feel bad for him because it's clear that it hurts him more than it hurts the fans.

Despite the disappointment of losing the game, we shouldn't lose sight of the big picture of the whole event. It was a lot of fun to watch our guys play and generally they played fairly well. We topped our group and played two of the most exciting games of the first round, creating some truly memorable moments along the way. We all knew they'd get eliminated at some point – it was just a game or two earlier than we had realistically hoped.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

2010-06-24T12:30:00.000-04:00

U-S-A

2010-06-23T19:18:00.003-04:00

Algeria

2010-06-22T21:05:00.001-04:00

OK, Algeria. You don't like us and we don't like you. You've got all kinds of human rights issues and you're listed as a Tier 2 country on the human trafficking watch list. Surprisingly, your pathetic GDP per capita of $4,027 is only the 7^th worst in the World Cup (the world is a terrible place). Despite your relatively restrictive society, your soccer team is full of bad tattoos and worse haircuts, making them look like a boy band…if boy bands were full of ugly dudes (gs). I'm willing to overlook all of this if you do one thing – lose the game tomorrow.

Hopefully the US team has put "the call" behind them and are fully prepared for the task at hand. With a few days of perspective, it's a little easier to look at Friday's comeback as a brilliant result that kept us alive in the tournament rather than an act of robbery by some cocksucker from Mali. At halftime it appeared that the dream was over than and that years of expectations would be dashed in a matter of five days by a bunch of "Slovenes". From the depths of despair, those two second half goals brought us back to pretty much where we thought we'd be at the outset of the competition – beat Algeria to advance out of the group. And really, that's not such a terrible deal.

This doesn't mean that I'll forget the call. No, I'll never do that. Even if we advance with a resounding win tomorrow, that call will always bother me. No matter what happens for the rest of the tournament, that douchebag stole something from me and from all fans of US Soccer. He stole something rare and awesome; something that you can't buy no matter how much money you have. Something that we can't get back – a moment, a feeling, a memory, what should have been. He stole them all, and thanks to the incompetent FIFA machine, he didn't even have to face the music.

OK, back to the reality of being stuck on two points. Although Algeria hasn't scored yet in the tournament, they did play some tidy stuff against England in the middle of the park, and they are capable of frustrating us with their possession. That possession hasn't paid off thanks to a fairly toothless attack, and hopefully that will continue. Of course, our shaky defense might help the Algiers locate those teeth. The key single matchup should be Landon Donovan vs. Nadir Belhadj. They're the best attacking player for each team and they should be lined up on the same side. If Landon can keep Belhadj pinned back, Algeria will have trouble creating much offense.

Algeria plays three at the back, which should make them somewhat susceptible to our wing-reliant attacking strategy. A 3-man backline tends to play narrowly, focusing on the strikers, meaning that there might be some space outside for Donovan and Dempsey. Who knows with this formation stuff though? Three at the back could look like five at the back if the wing-backs play defensively.

As far as the other group C game, if we win, we're rooting for an England win or a low-scoring draw, either of which could give us the top spot in the group. If we draw, we're rooting for a Slovenia win or a low-scoring draw.

I think we're going to win.

Other stuff:

France: Wow.

Africa: Really overrated. Nigeria will be kicking themselves though for some of their missed opportunities today against South Korea.

The US Open: Stop making all your holes so difficult. That 90 yard hole is a prime example. You put the pin in an incredibly dangerous position…and guess what? Nobody shot at it. Everybody aimed (and usually hit) the center of the green to leave themselves with a very long birdie putt. Mostly they all two-putted for par. That's boring. When the risk outweighs the reward by 10 times, nobody takes the risk. The final round of the tournament was boring – not because Graeme McDowell wears a cardigan, but because there were no shots to be made. When you make a hyper-difficult course, the response is to play with extreme care and grind out pars. Not fun to watch.

Chile: Great team that might just get screwed because they only scored one goal on 10-man Switzerland. They're on 6 points now and 3^rd most likely to qualify (slightly behind Switzerland) because of the tiebreak situation and the fact that they're playing Spain.

Come on USA. Beat Algeria. Unfortunately, I won't be able to watch this on live due to a work conflict. This is tremendously upsetting, but I'll have to make with the old DVR. So don't email or text me during the game.

Ian Darke: And Tonight's Referee is From Mali

2010-06-18T12:01:00.000-04:00

Jerry (to nobody): Uh oh....

Slovenia

2010-06-17T00:01:00.002-04:00

We're coming for you, you anonymous bastards. I can find you on a map, and I'm not impressed with your measly 7,827 square miles. I laugh at your official language of "Slovene". I'm unwilling to accept your shameful apology for Sasha Vujacic.

Although Friday's game against "Slovenia" lacks the cache and handy time slot of our previous match, it does surpass it in importance. Anything we got out of England was gravy. Against "Slovenia", if we lose, we're pretty much done. A loss would make it impossible for us to finish ahead of "Slovenia", so our only chance to advance would be a massive choke job by England.

A draw on Friday puts us in decent enough shape, but we'll still have to make up 2 points on "Slovenia" in the final round of games.

We won't clinch anything with a win, but it would put us in a very strong position.

W/L/D odds are 11/10 , 3/1 , 12/5 so the betting public fancies our chances of getting something out of this one.

I know very little about the "Slovenian" team other than that they're fairly difficult to score against. I wouldn't be surprised to see Jose Francisco Torres replace Rico Clark in the midfield to provide the team with some additional creativity and composure on the ball. I'd also expect Edson Buddle to replace Robbie Findley, as Buddle is the all-around better striker and Findley's speed will be less useful in this game due to the likelihood that "Slovenia" will keep a lot more players back than England did.

Two other interesting games in the next two days:

Mexico-France -- Arguably the two most hated non-enemy countries in America, both of whom have one point after one game. With Uruguay already on four points, a loser in this game would be on the brink of elimination.

Germany-Serbia -- It just shows you how quickly things can go pear-shaped for a team in the World Cup. In the lead-up, Serbia were a chic pick. Now, after a loss to Ghana, they're staring down the barrel of the most impressive team in the tournament after one game. A loss here would be almost certain elimination for the Serbs.

World Cup Quick Hits

2010-06-14T21:57:00.001-04:00

USA (briefly): Great result for the USA in the opening match against England. Although our goal was a complete fluke, it was heartening to see that we weren't completely overmatched by a team with as much quality as England. Defensively, we did a nice job shackling Rooney. We held enough possession to keep the pressure off our defense and to create a few decent scoring opportunities.
USA (viewing): It sounds like this game was a legitimate sporting spectacle. From what I've read, bars around the country were packed and people were fired up. I can personally vouch for that at Bailey's where it was standing room only and almost entirely American. In some way the "when will soccer catch on" question is overblown, but it is a lot of fun to have a unifying sporting event.
The Ball: Why can't they just use a regular ball? This phenomenon of people complaining about a crazy ball seems to come up at almost every major international tournament. Just use a normal ball that flies in a normal manner. What's the problem?
The Horns: This has got to stop. The noise itself is somewhat annoying, although I probably fall on the "less annoyed" half of the spectrum. I think this is because the noise sounds like a swarm of killer bees and for some reason I assume that killer bee swarms are frequent occurrences in South Africa. The real problem for me is that it drowns out all the real "human" crowd noise, which is a vital part of the soccer experience. The tournament is missing something when the audience can't hear the singing and cheering coming from the crowd. The brief moments when "God Save the Queen" or "U-S-A" manage to overcome the monotonous drone of the vuvazellas is a reminder of what we're missing. And don't give this "it's a traditional part of their culture" nonsense. It's a $2 plastic horn. If that's your tradition, your tradition sucks and it should make way for actual "good" traditions like cheering.
Who's Bad? – Australia: Old and slow. Greece: Old, slow, and bad. France: Dysfunctional and underachieving. Cameroon: Clueless against a very mediocre Japanese squad. Robert Green: Enough said
Who's Good? – Hard to say at this point. South Korea had the only surprisingly good performance, but that might just go down to the fact that they were willing to run and Greece wasn't. Holland and Argentina won despite not blowing anybody's skirt up. Germany's dominant win might be due to the poor play of Australia. Let's see what Brazil and Spain can deliver this week.
Overall Assessment: Not so good. I've watched most of the games and can't point to one that was exceptionally exciting on any level. It's still very early, so we can't draw any sweeping conclusions, but hopefully the pace will pick up soon.

Don't Tread on Me

2010-06-11T12:38:00.005-04:00

What Does it Mean?

The "most important game in the history of US Soccer" gets bandied about now and then. In this case, it's not true, although it is likely to be the highest rated game in the history of US Soccer. The quarterfinal against Germany was more important, so were the round of 16 games in 1994 and 2002. Heck, the Ghana game in 2006 was probably more important. In some ways, Saturday's game is actually the least important of the 2010 World Cup for the US. Our reasonable goal is to qualify for the knockout stages and to do that, we have to finish ahead of Algeria and Slovenia. Most people would concede one of the top two spots to England (1/16 to advance). However if we want to win the group (and we do), it's probably going to take a win against England. The team that finishes first in the group is likely to have a significantly easier knockout draw, so it's important, although unlikely for the US. Remember that goal differential is the first tiebreaker in the group standings, meaning that even if we lose, it's important to keep it close against the big dog of the group. The tiebreaker is also the reason that I think we have to win on Saturday to win the group – I suspect England will explode offensively in at least one game, giving them the edge in goal differential.

Although this game might be overhyped in terms of importance to American qualification, the game is incredibly important precisely because of the hype. I don't really want to get into the idea that any single event could be the catalyst for the mainstreaming of soccer in America. That's a gradual process that been occurring for years and will continue regardless of what happens tomorrow. A USA victory or even a loss full of tension and excitement will accelerate the process a bit.

We can put all that aside – the tournament, the long-term implications – the game is important because it's important. It's the World Cup. It's England. It's a stand-alone sporting spectacle.

How Excited Am I?

Very. Old school excited. Over the years it becomes more difficult to get truly fired up for a sporting event – that's just the way of life. It's back for this game and it feels awesome.

What Should We Worry About?

Discipline: This is my top concern and it applies throughout the tournament. In order to succeed, the USA absolutely must stop committing high-leverage fouls. In the Confederations Cup we had 3 red cards in the first 4 games. We had two players sent off against Italy in 2006. We gave away difference-making PKs in 2006 against Ghana and in a friendly this year against Holland. Despite our success in the latter phases of the Confederations Cup, these penalties and cards are back-breakers. Whatever the reason – overly physical play, lack of discipline, anti-Americanism, unpredictability of international officiating – it has to stop. If we keep 11 men on the field in every game, don't suffer any yellow card suspensions, and avoid giving away PKs, we'll be tough to beat.
Defense: This is mostly a health issue. We need Onyewu at full strength. England has a lot of attacking firepower and our defense looked shaky at best in the runup to the World Cup. We absolutely need Onyewu and DeMerit to dominate in the air in the box – that should be our strength and if we can't control the air then we're going to be very vulnerable in the back. I also worry about Carlos Bocanegra – a steady guy, but not the quickest – playing left back against whoever England is starting on the right (likely the speedy Aaron Lennon, supported by a quick attacking right back in Glen Johnson). They've both got him for pace by a fair margin.
Strikers: Just a few weeks ago, it looked like our strike force would be Jozy Altidore and nobody else, but the trio of Edson Buddle, Herculez Gomez, and Robbie Findley have played well in the last three friendlies. Although the attacking prospects are much improved, I still worry about how they'll do against a strong England central defense.

What Can We Capitalize On?

Non-Soccer Stuff: When it comes to shooting, passing, making runs, defending, and all that soccer stuff, we come out 2^nd best to England. We don't even have a speed/size advantage when matched up with England (although we should against our next two opponents). What we do have is conditioning, unselfishness, and team spirit. England is a team with lots of mega-millionaire big shot assholes. The US…not as much. England exists in a weird bi-polar media pressure cooker. Team USA…needs as much advertising as they can get. I'm confident that the US is going to fight, run, and play together for every minute that they're on the field. Despite the importance of this tournament, you can't say that about every team.
The Flanks: USA essentially plays a 4-2-2-2, with the attacking two midfielders on the outside and the central midfielders hanging back a bit. Credit to Bob Bradley for finding this formation, as it gives our two most creative players (Donovan/Dempsey) room to operate on the outside. England's right back, Johnson, is great going forward, but mistake-prone at the back. On the other side, Ashley Cole is both a world class left-back and a world class douchebag, but we can still take advantage of his desire to get forward with our counter-attacking.
Goalkeeping: The one position where we have a clear cut advantage. Tim Howard is a reliable, very good keeper and all three of England's goalies are capable of a howler.

Odds

USA win (13/2), England win (8/15), Draw (10/3)

Other Games This Weekend

Saturday (7:00 AM) – South Korea (2/1) vs. Greece (7/4) [Draw: 11/5] – If there's one game to miss this weekend, it's this one. Seriously, I've got no insight other than I'd expect the Koreans to put in a lot more running and the Greeks to have more body hair. Prediction: 1-1

Saturday (9:00 AM) – Argentina (1/2) vs. Nigeria (15/2) [Draw: 10/3] – Argentina might be the most compelling team in the tournament – loaded with talent and managed by an insane clown. Who knows what to expect from these guys? Maradona has been heavily and rightly criticized for his team selection (leaving Cambiasso at home), his lineups, and his general demeanor. They'll still be one of the best teams to watch. Prediction: 4-1 Argentina

Sunday (7:00 AM) – Algeria (13/5) vs. Slovenia (5/4) [Draw: 23/10] – I know nothing about either of these teams. We'll be rooting for a draw. Prediction: 1-0 Slovenia

Sunday (9:00 AM) – Serbia (6/5) vs. Ghana (3/1) [Draw 23/10] – Serbia is becoming a fashionable dark horse in soccer circles. My theory about this is that they're getting extra respect because their style of play is in line with people's impressions of Serbians. Rugged, mean, uncreative. This should be one of the top games of the weekend, along with today's France-Uruguay match and possibly USA-England. Prediction 2-1 Serbia

Sunday (2:30 PM) – Germany (8/15) vs. Australia (7/1) [Draw 16/5] – Australia looked old and slow against the US last weekend (yet still managed to create a handful of chances, which is what's worrying me about our defense). I'd see what kind of odds one could get on Australia scoring zero in this one. Prediction: 3-0 Germany

Back to the USA: It's going to take guts and maximum effort. It's going to take some last ditch defending. It's going to take some incredible saves by the Howard. It might require a little luck. Last year in South Africa, we beat Spain. With the same kind of effort, we can beat England.

And finally, I'd be fine with any local bar having a "no English" policy on Saturday.

USA Soccer: Taking Stock of the Program

2010-06-08T21:37:00.007-04:00

In the American buildup to the World Cup a lot of people are asking questions about whether this is the year we "break through" or how many more years it will take us to become an elite team. Although this ambition is admirable, very "American" and will ultimately serve us well in our development, it's also important to take stock of how far we've come as a soccer program in a remarkably short period of time.

Most people know that we beat England in the 1950 World Cup. That was a fluke and should be considered nothing more than a historical anomaly. We had lost our prior seven matches by a combined 45-2. From that England game through 1982 the USA Men's Soccer played 79 full-sided games. They won 16. In 32 years. Nine of those wins were against Haiti, Bermuda, and China.

The USA didn't qualify for the next nine World Cups after 1950 and either didn't enter or didn't qualify for the final rounds of the CONCACAF Cup (currently Gold Cup) its nine iterations from 1963 and 1989. In 1969, we had a 2-legged match with Haiti to qualify for the CONCACAF Cup. We lost both home and away. Then Haiti failed to qualify because they submitted improper paperwork. Even as recently as 1985, we qualified for the CONCACAF Cup through a two-legged victory over the Netherlands Antillies, which featured scoreless draw on the road and a 4-0 victory at home. We then finished 2^nd in our group between Costa Rica and Trinidad and Tobago and didn't advance to the knockout stage. Seriously, we drew with the Netherlands Antillies 25 years ago. That's not even a country. It's 309 square miles and had a population of 180,000 (same as Newport News).

Obviously we've made ridiculously massive strides since the late 80's and most people recognize this, but there's still a natural impulse to ask "when are we going to get there?" Looking at the big picture, in as much as there's a "there" there, we're kind of there. Here are some factoids to demonstrate:

Qualification

The US has qualified for every World Cup since we remerged on the scene in 1990, a total of six. While qualifying was a big deal to our program in the 90's it's something we now take for granted. Below is the complete list of countries that have qualified for six or more consecutive World Cups:

Argentina (last missed in 1970)
Brazil (never missed)
Germany (1954)
Italy (1958)
Spain (1974)
South Korea (1982)

Note that Mexico was banned in 1990 – the last time they failed to qualify was 1982.

That's a total of six or seven countries that surpass us in qualification streaks. Hmm. Kind of impressive, right? Admittedly region is a factor here, as one might infer from the presence of the USA, Mexico, and one of those Koreas on a short list with the giants of the sport. There's a very good chance that we would've missed a few WCs if we had to go through Europe or South America to get there. But the bottom line is that sports are the ultimate results based business and we're getting the right results. Plus, Europe gets a ton of qualification places and there are plenty of mediocre-ish Euro teams that have made it over this time period. It's not like Holland, England, Spain, and France are all fighting for a single spot.

There's also a downside in coming from CONCACAF in the way the pools are arranged at the World Cup. This year, it was impossible for us to be in a pool with teams from Asia or another CONCACAF country, meaning that we were unable to face most of the weaker teams in the competition. Although we got very, very lucky with our draw, neither Slovenia nor Algeria is likely to be a pushover.

Just look at that list: no England, no Holland, no France, no 2^nd tier South American teams.

What is "good"?

Historically, there are four teams that consistently get results on the world stage: Brazil, Argentina, Germany, and Italy. These countries are either winning World Cups or going deep into the tournament almost every four years. Beyond that, there are a group of talented teams that are sometimes considered powerhouses, but in reality show some surprisingly unimpressive results. For perspective, here are the points at which the USA was eliminated in the last six World Cups, starting with 2006 and going backwards:

USA: Group Stage, QF, Group Stage, Round of 16, Group Stage

Now here are some countries that are considered borderline elite:

Spain: Round of 16, QF, Group Stage, QF, Round of 16

England: QF, QF, Round of 16, DNQ, Semi

Dutch: Round of 16, DNQ, Semi, QF, 16

Mexico: Round of 16, Round of 16, Round of 16, Round of 16, Banned

Portugal: Semis, Group Stage, DNQ, DNQ, DNQ

Even France, who has won the whole thing: Runner-up, Group Stage, Champions, DNQ, DNQ

Clearly each of those teams other than Portugal have a more desirable outcome portfolio than the US, but the margin of difference isn't as large as a lot people might assume. Spain, the best team in the world for the past four years, doesn't have a higher water mark in the World Cup than the US since we've taken a passing interest in soccer. It's been 20 years since England has made it beyond the quarters. France, one of the elite of the past few cycles, didn't play a World Cup game between 1986 and 1998. And these teams listed above are the best around outside of the Elite Four.

Looking around the world, this will be Chile's 2^nd World Cup in the last 28 years, Uruguay has missed 3 of the last 5. Colombia has made it out of the group stage once, ever, and hasn't made the competition since 1998. Paraguay hasn't progressed beyond the round of 16 and didn't qualify in 90 and 94. There are teams that have made surprising deep runs in the tournament, like Croatia, which reached the semi-finals in 1998, but were eliminated in the group stage in the next two WCs and failed to qualify this year. Similarly, Turkey made the semis in 2002, then missed the next two tournaments (along with the prior 11). Sweden and Bulgaria both reached the final four in 1994. The Swedes didn't qualify for 2 of the last 4 events, while Bulgaria has missed the last three. None of the African teams have ever made a semi-final. That's it. That's pretty much everybody else. And our results, with a fledgling program aren't THAT far behind many of them and are markedly better than countries that have been doing this soccer thing since people started playing organized sports.

The point: it's very difficult to consistently achieve excellent results in the World Cup. There are too many teams, not enough spots, and the tournament happens too infrequently. Nobody does it other than Brazil, Argentina, Germany, and Italy. This is not to say that Team USA is on par with Holland or England. We're not. The talent gap is still substantial – we don't have many guys who would crack the starting 11 of the top few teams. Of course even if we increased our talent level by 50%, it still wouldn't be realistic to expect to be in the semi-finals every year.

Expectations

So what are reasonable expectations for the US? Let's go step by step through the process:

Qualifying: We should qualify. Failure to do so would be a disaster and a mark of massive underachievement.

Getting out of the Group: This is the reasonable success/failure bar for USA soccer and for most of the decent teams in the world. Roughly half the teams in the draw would fit into this category. We make the round of 16, that's an acceptable result. We don't , that's a disappointment, but not an abomination as you can see from the results of some of the better countries above. The betting odds back this up, as we're 8:11 to qualify for the knockout round.

Quarterfinals: The ceiling of a reasonable set of expectations. Winning in the round of 16 would be a highly successful showing for USA Soccer

Beyond the Quarterfinals: Basically fairy tale territory. Only four teams make the semi-finals every four years and there are lots and lots of countries that devote all their leisure resources to soccer. It's a rare achievement for everybody but the top 4 and eventually it's going to happen for the US, but probably not just yet.

Progress and Looking Forward

In 25 years, we've gone from fielding a team of barely-professionals and international castoffs, to a program that is favored to reach the final 16 in the biggest and arguably most competitive sports competition in the world. That's incredible. And while most of the soccer world has roughly reached an equilibrium, the US is almost certain to continue ascending. Countries like Denmark, Uruguay, or Poland will never become powerhouses. They may be blessed with a golden generation and field a strong team for a few years, but they'll revert to form eventually. Some countries may gradually improve or decline based on demographic trends, economic development, or organizational management. Very few have the explosive growth potential of the US. Maybe only Russia and China. Everyone knows we have the resources and the athletes. We're also only just reaching the point where lots of kids are being raised and coached by adults who grew up with soccer. This will make a difference. In my estimation the next 20 years will place us in that 2^nd tier of teams, behind the very elite, but capable of challenging at any given time. I wouldn't even be shocked if Italy drops down a notch due to demographics, lack of personal discipline, and the scarf-wearing epidemic. I doubt we can ever reach the Brazil/Argentina level, but we just might be an even money bet in the knockout stages with England, Germany, France, or Italy in our lifetimes.

The Game Where Cliches are True

2010-06-06T23:26:00.002-04:00

Us blog-types spend a lot of time bagging on conventional wisdom, but there are times when said conventions are indeed wise and tonight was one of them.

And I can sum it all up in just one word: courage, dedication, daring, pride, pluck, spirit, grit, mettle, and G-U-T-S, *guts*. Why, Ted Striker's got more guts in his little finger than most of us have in our large intestine, including the colon!

I feel terrible writing this, but the Boston Celtics played with the heart of a champion tonight and despite being physically overmatched with alarming regularity, they've kept themselves in the series and still have a chance to win another title. A good game from Rondo and one half of remarkable shooting from Ray Allen shouldn't be enough to beat LA on their home floor. KG went 2-5, Pierce was 2-11, the Lakers blocked 14 shots and somehow the Celtics managed a slightly comfortable win. It feels wrong to even single out any Boston players for individual effort because they all brought it.

For the Lakers, maybe consider getting the ball to Pau Gasol when Kobe isn't having one of his super-human games. Early/middle 3rd quarter, Gasol had 24 points on 9 shots. He finished up with 25 points on 10 shots, with both the missed FG and the made FT coming in the garbage time of the last minute.

If the Celtics give anything resembling that effort in game 3, that place is going to be rocking and we might actually get the great series that everyone was hoping for.

That Game Was Terrible

2010-06-04T08:02:00.004-04:00

Enough with the fouls. I've got nothing else to say -- just some unrelated pictures of strangers from this weekend.

Giuseppe Rossi Cut from Italy's World Cup Squad

2010-06-02T07:57:00.003-04:00

It would be pretty hilarious if this guy never gets to play in a World Cup.

Don't Ice Me, Bro

2010-05-25T19:55:00.000-04:00

Seeing as the readers of this blog are among the savviest in the world when it comes to short term fads passed along via the internet and documented on youtube, I may be a late mover on this one, but we'll give it a shot anyway.

Evidently there's a fresh craze sweeping the parts of the nation where semi-affluence and semi-irresponsibility converge. That's one of my favorite neighborhoods, so it's critical to be aware of this trend. It's called Icing and it's got nothing to do with shooting the puck in the offensive zone from behind the red line. It's a very simple game -- give a guy a Smirnoff Ice and he has to drop to one knee and chug it. There is one catch however. If the recipient has a Smirnoff Ice on his person, the initiator of process has to chug both of them. So it's not just a drinking game. It's got strategy, too.

I suppose there has to be some kind of implicit buy-in among willing parties prior to the act of icing for the drink exchange to function as a stunt rather than an awkward gift. Apparently this buy in exists, not only on college campuses, but even in the workplace either both hyper-macho and extremely casual "professional" environments. I'm still new to this phenomenon, so I'm not entirely sure if the icer can simply hand the bottle to his victim or the icee has to discover the Smirnoff unexpectedly. A lot of complexity here.

According the comments in youtube, always a reliable source of information, "icing" females is not kosher, but this girl appears to have waived her right of first refusal.

Despair for Passive Entertainment Enthusiasts

2010-05-24T22:28:00.004-04:00

In 22.5 hours, the light has gone out on arguably my two favorite TV shows of all-time. And when the light goes out on TV, it goes out everywhere. I'm not going to get into the details -- there's probably more internet ink spilled on Lost than any other topic in the world and 24 was just being 24 -- killing, machismo, moles, technology, brutality, handshakefulness...

I will say that I don't have much hope that either show will be adequately replaced. Networks just don't seem interested in building big shows with any intricacy to them. Not that 24 was exactly rocket science, but it still carried a much larger scope than the CSI style dramas that can neatly wrap a bow around 42 minute chunks of programming.

So as I sit here and await the prologue, where Jack is on his way to the church to meet up with Palmer, Curtis, Bill, Audrey, and all the rest, my TV sits dark out of respect. At least until tomorrow, when Phoenix tries to even the series with the Lakers and the Czech Republic tries to get even with the USA for pulling the plug on our missile defense agreement (on the soccer field). That's 7:30 on ESPN.

Lost and 24. Four letters, two numbers, 316 episodes. Good times. Over.

Short Bursts of Nonsense

2010-05-20T07:27:00.003-04:00

- NBA jump balls: the arena is going to play "Jump" by Van Halen or Kriss Kross, or "Jump Around" by House of Pain. Who's making this decision and how much thought are they putting into it? If it's more than 30 seconds and it involvels more than one person, it should absolutely be televised.

- Is there a more arbitrary adjective in sports than the "technical" in "technical foul"? What's so technical about it?

- When calling travelling, why does the baseline official blow his whistle three times and take three hops onto the court before making his signal? This always happens for travelling called by the baseline ref and almost never happens for any other call.

- Why don't players get assists for passes that lead to shooting fouls?

- It seems like 3 point percentage goes up when defenders close out shooters if they don't have a real chance of blocking/altering the shot. The shooter looks more comfortable having a guy run at him than just being wide open. I wonder if this is true.

MVPerkins, Lottery, etc.

2010-05-17T18:25:00.002-04:00

Going into the Eastern Conference Finals, I knew that this series didn't appeal to me whatsoever. I don't particularly like either team, nor do I like watching either team. The last Celtics-Magic game I saw was on Christmas Day...you might remember it as the ugliest nationally televised game of the season. This view was confirmed yesterday by the fact that the most interesting component of the series to me is watching Kendrick Perkins play defense.

Kendrick Perkins is fascinating. He must be the best post defender in the NBA and we can understand why to some degree -- he's big and strong. As Al Horford and countless others who have been ragdolled by Dwight Howard know, big and strong are prerequisites for defending the post, especially against power players. The NBA has its share of big and strong guys though, so I'm curious as to what makes Perkins so good. From the looks of it, he just....stands there. He doesn't jump. He doesn't push or jockey. He just stands. And it works. Shaq is possibly the biggest, strongest guy the NBA has ever seen and he couldn't get a shot off against Perkins from 3 feet away without flopping around. Dwight is the biggest, strongest guy in the NBA right now and it's the same thing. It's almost like Perkins has some kind of force field around his body that activates when his opponent is preparing to shoot. When Dwight or Shaq are about to jump, it seems like they're unable to jump straight up in the air. The Perkins reverse tractor beam kicks in, turning what should have been a simple jump hook into a fading/twisting monstrosity. I don't get it. But it works.

So I got to thinking, if you were drafting a team to beat Orlando, how high would pick Perkins? I was trying to formulate an argument for taking him #1, but it's hard to support unless I filled in the blanks of this hypothetical draft (when do you get to pick next, etc.). So let's look at it another way -- say we changed the rules of the NBA playoffs and the higher seeded team was allowed to remove one player from the roster of the lower seeded team, what would Orlando do? Boston has 3 guys who are probably going to the Hall of Fame, one guy who's playing at an all-NBA level, and they have Kendrick Perkins. If Cleveland had this option, the list would've been 1) Rondo, 2) Garnett, 3) Pierce, 4) Allen. Almost every other team would have some variation of those four depending on matchups.

I say Orlando's list is 1) Perkins 2) Nobody else even close. Perkins is that important to stopping what the Magic do on the offensive end. When Dwight Howard is crapping on an athletically inadquate big man, the Magicians are unstoppable. Either Dwight scores (and shoots about 70% in the process) or he draws double teams and Orlando rips the defense to shreds from the 3 point line. We saw it against Atlanta. We saw it against Cleveland last year. There's just no way to handle the Magic without a big man who can get in Howard's way.

And with a guy like Howard, the quality of the defender basically creates a binary outcome. It's yes/no. Either you can stop him or you can't. When a team is playing against a guy like Pau Gasol, a really good defender might knock his shooting percentage down to 40 and a bad defender would allow something like 60% (made up #s but you get the idea). With Howard, when he's got Al Horford on him, it's a dunk, a foul, or a double team almost every time. And with Perkins on him, he can't do a damn thing.

To some extent, the rest of Orlando's offense is nearly as volatile as Howard because they're so reliant on hitting open 3's. They're not great at breaking down defenses off the dribble, so the perimeter players aren't nearly as effective without the open opportunities created by double teams on Howard.

So Kendrick Perkins - #1 pick.

The Lottery

Everyone loves the lottery and why shouldn't they? It's full of excitement, immediacy, and massive long-term implications. I just ran the lottery simulator on ESPN and the Nets got the #1 pick and drafted John Wall. I'm hoping to develop a technique to bottle that process in the next 24 hours. Aside from pulling for the Nets, I'm hoping the Jazz move up into the top 3 with the Knicks' pick just for the laughs. Also Evan Turner would fit in nicely in Utah and if they somehow got the #1 pick and the Nets went #2, Wall might still end up in NJ.

My Predictions: #1 Nets, #2 Warriors, #3 Timberwolves.

In case anybody was wondering, my predictions last year were: Sacramento, OKC, and Memphis and the actual top 3 were LAC, Memphis, and OKC. So there is a track record of moderate partial success...

Comparing Some Lines

2010-05-14T00:30:00.005-04:00

Game A: 29 points on 9-21 shooting, 18 rebounds, 13 assists, 2 steals, 0 blocks, 4 turnovers

Game B: 27 points on 8-21 shooting, 19 rebounds, 10 assists, 3 steals, 1 block, 9 turnovers

In listening to/reading a lot of coverage, Game A was often referred to as one of the great post-season performances in recent memory. Game B will certainly be considered a disappointment and I'm sure it will be called many worse things over the course of the next few days. I'm sure you've already figured out that "Game A" is Rajon Rondo in game 4 and "Game B" is LeBron James in his last appearance in a Cavaliers uniform. Granted, the numbers don't tell the whole story and 9 turnovers is abysmal, but there aren't that many guys who put up triple doubles while scoring 27 points, fewer still who could do it on an off shooting night while being guarded by at least three guys. And the list of people for whom it would be considered a disappointment probably only has one name. LeBron wasn't at his best tonight, that much is clear and maybe the numbers are a little deceiving, but still...come on.

That's all I've got. At least the Penguins lost.

Ah, just for the heck of it, one more:

Game C: 21 points on 6-19 shooting, 2 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, 1 block, 2 turnovers

Kobe Bryant in a win over Oklahoma City.

So Long, Sidney

2010-05-12T21:50:00.001-04:00

You douchebag.

LeBron Gone?

2010-05-11T23:26:00.003-04:00

I've always been of the opinion that LeBron James would stay in Cleveland for the remainder of his career. I thought he'd shroud his intentions in mystery (much like the founder's period) to attract some attention and possibly to increase his leverage with the Cavs, but I didn't think he'd abandon his home region. Now I'm not so sure. Tonight, LeBron looked like he already had his bags packed and is preparing for next season. Of course this makes no sense at all since he's in the playoffs right now and has a legitimate chance to win a title, but I've never seen such a listless performance from LeBron. His shot wasn't falling tonight, and that's going to happen from time to time, but he barely looked involved in the game. God forbid one of his teammates pick him up when he's having a bad game - we know that's not going to happen. The Cavs can't afford for James to be chilling on the weak side outside the 3 point line for 15 seconds on multiple possessions. He should know by now that in the playoffs he has to be great for the Cavs to win against a decent team. If he's anything less than the best player in basketball, they're going to lose. Even when he has super-human games, they still might lose. If he's going to be a space cadet for long stretches, they're going to get killed.

Note that all the post-game talk will be about LeBron, but a lot of criticsm should be directed at Cleveland's defense. For all their offensive faults (and there are many), the Cavs usually get it done at the other end of the floor. Not tonight - Boston had more open layups and jumpers tonight than you usually see in four Cleveland games. It's possible that in Cleveland's quest to surround LeBron with marginally acceptable offensive talent that they've sacrificed on the defensive end and that they can't lock down teams on a consistent basis anymore. Mo Williams gets torched by everybody. People think Anthony Parker is a good defender because he's not a good offensive player, but he's actually pretty bad at defense, too (and he's been one of their better overall players). Antawn needs a double on Garnett, which isn't good at this stage of his career.

And of course Mike Brown should be fired. This should've happened years ago, but the point still stands. On my first pass through this post I wrote, "It's unclear if Cleveland has any plan on offense". That's incorrect. It's clear that they don't. They don't run plays (or "sets" as they're called at the professional level), they don't move without the ball, and they don't move the ball. They do dribble in place quite a bit though. The LeBron 1-on-1 (or more accurately 1-on-4) offense is actually kind of effective, but when LeBron isn't locked in, they seem to go to the Shaq, West, or Mo 1-on-1 offense which doesn't really meet the mail. It might be time to employ something a little more advanced instead of an offense that looks like the Cavs are playing 21.

Back in 2004 or 2005 I went to a Red Sox-Indians game at what was formerly known as Jacobs Field. I was amazed at the continuous stream of profane insults hurled in the direction of Manny Ramirez, who had left Cleveland in 2000 (at the time I wasn't fully aware of the massive inferiority complex of people who live in Big 10 country). To some degree, this is why I never envisioned LeBron leaving. He's rip the heart out of his home region. It's been generations since Cleveland has loved an athlete they way they love LeBron. Multiply that love by 10, then turn it into hatred and that's what you get if he goes to New York. I really don't think he'd be welcome in northeast Ohio if he ends up on the Knicks. As much as I want him to stay in Cleveland, I am very intrigued by the scene at the Q in his first game in an visitor's uniform. I could imagine anything from an organized boycott to death threats to riot police surrounding the court to thousands of fans quietly weeping in their seats. Nothing would be out of bounds. Impossible is nothing. I never saw it happening, but after tonight, I'm not so sure.

Go Habs Go!!!!

Not a Creed Video

2010-05-07T08:45:00.001-04:00

Man Management in the NBA: The English have a handy phrase called Man Management, which refers to a manager's ability to use his personnel -- get the most out of his team, develop an efficient player rotation, and use substitutes effectively. For most NBA teams, the coach creates a substitution pattern and allows it to basically run on auto-pilot. Generally, this is an effective strategy and typically we see consistent player rotations from game to game. Players tend to like the consistency because they know their role and they know when they'll be entering and exiting the game. Teams can operate in this manner when they have the right number of good players – the Spurs are a prime example. They've got their starters, their one star off the bench (currently Parker, previously Ginobili), and a few subs that they use pretty much the same way every game (guys like Blair and Bonner). (Note: I started writing this before San Antonio was in a 2-0 hole. They actually need one more good player). The exceptions to this model of firm, pre-determined rotations are teams with too many or too few good players. Among the playoff teams, Miami is the best example of having too few good players and the coach has to juggle the lineup to see if he can get anything out of his non-Wade players and to generally attempt to reduce the amount of collective suck on the floor at any given time. It's a challenge for the coach, but it's possible that a bigger challenge is to determine how to use a roster that has too many good players. Maybe "good" players isn't even the best way to define the situation – it's more like there isn't a great enough quality differential between players #3 through #10 or #11 on the roster.

Dallas and Cleveland both fall into this category and neither of their coaches is covering themselves in glory when it comes to man management. Rick Carlisle didn't handle his rotations well in round one and ended up on the business end of significant criticism for that reason. Roddy Beaubois played 10 minutes combined in the first 5 games before logging 21 very effective minutes in game 6. JJ Barea's minutes ranged from 6 to 32. Dampier from 0 to 30. Marion from 17 to 32. I suppose Carlisle deserves some credit for experimentation, but he never found the right combinations and his team paid the price.

Mike Brown is finding himself in the same situation. Since Boston has a set rotation and doesn't have enough depth to mix things up, Cleveland knows exactly what their opposition will be. The Cavs' roster flexibility should allow them to take advantage of favorable matchups, but it requires pro-active coaching. If Cleveland simply trots out their same pre-determined rotation, they're not maximizing their chances of exploiting Boston's weaknesses. The Cavs have 10 or 11 guys who could see playing time and Brown needs to do a better job of optimizing his lineups.

Some advice: We know that you want to get Shaq involved in the game. It's not a terrible idea because there's nothing easier than dumping the ball down to the big man and letting him operate. It can result in easy points and it takes some burden off of LeBron's shoulders. Here's the problem – Shaq can't score on Kendrick Perkins. He just can't. He was something like 1-5 in the 1^st quarter of game one and didn't fare much better in game two. Here's a very simple solution – play Shaq when Perkins is on the bench. Shaq can score on Big Baby or Rasheed or whoever else will be guarding him. Play Varejao or Hickson against Perkins. Those guys will give up a little size, but Boston isn't going to dump the ball into Perkins when he's in the game with their four best players. Varejao will annoy Perkins on the offensive glass and Hickson can use his quickness to go around him. Cleveland gave O'Neal $20 million this year for one reason – to guard Dwight Howard, not to run isolations 3 out of every 5 possessions against one of the best post defenders in the league. Simple. Problem solved.

Switch up the LeBron strategy: Anybody who has watched even a few Cavs games know that LeBron rarely looks for his own shot in the first quarter. Although he usually manages to score around 7 points in the first, those points could be classified more as incidental than intentional. Boston knows this, and as a smart defensive team, operates accordingly. Consequently, Cleveland has fallen behind in the first quarter in both games (#s). This also ties into the Shaq point because the Cavs have four or five empty possessions in the first five minutes when they dump it down low and Shaq fails to score over Perkins. Try letting LeBron loose in the first, at least once, just to change things up. Then maybe you won't be fighting an uphill battle for the rest of the game.

Find more minutes for Hickson and Varejao: (#s) Following the first suggestion will help here, as these two guys should get some of Shaq's minutes. The crux of Cleveland's offense is to put the ball in LeBron's hands and let him score and set up wide open 3's and layups. Both of these guys excel at finding open spaces near the basket and finishing around the rim. They also provide the added bonus of offensive rebounding. The way things are going, it would even make sense to reduce Jamison's minutes a bit to get these two guys on the court more often. While Antawn is far more skilled than either of these guys, he doesn't have a favorable matchup with Garnett at either end of the floor.

Figure out who can defend Rajon Rondo and give him more minutes: I don't know who this is, but it's obviously not Mo Williams.

This is pretty unbelievable

2010-05-05T09:52:00.001-04:00

I hate posting youtubes, but...wow

Playoffs

2010-05-03T13:58:00.004-04:00

Catching up on last week and the weekend...

Is it OK to Say This? (#1): Kevin Durant had a bad series against LA. Even though he averaged 25 PPG, he shot 35% from the field (an average of 9/25 per game), 29% from 3 point range, and turned it over 3.7 times per game. In the media world, Durant is in that untouchable zone where people feel cool and knowledgeable just for knowing his name, so he's generally shielded from even the most sober and measured criticism. He's a great player, lots of fun to watch, but he didn't get it done against the Lakers and if he'd played up to his regular season levels, that series would've gone 7 and OKC would've had a chance to win.

We Should be Able to Say This: The flipside is that we should be able to say that Durant underperformed in six games without making any controversial, sweeping statements about his ability or career prospects. Durant is a fantastic player and there is a lot to like about his game and the way he handles himself. He just didn't get it done this year.

We should also give Ron Artest some credit here – I hated the Ariza for Artest swap for LA. Ariza is younger, on an upward trajectory, and much less likely to tells stories about guys getting impaled by table legs while playing pickup ball. Long term, I think LA will still regret the moves, but in round 1 Artest was a difference-maker on the defensive end. His shot selection still leaves something to be desired though.

Is it OK to say This? (#2): The Cavs' crowd sucks. I know it's a tortured fan base and we're supposed to have all this sympathy for them because of their sports history and the fact that they live in a declining rust belt city. Don't care – their crowd is awful. It's not loud, it's not pro-active, it never gives energy to the team when they need a lift. Even on big possessions, the piped in robot man saying "Defense" is 5 times louder than the fans. I do enjoy their PA announcer though - the effort he puts into trying to sound unenthusiastic and despondent when announcing opposing scores is truly impressive. The Super Mario power up sound effects after Cavs free throws is also a nice touch.

Caps: Although Washington's loss in the playoffs is a major upset, it shouldn't be considered a massive shock. Prior to game 7, I was curious about whether a Caps loss could be considered the biggest upset in NHL history. Since they won the President's Trophy with a ridiculous 121 points I figured there's a good chance that they could be the most successful regular season team to lose in the first round in some time. Wrong. Detroit racked up 124 points in 2006 and lost to Edmonton in the first round. In fact, three of the five President's Trophy winners since the lockout haven't made it out of round 1.

The point –This is hockey and these things happen. People might want to attribute some reasoning to their loss – that they're not tough enough, they don't defend well enough, weak goaltending, etc. There may be some truth in some of those reasons, but it's easier (and more accurate in my opinion) to explain it with chance. Post-season hockey has significantly more randomness than the NBA, which is the closest analog in regular and post-season structure. The Caps shouldn't overreact to this series by cleaning house or making major changes to their style of play. And it wasn't really the defense that cost them. 1,1,1. These are the number of goals that Washington scored in the last three games of the series (they scored 2 in their game 1 loss). 6,5,6. These are the number of goals that they scored in their wins in games 2-4. Simply put, Washington ran into a hot goaltender and some pucks that would normally find the back of the net just didn't get there. Eventually they will and if they keep this core together, they'll eventually find playoff success.

Today's Hockey Guy to Know About to Make You Sound Like You Know About Hockey: Joe Pavelski. Center for the Sharks and Team USA. First player to score multiple goals in three consecutive playoff games since Mario Lemieux. Has been the best player on the ice against Detroit, leading San Jose to a 2-0 lead.

It's playoff time, enjoy the ride.

Greg...Muscle Milk...A Long Overdue Marriage of Ribaldry and Convenience

2010-05-03T13:04:00.001-04:00

Zorn: Retrospective. Maybe The Worst NFL Hire of All Time?

2010-04-28T09:38:00.002-04:00

When an NFL team starts to flounder, accusations of coaching incompetence are often not far off. However, most reasonable people’s first inclination is to think “I’m sure its not really as bad as the media or disgruntled players try to make it out to be.”

When he was hired, Jim Zorn had never been a coordinator, let alone a head coach at any level. Many around the league expressed sentiments ranging from concern to incredulity that the Redskins would make Zorn their new head coach. Most notable, Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News, who had spent significant time with Zorn over his years as an assistant, wrote an article entitled “Probably the Worst NFL Hire of All Time” about Zorn getting the Skins nod. I’ll won't spoil the article for you, but you may not be surprised to hear that Kawakami is not particularly high on Zorn.

Now that Zorn is in the Skins rearview mirror and we are fully immersed in Mike Shanahan’s glass-eyed gazes and Draconian rules, some of the veterans are starting to share their thoughts on the circus that was the last two seasons.

On his was out the door to the Bay Area, Jason Campbell took some thinly veiled shots at Zorn, citing a lack of leadership, organization or structure. He also made clear that the offense they were running was less than optimal.

Then yesterday, Chris Cooley went on the Sports Junkies and decided to delightfully furnish us with the details. In short, Cooley described a Redskins offense that was painfully, criminally simple. He said in the entire playbook last year, he had to learn a grand total of seven passing route. In addition, he said that each play in the playbook was run out of the same formation every time. Here’s the exact quote:

"We were in bad shape last year, from the top down. This offense is just a little more advanced from the last offense," he said. "We don't run the same plays out of the same formations every time. Last year I ran like seven routes, total.” He said his lasting memory of the Zorn era will be "how bad we honestly were," calling last year's team "a pure disaster" and "an embarrassment."

Grading the Draft…2001

2010-04-26T15:47:00.001-04:00

Pat Kirwan, a solid analyst, has the misfortune of being one of the few writers with an easily accessible draft review from 2001. In fairness, he basically liked every pick and didn't make too many outlandish statements. The worst things he says about any of the players are along of "received mixed reviews" and "an interesting pick." He also correctly panned a few 2^nd round picks, so overall it's about as good a draft grade column as one could reasonable expect. Plus, it was a relatively strong draft, but it did have its share of busts and it's a reminder that we know nothing about how the draft will pan out. Also it's kind of fun to see some of the names. Here are the cherry-picked worst reviews from the first round:

3: Cleveland Browns | Gerard Warren | DT | Florida Gators
The people I've spoken to over the last month said he was the best defensive tackle in this draft. Once again, in a draft with a lot of people with similar grades, think big, and the next team did the same. The Cleveland Browns need offensive weapons but were also last against the run last season. Warren will help, he can play in a 2-gap scheme because of his quickness or a 1-gap scheme because he's 323 pounds. He can rush the passer and collapse the pocket. Some say he's not Warren Sapp but it doesn't matter. For the Browns, he could be everything Corey Simon was for the Eagles. Last year, the Eagles needed a receiver and they took a defensive tackle in the first round. This year, Warren will have more sacks inside than last year's defensive tackle starters combined. The Baltimore Ravens have popularized two big defensive tackles inside if you want a very good defense. Cleveland is on its way.

4: Cincinnati Bengals | Justin Smith | DE | Missouri Tigers
A coach's dream. He will be on the field for every passing situation as a rookie and with 10 more pounds, could stay on the field for all downs. Some teams are concerned about his lower body bulk but his motor and his technique should overcome that. The Cincinnati Bengals wanted a guy with high character and a big-time motor and they got one in Justin Smith. There is some concern about his short arms, like there was with Patrick Kearney, who Atlanta took in the first round a couple of years ago. He will be at least a Chad Bratzke and maybe more. His 4.58 40 is rare for a defensive end and he puts that to good use every snap.

8: Chicago Bears | David Terrell | WR | Michigan Wolverines
The Bears decided they needed to give Cade McNown more weapons. Terrell will do that for them. Instantly, they have a big red-zone threat on the fade route. He is a faster Keyshawn Johnson. He brings firepower to a weak offense and will open up the running game. I know the Bears thought long and hard about Andre Carter and San Francisco's move ahead made the decision easy. There was no concern on the Bears' part about Terrell's less than spectacular campus workout. He has a controversial foot injury that he has already played with. At some point it may have to get addressed but at this time he was healthy enough to go this high in the draft.

10: Green Bay Packers | Jamal Reynolds | DE | Florida St. SeminolesThere were those who felt Jamal was as good or better than Justin Smith or Andre Carter during the season. This year, Carter said he kept an eye on Reynolds' sack totals. He has put on weight but he has to make sure not to lose his quickness. Ed Donatell knows how to play an undersized right defensive end. He has had Jeff Lageman with the Jets at 265 pounds and Alfred Williams with the Broncos at 255 pounds. The Green Bay defensive line has needed to be rebuilt since Reggie White retired. This is the first solid step in doing it. I thought they were going to trade up, but sitting still and getting Reynolds is good for the Packers' defense. He plays well with his hands and when he disengages from blockers, he has a second gear to close on the quarterback. Reynolds could become as productive as a Robert Porcher in a year or two.

9: Seattle Seahawks | Koren Robinson | WR | North Carolina St. Wolfpack
A tremendous young talent that was ranked ahead of David Terrell on a number of boards. Not for what he's done but what he's capable of doing in the future. Seattle, among others, was not concerned about his 4.6 40 time. They know he's faster than that. They believe that trying to run the 40 with a sore hamstring as a sign of toughness. He catches the ball away from his body with his hands, and will be extremely dangerous in the open field. Look for him to catch the quick slant and take off like Jerry Rice did when he was younger. Seattle rebuilt its defense in free agency and, with multiple first-round picks and extra picks gained in the move down with San Francisco, can really change this football team this year.

15: Washington Redskins | Rod Gardner | WR | Clemson Tigers
He emerged as the third-best receiver on most boards. He's a big athletic wideout who will team with Michael Westbrook to give the Redskins a good receiver corps. They needed to draft a receiver after losing Albert Connell and James Thrash to free agency and Andre Reed and Irving Fryar to retirement. There was a sentiment that they would take one of the Michigan linemen, so in some sense it was a surprise at this point in the draft. Gardner has the speed and the range to be a very good weapon with strong-armed Jeff George throwing. Watch him on the deep balls.

20: St. Louis Rams | Adam Archuleta | S | Arizona St. Sun Devils
Many defensive coordinators told me he was the best defensive prospect in this draft. He will have no trouble in the transition from outside linebacker to safety, he looked very natural at the Senior Bowl. He has great measurables, and one highly respected coordinator told me he has a shot at the Pro bowl this year or the year after. Some might think that he was chosen early, but in the last four days I started to think he might go as high as 15. This Rams defense got so much better with the last two picks. With another one still to go, they could be completely fixed today.

25: Philadelphia Eagles | Freddie Mitchell | WR | UCLA Bruins
At one point was considered a second-round pick but a 4.4 40 got him in the first round. The Eagles really liked him and would've been disappointed if he were taken prior to 25. He was their guy and will do a tremendous job. He's polished and has the capability to make a big play after catching the ball. He has shown great body control working the sidelines.

In my searches, I found Peter King's 2001 draft grades and I couldn't find a mistake among any of his evaluations…and I really wanted to. I mean…he nailed just about every single one with the exception of Michael Vick. How is this possible? It's Peter King, right? Then I saw that the article was written in 2006.

Grading the Draft...The Year 2000

2010-04-24T15:22:00.001-04:00

CNN/Sports Illustrated's Bob Lorenz talked with CNNSI.com football analyst Trev Alberts about his thoughts on the first round of the 2000 NFL Draft.

Bob Lorenz: Draft day as we know make millionaires, breaks some hearts and leaves you scratching your head, too, Trev. Give us some impressions of what happened early in the draft.

Trev Alberts: Well you know, Bob, early in the draft, in my opinion, if you're going to pick in the top 5 of the draft you better get a playmaker. That's my opinion, and that's why I thought Peter Warrick should've been the No. 1 player taken in the draft. In my opinion he's the best playmaker to come out since Deion Sanders.

Then with the third pick the Washington Redskins took an offensive tackle. Sure Samuels is a good offensive tackle, but you have to pay the guy $9 million up front, and then $4 million per year -- this is a guy who just blocks people. And then the biggest no-brainer of the day: Baltimore taking Jamal Lewis. Bob, this is a guy that, no doubt about it, if he goes back to Tennessee for his senior year he isn't going to even start. Travis Henry had effectively beaten this guy out. Now, all of a sudden, he's the fifth pick, simply because he runs a 4.3 40. A horrible pick.

How Many Backflips Can Your First Round Pick Do?

2010-04-23T08:13:00.000-04:00

Some random draft related thoughts

2010-04-22T12:50:00.002-04:00

*It seems like Suh and Berry are the only consensus zero risk picks in the top 10. I haven’t heard a negative mentioned for either of them. If the Skins get Berry at 4 and make some trades to get Bruce Campbell or Williams or Balaga in the late first early second, I’d be pleased.

*Holding the first round by itself on Thursday night is annoying logistically, but it will likely make for much more interesting second and third rounds. I would think there will be a significant uptick in trades prior to round two given all the extra time to stew and reevaluate what’s left.

*While I support Goodell’s handling of the Roethlisberger situation, I think it’s interesting to consider that the NFL’s behavior in this instance is unlike that of almost any other employer in a similar situation. Roethlisberger has been convicted of no crime, and while his behavior has placed him in a series of bad situations, you still have to make a minor leap to say that he clearly and discernibly has acted irresponsibly. Most employers would be petrified to take action in such a case, as they would almost certainly be sued by the employee. In this case, a suit by Roethlisberger would only draw further attention to the details surrounding the accusations and Goodell knew that, which enabled him to levy the punishment.

*Has the NFC East ever been more of a crapshoot than it is this year? Who’s the best team? Who’s the worst? I could see the Redskins winning 5 games or 10. Same goes for the Eagles.

*The excitement over the NFL schedule release is a joke. Remember the opening Thursday night game last year—Titans @ Steelers—a probable AFC Championship preview? Or, as it turned out, two teams that missed the playoffs.

*Jon Gruden’s QB draft special had some enjoyable moments. I particularly liked when he asked Colt McCoy if he was 5”10 or 5”10 and a half? Also interesting was everytime he showed a clip of a Jimmy Clausen interception and he asked Clausen “What happened here?” Almost every answer was some form of “receiver ran the wrong route.” Stand up guy…

*Guy who won’t get drafted tonight who I think will have a big rookie impact: Dexter McCluster

*I’ve heard enough blather about Toby Gearhart not getting drafted high enough because he’s white. Bull. Shit. He’s not getting drafted particularly high because people are concerned he won’t be a very good NFL player. I think those people are right.

*I hope Berman can refrain from announcing who the pick is 3 seconds before Goodell does tonight—an annual tradition I could do without.

*LaRon Landry may be moving to linebacker for the Redskins. He came into camp with 20 added pounds of muscle and said he is probably making the move on the Lavar Arrington Show. I’m ok with that. I prefer to watch him suck in coverage against tight ends instead of WR’s for a few games.

A Children's Treasury of the Pictures Adorning the Walls of the Redskins Draft War Room

2010-04-22T09:44:00.006-04:00

Assorted Draft Musings

2010-04-15T15:57:00.003-04:00

UPDATE:

On Me Being a Moron

For some reason I thought the draft was tonight. It's actually next Thursday. This is one of the more embarrassing gaffes of my career.

----------------------------------------------------------

On Drafting Quarterbacks

What we know about the NFL and QBs:

There is nothing more critical to the success of a team than the QB
Projecting QBs from college to the NFL is very difficult
Highly drafted QBs get a lot of money
QBs generally take longer to reach their potential than any other position

It really is a dilemma, needing a QB and having a high draft choice. The upside of having an elite QB is well-documented and well-understood. And the case can certainly be made that the best place to find an elite QB is near the top of the draft. What is less-documented is the downside of selecting a QB at the top of the draft. A QB is almost a marriage-level decision for GMs and coaches. Draft a QB in the 1^st round and you have to play him until he proves that he can't play. Put a lousy QB behind center for a few years and you'll have racked up the losses and are on the way to the unemployment line. It's a different experience than drafting a player at any other position. .Spend a high draft pick on a guy like Troy Williamson or Dewayne Robertson and you just put them into a rotation and let better players get more snaps. Eventually they filter out of the system and the reaction is that "we missed an opportunity to improve the team" rather than "it sure was a nightmare having JP Losman behind center". QB is the only position where you can't go halfway. Get JaMarcus Russell and you lose until you cut the cord. Get Peyton Manning and you win until he's 40 years old.

It's my opinion that teams often weigh the reward element of this equation much greater than they do the risk. They see the upside of the player. They know the benefits of having an elite QB. And they do perform due diligence on every player, breaking down all of their deficiencies in arguably too much detail. What they fail to consider, or perhaps just fail to refuse to properly weigh, is the organizational downside of a QB that doesn't pan out, especially when compared to the prospects of drafting another player.

To boil it down, they choose a QB who might grade out as a 7 over a DT who clearly is a 10. Maybe that's the right decision because QB is a much more important position. The thing they seem to miss is that there's a reasonable chance that the 7 QB actually plays like a 4 or 5 (at least for a few years), while the DT will in all likelihood only bottom out around 7.5. If that QB plays like a 4, you've got a bad pick, a bad team, and you missed a chance to pick up a very good DT. Plus you're paying a ridiculous amount of money. This has been happening over and over in recent drafts – 9 of the past 12 overall #1 picks have been QBs (Manning, Couch, Vick, Carr, Palmer, Manning, Smith, Russell, Stafford). It's simply not possible that the QB was the highest rated player that frequently.

Obviously this year is the perfect illustration of this scenario. All year long we heard that N* Suh is the #1 NFL prospect and the best player in college football regardless of position. He's got it all and it would be surprising to most if he didn't perform at a relatively high level right out of the gate. Suh's collective foil is a handful of QBs that have a lot to like about their games and some major question marks, of which Sam Bradford has risen to the top. Bradford may very well turn out to be a great QB – he's certainly an updated version of the hunky slightly-ethnic "face of the franchise" that was so successful last year. But Suh is a sure thing and an impact DT is a valuable piece.

A slightly unrelated idea: How about drafting a QB before you actually need him to start? It worked out well for Green Bay. Why wait until you're absolutely forced to pick a guy that you might not even like that much and have to throw him into the fire during his rookie year. I'm looking at you, Minnesota.

On Drafting Tim Tebow

Seeing as "do you think Tim Tebow will be a good NFL QB" has been common question in sporting circles the last few years and I'm a guy who's frequently on the business end of sports questions, this is something that I've heard many times. My short answer: No. I think it's unlikely that Tebow is ever an above average starting NFL QB and I wouldn't be happy if my team tied their future to him with a first round pick. When projecting Tebow forward, all the intangibles and prayers in the world can't overcome his combination of weaknesses and unknowns. Now of course he COULD end up being good, but right now we're placing bets on what we think the likely outcomes are and right now Tebow hasn't played QB under center, hasn't shown an NFL-caliber release, and most underrated-ly hasn't shown the ability to orchestrate an intermediate passing game. Tebow was a master of Florida's offense, which was almost entirely comprised of short screen-type passes and bombs, neither of which require significant reading of the defense. While Tebow may have had to read a safety on a deep ball or a DE on the plays near the LoS, he rarely had to run plays where he accounted for multiple defensive players. On intermediate routes, which are crucial to an NFL offense, the QB must be aware of several defenders and making a mistake on any of them can result in an interception. Can Tebow do this and deliver an accurate ball on a consistent basis? Maybe. Would you want to gamble your professional future on it?

This may sound self-evident, but if a team drafts Tim Tebow in the first round, they have to commit to the whole Tim Tebow experience (on the field). He's your new QB. He's your new most important person in your organization, and you need to tailor all your operations to put him in position to succeed. This means that if you run a west coast offense, you have to modify it. This means that you have to draw up some new ball plays and tear a bunch of your old ones out of the playbook. This means that you have to let him run the ball a little bit. It means that you have to get a backup QB who can play in this new system (this should be the easiest thing in the world, as college football is producing no shortage of spread QBs with legs). Tennessee has done this for Vince Young, and insanity aside, it's worked a little bit. If they had put Vince Young in the Colts offense, he would've failed, insanity or not.

On the Thursday Draft

It's awful. Why change something that works? The draft should start in the early afternoon on Saturday. We all liked it – what's the problem? I'm not prepared for this at all.

On the Draft as a Whole

I can't believe it's been two years since I wrote my post about losing interest in the draft. Where does the time go? And how about this weather? And I'm really looking forward to the weekend. The same principles apply to this year's draft, possibly even more so. I've come to the realization that I have no real ability to predict which college players are going to be good NFL players, so I've stopped trying.

On the Giants

Jerry Reese seems to go into a draft looking at particular positions of need and selecting the top available player at that position in the first round: Hakeem Nicks, Kenny Phillips, and Aaron Ross fit the bill. For this reason, I'd expect them to take Rolando McClain. Or possibly "Weatherspoon" (whoever he is). Regardless, I'm not going to get too high or low about it. I'm looking forward to having a few new guys to watch and I hope they end up being really super awesome NFL players.

Who I’m Rooting For -- NHL

2010-04-13T21:29:00.001-04:00

The NHL playoffs begin on Wednesday and several thousand people are intensely interested. Millions of others will take no notice. My hockey expertise is heavily concentrated in a team that's busy making tee-times at the moment so I'm unable to provide much insight here, but I feel like the event should be acknowledged and what better way to do it than through a spectrum of juvenile nonsense, namely telling all of you which team I would prefer to see win. The one value added component that I'll provide is the odds of each team winning the series.

#1 Washington (-600) vs. Montreal (+450): The Caps are the most exciting team in the NHL and there's little to dislike about the team. They're fun to watch, they have few, if any, unsavory characters, and they're damn fun to watch. I'll be rooting against the Caps to win the Stanley Cup because of the fans – they'll show up if the team is really good, really exciting, and they have the best and most exciting player in the league. Die hard…since 2007. Nonetheless, the playoffs are a far better product if the Caps are involved, so I'll be pulling for them against a non-descript Canadiens team.

#2 New Jersey (-230) vs. Philadelphia (+210): For what it's worth, the Flyers won 5 of 6 against the Devils this year. I actually do know a thing or two about these teams and I'd rate this series as a toss-up so there might be some value here for the enterprising individual. Neither of these teams is a favorite of mine, but I'll be pulling for New Jersey, as my hatred of the Devils has substantially subsided during my years away.

#3 Buffalo (-165) vs. Boston (+145): I'm all in for the Buffalo Sabres. It's a city that could use some luck. They've got an American hero between the pipes. It's a real hockey place. What's not to like here? I'd love to see the Cup in Buffalo.

#4 Pittsburgh (-275) vs. Ottawa (+250): The bookmakers aren't giving much love to the Senators, nor should they. Classic playoff underachievers against the defending Stanley Cup champs. I don't think there's any doubt where my loyalties lie here. While I don't have much hope for an Ottawa victory, I can at least hope for Sidney to get battered and bloodied and whine and bitch like the little douchebag that he is.

#1 San Jose (-375) vs. Colorado (+335): While my rooting interests are generally with traditional teams in hockey hotbeds, I'm going with California and teal uniforms in this one. The Sharks have been an excellent team for most of the decade (5 straight seasons with 99 or more points) and haven't been able to back it up with successful post-seasons, only reaching the conference finals once. It's good for the playoffs for good teams to advance, so let's hope San Jose can get it together.

#2 Chicago (-390) vs. Nashville (+320): From a neutral perspective, the Blackhawks have it all – great young players, exciting style of play, excellent uniforms, solid tradition, a fresh start after recent tough times. Nashville has…well, none of that. Chicago is my choice to come out of the West.

#3 Vancouver (-250) vs. Los Angeles: It's big. Beautiful. Cosmopolitan. It doesn't get more west coast than this. Some call it British Columbia. We call it. Home. British Columbia 2010. Ya gotta be here.

#4 Phoenix (+170) vs. Detroit (-185): Nobody is rooting for the Coyotes in this series. Not even people in Phoenix.

Evidently the underpants gnomes at NFL headquarters have moved the draft up to Thursday night, something that wasn't beknownst to me until earlier this week. Obviously this is a major chance, and as such, I don't care for it one bit. Nevertheless I'll be doing my duty to try to get some thoughts up prior to the Rams making a huge mistake by passing on N* Suh.

This Week in Juvenile Insults

2010-04-13T09:24:00.000-04:00

My affinity for Louis CK's insult "Go suck a bag of dicks" is well documented in these parts.

There's something I just can't put my finger on (latent gayness?) that makes it so appealing. When someone is being a Grade A douchenozzle, nothing fits the bill like "go suck a bag of dicks." Well...that was until Ice T took it to the next level this weekend:

Singer Aimee Mann complained on her official Twitterfeed about Ice-T's acting abilities, writing: "Christ, there is no reason in the world anyone should ever have cast Ice T in a television show."

Ice-T retaliated via Twitter as well:

"Hey @aimeemann, stop worrying bout my acting bitch, and worry about your WACK ass music. In the mean time... Eat a hot bowl of Dicks!"

Indeed--eat said bowl Ms. Mann. Kudos to Ice T. The next person who incurs my wrath will be invited to consume a similar warm bowl of male genitalia post haste.

A Little Common Sense, Please

2010-04-12T11:31:00.001-04:00

First, congratulations and thanks to Tiger Woods for stringing together four rounds of golf that present no slam-dunk gossip angle for lazy sports-talk hacks to gravitate towards. He didn't choke. He didn't win. He just played a solid tournament and generally looked exactly how he should've looked – like a rusty version of the best golfer in the world.

Futile Requests: Can we just stop it with the "pressure" of being Tiger Woods? Yes, Tiger was under a tremendous amount of scrutiny this week. He was also in the most comfortable place in the world for him (the golf course) doing the thing he does better than any other (play golf). Did Tiger have to deal with distractions? Of course. Guess what, Phil Mickelson's wife has cancer. How's that for a "distraction". There are probably dozens of other guys in the field who have various things happening in their off the course lives that none of us ever hear about because 1) they're not as famous as Tiger and 2) reporting on them doesn't allow for cleavage to be splashed across the front page of the NY Post. Tiger Woods is a golfer. He played golf this week. He played well. He also screwed a bunch of women that aren't his wife. Just like lots of other pro athletes. This isn't special. "Hey Patrick Jeffers, you caught 4 balls for 42 yards – how did you manage to keep it together the week after some guy on a message board claimed that your cornholed Bonnie Bernstein?"

And while we're at it – I'm pretty sure that I'm in the majority when I say that I don't give a damn if Tiger Woods yells at himself after a bad shot. Somehow Tiger being a sex-fiend opens the door for Peter Kostis to be a condescending life coach in a post-match interview? Come on.

I'm happy for Phil and I was rooting for him, but that shot on 13 was a terrible decision.

Lionel Messi is just absurd – Four goals against Arsenal in midweek to send Barcelona to the Champions League semifinals. A goal on Saturday against Real Madrid to take command of La Liga. 35 goals in 33 League/Champions League games this year.

The world has run out of accolades for Messi. He's brilliant. He magical. He's the best player in the world. He might end up being the best player of all-time. We're going to need some more words if he keeps up this level of play. During the Real Madrid game, the insane Scottish commentator described him as 'not bothered by the weight of his own shadow', a 'werewolf', a 'zombie', a 'rabbit', an 'extra-terrestrial', and as being in possession of 'ceramic Ferrari brakes'. Most memorably we were told that his dribbling skills were such that 'if he were surrounded by alligators, he'd get out without a scratch'. My favorite was after his goal -- "He doesn't exist in a world of X's and O's" …(where is he going with this)… "He doesn't exist in the world of the tactical. He can't be defined in the world of the technical" (seriously…) "Lionel Messi, he only exists in a magnetic spectrum of genius."

Nice start for the Mets – win 2 of the first 6 at home against the Marlins and Nats. No regrets on dropping the baseball package. Please fire everybody ASAP. Thanks. When you're done, send that message over to the Rangers.

The Redskins Continue to Equate Draft Picks to A Bag of Magic Beans

2010-04-06T14:30:00.005-04:00

This post will be 69% more negative than normal as I only got 1 hour of sleep last night…or more appropriately this morning. I won’t bore you with the details…just think “twins” and “teething”… ok, and I better throw "G rating” in there for the Greg’s and Igor’s of the world.

Now that the Redskins have done something of note for the first time since the end of their inglorious 2009 campaign, I guess its time for me to start playing ball around these parts again.

I thought it was apropos that McNabb flew into BWI yesterday. Like many of this passes, this flight just couldn’t make it all the way to its intended target. Generally, I’ve been teetering back and forth between “I fucking hate this move and this team” and “I guess it’ll be better than the flaccid offensive shitshow I’ve suffered through the last few years.”

Why this move is stupid
1. You are giving up a 2nd this year and (most likely) a 3rd next year on a team not remotely built to “win now”
2. You took a QB who complained for years that he didn’t have enough weapons on offense to win, and you brought him to a team with less weapons
3. The offensive line is currently comprised of three folding chairs, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Stephon Heyer
4. McNabb has missed 15 games due to injury since 2007
5. At best he gives you three “good” seasons. At worst, zero.

So, from that perspective this move sounds like what we professional types refer to as “less than optimal.” So, could it work out? Is this Favre to the Vikings, or is it Farve to the Jets? Or is it Cutler to the Bears? Or is it Brunell to the Redskins? Or, is it Gary Cherone to Van Halen? You got me.

Let’s play out a couple scenarios on how the Redskins season could go.

Scenario #1: The Snyder Nocturnal Emission: The Skins draft Okung at #4 and he’s the goods. They trade for Brandon Marshall. The switch to the 3-4 defense turns Brian Orakpo into Lawrence Taylor and the Skins defense is top 5 in the league. The Redskins win 10 or 11 games and host a home playoff game for the first time this millennium.

Scenario #2: Albert Brooks Doing the Nightly News: The Skins draft Jimmy Clausen at #4, saying he’ll take over the reigns in 2013. The offensive line remains a disaster. McNabb is inaccurate, old and surprisingly unathletic. The defense struggles to grasp the 3-4. Haynesworth is locker room cancer. Laron Landry gets accused of sexual assault…during a play on which he was being burned by a double move for a TD. Willie Parker takes on the role of beating Larry Johnson’s girlfriend “on passing downs only.” Kyle Shanahan’s raise unwittingly subjects him to the Alternative Minimum Tax. The Redskins go 3-13 in 2010. Jimmy Clausen replaces McNabb at QB in 2012. He then replaces the hand warmer QB’s wear around their waist with a mini bag full of dicks, which he sucks during key plays. Mike Shanahan’s car will require a new alternator belt. The 2013 Skins go 1-15.

Scenario #3: What I Think Will Happen: The Skins will draft Okung. McNabb will struggle early and the Skins offense will be average (in the 14-18 range in the league). The defense will be a top 10 unit. The Skins will win about 8 games in year one. In 2012 they’ll make some major moves, grabbing a big name WR and drafting a quarterback. They’ll miss the playoffs again in 2012 and begin full-fledged rebuilding in 2013 with the new QB. I’ll also throw this out there—it feels like the Skins are a favorite to end up with Tebow as well.

The Most Lopsided Rooting Distribution of All-Time...

2010-04-05T13:09:00.002-04:00

...and once again I'm playing the contrarian.

The complete list of people rooting for Duke tonight:

- Anybody associated with the Duke basketball program
- Almost everybody associated with Duke University (presumably there are a few hipster students who are too cool to root for their own school and their adult equivalents in the faculty)
- Around 5 people in every pool in the country (depending on # of payouts)
- Super hard-core contrarians. I'm not entirely sure that this group exists, but there's probably a few people out there that want to see the great story of Butler go down the tubes

I am a proud member of that third group. My 20 year March Madness drought will end with a Duke victory tonight.

There is no doubt in my mind that outside of Team USA events, this game will have the largest percentage of viewers rooting for one team out of any game...maybe ever. Butler really is the ultimate Cinderella -- the school that nobody's ever heard of, the Hoosiers gym, the hometown Final Four, the white guys -- they've got it all. On the flip side, Duke is probably the most hated team in all of sports. While their counterparts in other sports -- Yankees, Cowboys, Notre Dame -- generate similar levels of ire, those team are arguably the most popular in their sports, so they've got plenty of people rooting for them. Duke doesn't really have any fans at all, but everybody still hates them.

Let's go Duke.

My initial take on the McNabb deal -- I can't picture him in a Redskins uniform at all. It just doesn't seem right. So I just don't see it working out.

Olympics Week Two

2010-03-25T10:58:00.000-04:00

...was awesome. Discuss.

Olympics Week One

2010-02-18T20:15:00.004-05:00

Tough call on whether to write about the Olympics or the NBA trade deadline. Both are interesting and weird in their own way and there are major aspects of both that make no sense at all to the general sporting public. We'll start with the Olympics and see where we end up.

- I didn't know that such a thing as "the perfect voice for curling" existed before listening to the analyst for NBC's coverage

- Overall, the announcers are impressive -- they have shocking reservoirs of knowledge about these obscure sports. It's remarkable to me that Americans can stay on top of the world scene of biathlon or ski jumping. Of course it's also remarkable to me that these sports have fans, media coverage, prize money, etc.

- Most surprising might be the level of commentary on the radical sports - the guys doing the moguls and snowboarding competitions were articulate, knowledgeable and were generally capable of speaking like real business people rather than stoner punks.

- I know we're all ignorant Americans that can't possibly comprehend the complexities of the metric system, but I don't think I'm expressing too much confidence in our collective intelligence level when I say that we don't need all measurements dumbed down to the unit of "football fields". No exaggeration, I've probably heard the "football field" crutch upwards of 30 times this week.

- Luge - With all due respect to the guy who died, the luge committee went way overboard in shortening the course. The mens start was moved to the ladies start and the ladies start was moved to the juniors start. Apparently this completely screwed up the competitors, as they'd spent quite a bit of time preparing for the original courses. Initially the ladies were supposed to start on a straightaway, but after the course was shortened by "three football fields" they started on a curve, which evidently makes a massive difference.

- #1 Hero - Shaun White. I LOVE this guy. Not only is he unbelievably good, he's unbelievably clutch. On his last run when he was going for some crazy trick that nobody ever does, he was losing some speed going into it, but I still had no doubt in my mind that he'd nail it. And he did. Plus his interviews are outstanding - funny, thoughtful, and doesn't resort to the generic platitudes we've become accustomed to. Radicalness, clutchness, enthusiasm, entertainment. We need more Shaun White in our lives. Just make up a 2nd half-pipe event or something.

- #1 Non-American Hero - Some Slovenian female cross-country skier. She crashed off the course into a ditch and came back to win the bronze medal. Turns out she had four broken ribs. Like I always say, they don't build'em any tougher than Slovenian chicks.

- #1 New Favorite Sport - Snowboard Cross - It's really got it all: racing, bumping, jumping, falling. So much more interesting than the timed sports. Honorable mention to short track speed skating.

- #1 American Goat - John Shuster - The American curling skipper has been choking his guts out all week. In 3 games he's had 4 shots to win games and botched them all. They weren't particularly difficult shots either. Send him home.

- Hockey - The preliminary rounds are essentially an exhibition, especially for the USA and Canada. Among the three groups, only Group B has any legitimate competition for advancement to the medal round. One of Russia/Czech/Slovakia will be eliminated in the preliminary round. Otherwise it will be USA/Canada in Group A and Sweden/Finland in Group C. I suppose it was nice of the committee to segment the groups by natural rivals among the top teams. USA vs. Canada should be fun on Sunday.

And finally, figure skating...I don't watch it...but I might if I had access to the Australian telecast...

As the pair discussed the men's figure skating, Molloy said, "They don't leave anything in the locker room, these blokes, do they?" before a sniggering McGuire interjected, adding: "They don't leave anything in the closet, either, do they?
Molloy was quick to jokily reprimand McGuire, warning him he could get into trouble.
The network then cut to an image of a skater wearing a tuxedo-style costume, which Molloy described as something even singer Prince would not wear.
The footage then showed a skater wearing a costume of overalls and a flannelette shirt with McGuire suggesting it was "a bit of 'Brokeback.'"
Molloy agreed, saying: "A bit of 'Brokeback Mountain' exercises, you can't wear that.
Then they went after Weir, whose pink-laced "onesie" suit has created a lot of buzz.
Later in the segment, Molloy apologised for that comment he had made on Tuesday night.
"I made a joke that was a bit off-colour. Some of the crew here didn't like it either," he said.
"I suggested that there was a disaster happening at the ice skating rink because organisers had found out one of the male ice dancers wasn't gay.
"And I apologise for that really sincerely."
But the apology was soon defunct as Molloy added "But it definitely wasn't this guy" before cutting to a shot of champion American figure skater Johnny Weir wearing a pink and black outfit and holding a heart-shaped cushion.

Some Offensive Soccer Songs

2010-02-11T10:10:00.003-05:00

The world of soccer songs is interesting, profane, witty, and offensive. Unfortunately, it's difficult to make out the words over TV unless you know exactly what to listen for. Over the years, I've developed a bit of an ear for it and can pick out maybe 25% of the songs during a game. Most of them are just chants of players names set to a melody or a few major songs that each fan base has in general support of their team. But there are a few that make me chuckle and that might make a lesser man cringe.

We'll start with a series of songs about Togolese striker Emmanuel Adebayor, formerly of Arsenal, currently of Man City. When he was bagging goals in North London, the Arsenal faithful took a common melody and set the following lame words to it:

Adebayor, Adebay-o-o-or
Give him the ball
And he will score

Pretty unimpressive, but it passed the time. After Adebayor left Arsenal under acrimonious circumstances, they replaced that song with this one, referencing midget forward Andrei Arshavin.

He's five foot four, he's five foot fo-o-our
We've got Arshavin
F*ck Adebayor

Again, not too interesting, but it is nice hear the clear profanity broadcast worldwide. Meanwhile, a group of enterprising fans at Tottenham and probably a few other places who were not too fond of Adebayor came up with this one...a little more edgy

Adebayor, Adebay-o-o-or
His dad washes elephants
His mum's a whore

If you're listening for it, you can hear this clearly in handful of stadiums around the Premiership. It's pretty outrageous, and it was particularly interesting reading some of the fan websites debating whether this song was "racist" or just "anti-African."

Arguably as offensive is this one, a song that Manchester United fans have been singing about Arsene Wenger for years:

(to the tune of Winter Wonderland)

There's only one Arsene Wenger
Only one Arsene Wenger
With a packet of sweets and a cheeky smile
Wenger is a f*king pedophile

It's so popular that it was even included on a CD of Manchester United chants that was released by a fan group. This ended in mild controversy, as some major retailers ended up pulling the CD after complaints by Arsenal fans and the general populace of right-minded people.

And finally, the front-runner for song of 2010 - after it was revealed that John Terry was sleeping with the girlfriend (and baby mama) of former teammate Wayne Bridge, pretty much every fan with a brain came up with this one:

(to the tune of London Bridge)

Mrs. Bridge is going down, going down, going down
Mrs. Bridge is going down
On John Terry

It's a bit of a no-brainer lay-up, but it just works so well and you'll hear it during every Man City game (Bridge's current team) for the rest of the year.

Save Us Drew Brees

2010-02-09T15:19:00.002-05:00

At this point he's the only known antidote for natural disasters, and we're approaching that level here in the DC Metro area. At the very least maybe he could donate some money so that my condo association can hire a competent plow crew.

Sometimes when I'm stumped for material, I scan the headlines at ESPN.com. Evidently we're either in a bit of a rut, or they need some better news compilers. See for yourself, it's a nightmare.

Here's an interesting story chronicling how the Arizona basketball program got itself into hot water at the tail end of the Lute Olsen era. And by "interesting" I mean kind of dull, inside baseball detail-rich stuff, but it's "newsy" and certainly more worthwhile material than reading John McEnroe's compliments of Roger Federer. The short story is that Arizona "unofficially" sponsored a major AAU tournament in Tucson, allowing the best basketball players in the country to visit their campus and "unofficially" cross paths with U of A key figures. They also "unofficially" paid for hotel and meals, which were served in their Hall of Champions, allowing prospective recruits to dine in front of all of Arizona's trophies.

The thing is that most of this stuff wasn't explicitly illegal...it was just very very shady. And here's the contrarian point you've been waiting for -- the NCAA has an incredibly tough job. It's an organization that's a punching bag for media/fans, and rightfully so in some cases. But they also have to deal with a very large and geographically diverse group of bright, highly motivated people that are trying their best to bend every rule in the book without explicitly breaking one. This is just one story at one place -- the NCAA monitors hundreds of schools, thousands of teams, and all the associated hangers-on like boosters, web site owners, the whole AAU crowd, agents, etc. To make matters more difficult, the NCAA doesn't have any authority over most of the people in the latter group, many of whom have substantial resources at their disposal and aren't afraid to do some work in the ethically gray zone.

The average fan's contact with the NCAA machine is somewhat sporadic -- we hear about a guy like Dez Bryant being suspended for breaking a seemingly ridiculous rule and we become mildly irritated for a few minutes and then move on with our lives. The cumulative effect of these types of incidents is that we see the NCAA as a bumbling bureaucratic monstrosity that leverages the cheap labor of highly talented young people. There is a lot of truth to that point of view. But let's also keep in mind some of these ridiculous rules were probably written in response to some crazy scheme conjured up by some enterprising assistant or booster that we never heard about.

Super Bowl

2010-02-05T10:08:00.005-05:00

It's not much of a new story, but the prop bets I'm seeing for this year's Super Bowl are even more outrageous than anything I can remember

- You can get the Saints (-42.5) at 250:1
- You can get the game NOT going to a 2nd overtime and -12500. Bet $125 to win $1.
- 30 second increments for when the first score will occur

- Color of sports drink to soak winning coach: Yellow Gatorade (-110) Other (-130)

- Exact words HURRICANE KATRINA said live on CBS broadcast from kickoff until final whistle, KATRINA not proceeded by HURRICANE does not count: O/U 2.5

- Number of times the broadcast shows: Eli, Archie, Kardashian, Bourbon Street, South Beach, Dungy....

- Pete Townshend 360 degree windmill guitar move shown on CBS live during halftime show (O/U 5.5)

- Saints win and Bush/Kardashian engaged by 7/31/10 (+500)

- National Anthem O/U 102 seconds: +120/-150

- First sideline reporter to be shown: even between Wilcots and Tasker

- Super Bowl MVP thanks God first (+110)/thanks someone else first or doesn't thank anyone (-150)

Here are a couple of bets I like

- Drew Brees to win the MVP at 3:1. New Orleans is +175 to win the game and it seems likely that if they do win that Brees will be the MVP.

- Team to score first loses at +160. There should be lots of points scored, so there's good value here.

- Joseph Addai rushing attempts under 15.5 (-120)

- Yardage of longest TD score under 51.5 (-100)

- Both teams make a 37+ yard FG (+290)

There's actually too many of these and I'm getting bored going through them, since I'm not actually wagering here.

For your Super Bowl entertainment, a group game:

We ran a version of this during the Steelers-Seahawks Super Bowl and it worked out pretty well.

1) Everybody puts 1 betting unit into the pot
2) The objective is to select the player who will score next
3) Snake style draft with each person in the room selecting 2 players
4) If your player scores a TD, you win the pot
5) You can select a kicker, but a FG only wins half the pot AND if you pick a kicker, you don't get to pick another player
6) If nobody owns the player who scores, everybody re-antes and keeps the same players
6) If somebody owns the player who scores, re-ante and re-draft.
7) You may select a team defense, however this only applies to defensive scores, not special teams scores
8) First selection of the draft rotates through the room

For the game itself, I've got nothing to add: QBs, pressure the QBs, make big plays, protect the ball, special teams, intangibles, the city of New Orleans. You know the drill.

DC Bailouts and Other Thoughts

2010-02-01T12:35:00.004-05:00

Locals are surely hoping that the goodwill of the federal government in bailing out banks, bloated state governments, auto companies, mortgage holders (unfortunately not me), and just about anybody else who has made a bad decision in the past 50 years is spilling over to the world of sports. And they just might get their wish.

Uncapped Year

(bear in mind that some of the specifics below are probably wrong, but the overall message is probably right)

It seems unlikely that the NFL and the union will reach an agreement on a new CBA anytime soon and that 2010 will be an uncapped year, which in effect is a collection of odd rules that will have a moderate impact on the way that NFL teams do business. The phrase "uncapped year" sounds like it will initiate a free for all where guys like Dan Snyder and Jerry Jones get to fulfill their dreams of living like George Steinbrenner for one shining moment in time. I don't think that will be the case. The powers that be have some controls in place to prevent a crazy free agency period, the most prominent of which is the extension of the waiting period for players to become unrestricted free agents. If the uncapped year goes into effect, the players who have just completed their fifth season will not be free agents, as they would have in the old system. In most cases, these are the most desirable free agent targets, so the marketplace will consist mainly of players that get released this year and older guys who are seeking their 3rd contracts.

The biggest impact of the uncapped year is that it will allow teams to get out of bad contracts by releasing players. In the capped environment, when a team cuts a player the unamortized bonuses received by that player are accelerated into the current year's cap number. With no cap in 2010, this acceleration is meaningless.

And guess who owes absurd amounts of unamortized money to lots of players who aren't living up to their cap number? You got it, your Washington Redskins. The Dirt Worshippers have been pushing bonus money forward for years on the contracts of guys like Samuels and Portis (and probably many others). Samuels may be retiring and Portis is rapidly becoming unproductive on the field and undesirable off the field (to the team, not the ladies).

This frustrates me tremendously, not as much as someone who dislikes the Redskins, but more as someone who loves seeing people get their comeuppance. Dan Snyder has been at the helm for years and years of irresponsible decision making and the consequences of many of those decisions can be painlessly written off in 2010 because of what is essentially a legal loophole. The Redskins will be able to start relatively fresh, free of their salary cap debts. They'll still have a host of other issues, but they won't pay the price for their over-aggressive, irresponsible financial management.

Agent Zero

Most knowledgeable NBA people consider Gilbert Arenas to have the worst contract in the entire NBA. He's almost two years into a 6-year, $111 million deal. Since the end of the 06-07 season, Arenas has played a total of 47 games and hasn't been anywhere near the impact player that he was prior to his series of knee injuries. Even before the gun fiasco, his contract was completely untradable -- there was nothing the Wizards could possibly add to sweeten the pot enough to entice another team to take on the whatever-million dollars left on his deal.

Depending on a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo, it's possible -- although fairly unlikely -- that the Wizards would be able to void Arenas's contract. The positive impact this would have on the team might even surpass the benefits that the Redskins will receive from the uncapped year. With Arenas on the books, there is really no way for the Wizards to rebuild with a new core, which is something that they have to do if they want to become anything resembling a serious playoff contender. If they could void Arenas, they could easily trade Jamison and/or Butler and start fresh.

Unfortunately for the Wiz it seems unlikely that this will happen. Their best chance is if Arenas is sentenced to jail time during the season, forcing him to miss games. If that's the case, they'll have a strong argument in favor of voiding, however the timeline for his trial and sentencing isn't favorable.

Other Stuff

- The constant stream of "how to fix the Pro Bowl" ideas is actually worse than the Pro Bowl itself. It's not happening. The Pro Bowl sucks. It always sucked, and it always will suck. There's no way around this....she's a horse....deal with it.

- Paul Shirley got canned by ESPN and ripped by lots of people for his thoughts on Haiti. He probably deserved it because he put some objectionable stuff in there, but a lot of it was taken out of context to some degree. If there's one thing we should have learned in the past 20 years it's to be very delicate when presenting a controversial perspective on hot button issues and he failed miserably on that count. But it's also worth reading the entire piece because there are some interesting thoughts. He could've gotten the point across in a much less inflammatory manner with the removal of a couple of unnecessary lines and some substantial general smoothing. It's also a bit rambling and goes off point at several key junctures. A piece like that has to be air-tight, consistently on message, caveated to death, free of juicy one-liners. Anyone should have known better, especially a guy like Shirley who made his name writing about topics that require significant discretion. Just to keep myself safe, I'll add that Paul Shirley is an insensitive, selfish, racist scumbag.

- The other side of controversy: Is there anything more lame than the current PGA flap about the rules of wedge grooves?

The Story Is There's No Story

2010-01-20T21:54:00.002-05:00

I haven't written much (anything?) about the NFL Playoffs for three reasons: 1) Laziness, 2) The games have sucked, and 3) There's no consistent theme that induces commentary.

The theme of the regular season was fairly clear -- the passing game and great QBs. Sports Guy did a good job of pulling out the stats in his NFL preview column and I won't re-plow that ground here, but I think anybody who has watched the games recognizes this. Teams with great QBs were basically unstoppable and if they had any semblance of defense, those teams were almost unbeatable. Teams with bad QBs couldn't move the ball at all and had almost no chance to win unless they were facing equally crappy QBs. In the AFC, the top 3 seeds were the top 3 in points scored and none of them had any rushing attack to speak of. In fact the top 2 seeds had the 2 worst rushing averages in the league. In the NFC, the top 2 seeds were the top 2 offenses and both had excellent passing games (although their rushing games were better than their AFC counterparts).

Basically it boils down to: Passing yields points. Points yield wins. That was the NFL regular season and coming into the playoffs, that was my theme. I could manipulate the facts of the post-season support this hypothesis and it wouldn't be that much of a stretch, but it also wouldn't be entirely true. The Jets are the primary culprit in throwing the monkey wrench into this outlook and they have really really funked it up. Mark Sanchez was one of the worst non-JaMarcus QBs in the league this year and their entire team philosophy revolves around hiding him. Yet here they are in the conference championship game, playing the conservative offense/shutdown defense style that appeared to be extinct. They even beat San Diego's prolific passing attack to get there. The Ravens did the same thing in beating the Patriots and even the Colts kind of won with defense against Baltimore.

On the other hand, we can't say that the passing theory is completely dead either. We've seen the absurd shootout in Arizona, the success of New Orleans and Minnesota throwing the ball, and overall 3 of the 4 remaining teams are passing offenses (yes, Minnesota has been a passing team this year -- Peterson has been around 3.0 YPC over a long period of time). So my theme is not dead, but it's not fully supported. What else do we have?

Coaches: In the AFC we've got a rambunctious renegade who dresses like a butcher going on cruise and a team that's coached by its QB because the guy with the official title hasn't spoken all year. In the NFC we've got a hyper-aggressive offensive minded coach and I'm not even sure how to classify Brad Childress. I do know that Sports Guy's hatred of him makes no sense to me. Overall, not much of a theme.

On the subject of Sean Payton and no themes -- when Payton was with the Giants he was removed of his play-calling duties in 2002 with the explanation that he implemented too many formations and the offense was too complex. Jim Fassel took over the play-calling, made major simplifications, and the offense exploded in the 2nd half of the season, setting up the worst playoff game of all time. That's the same Jim Fassel who got fired by the Giants the next year, got fired as Baltimore's offensive coordinator, and won the UFL championship this year. Now Payton is the mastermind of a prolific offense and "football guys" consistently praise him for getting favorable mathcups with his multiple formation philosophy and complex schemes. And it's all true. Maybe Drew Brees is just a lot better than Kerry Collins.

Defensive Philosophies: The Colts play a vanilla defense. The Jets have a bunch of wild schemes and are powered by their exceptionally talented CB. The Vikings are weak at DB, but dominate up front. And the Saints...I don't really know....they have Darren Sharper. And the Vikings used to have Darren Sharper. And the Tribe made the semi-finals. There's a theme. Anybody know how Hermitage HS did this year?

Special Teams: The Vikings and Saints have electric return men. The Colts and Jets don't. The Jets also have the best post-season field goal defense of all-time, although I'm not sure if that's sustainable.

What's my point? I have no point. Or maybe my point is that if the Chargers had rolled the Jets then I could've written the post that I wanted to. Instead we have to say that we haven't learned much from the post-season so far, nor have we been entertained. Maybe the sample size is just too small to draw any meaningful conclusions.

Why Didn't You Get The Big One?

2010-01-14T13:16:00.002-05:00

Spotted on the metro today.

Don't ya hate pants?

2010-01-13T13:52:00.002-05:00

**I’m up at odd hours of the night with regularity these days, and I’d like to report back that Late Night with Jimmy Fallon is surprisingly enjoyable. I never much cared for Fallon on SNL, but the show is inventive and funny.

**Anyone else flummoxed by Charles Woodson winning defensive player of the year? Sure, he had a bunch of picks…but I’m just not seeing it. If you’re going to give it to a corner, why not Derrelle Revis? He’s the guy everyone talks about when they want to sound smart. Or, if they really want to sounds smart they bring up Nnamdi Ashmghkyldou. “He’s really super terrific awesome…and HE’S on the RAIDERS!!!”

**Joe Gibbs in the broadcast booth evokes similar emotions to when I watch my mom tell people how much she spent on their Christmas present. I just want to leave the room.

**I’ve watched all the 30 for 30 documentaries on TWWL and by far the one on the Miami Hurricanes has been my favorite. Those teams were so unapologetically villainous...the current media culture will never again allow anything like that to exist or survive. The Ali-Holmes and Baltimore Colts Band pieces were mediocre, and the Len Bias docu was very well done. The Jimmy the Greek episode was intriguing and had a ton of interesting information, but the way in which they chose to present it was distracting, with the fake Jimmy the Greek first person narrative. In case you were wondering...

**Pictured lower left: Rob’s House.

**I’m really actually enjoying the Conan/Leno/NBC debacle. It’s the only interesting thing to come out of NBC in years. The right answer, from a ratings perspective, is to just give Leno back The Tonight Show. The majority of Americans are dumb...so dumb in fact that they think Jay Leno is a real hoot.

**Anyone else caught the commercial featuring the smug ponytailed dude from the bar scene in Good Will Hunting begging you to invest in gold? I believe he is the brother of Dennis Duffy the beeper salesman and he played a child of a lesser god for a couple seasons on Oz. So, the “You forgot about VICKAHS” guy, the bouncer from Jerry Springer and G. Gordon Liddy all think I should invest in gold? Consider this guy sold.

**Mike Shanahan: All stocked up on smug confidence.

**Zoltan threw out a “The Doobie Brothers broke up?” quip on G:TB a couple days back and it took me a couple days to pull it, but I’m pretty sure its from Romancing the Stone. I could, of course, just google it to confirm, but...that seems like a lot of work.

**When the black guy in the Viagara commercial stops to talk to the old lady florist and then the truck blocks my view of them, am I supposed to think they went in the back and banged?

**For your reverse betting purposes, I like the Chargers -7, the Cardinals +7, the Colts -6.5 and Dallas +3 this weekend. As always, bet heavily on the opposite. You can also get the AFC -3 right now to win the Super Bowl, which seems friendly.

How Two Steps by an Unknown Fat Guy Changed the Playoffs

2010-01-11T10:07:00.005-05:00

A couple of thoughts on Sunday's games. Nothing from Saturday, as those games were boring and I stopped paying attention 45 minutes into the late game in favor of quizzing people in my apartment on the players in the 1993 Arcade version of NBA Jam.

Ravens-Patriots

It's no secret that football is a wildly complex game that even the most informed and knowledgeable fans have difficulty fully comprehending. There are well over a hundred plays in every game, and each play has a story with multiple components contributing to the outcome. In the end, most of those plays are forgotten and almost all of those stories remain untold outside the film room.

Here's the story of one of the most anonymous guys on the field, RG Marshall Yanda, making a play that helped change the game. It's the first play of the game - a counter (or a cutback) with the RB starting to the left and finding a hole over the RG that went for an 83 yard TD.

Formation: Nothing particularly unusual here. Our hero, the RG is uncovered against the 3-4 alignment, with NT Wilfork on the nose and the DE just outside the shoulder of the RT. OLB Thomas (96) is wide to the right of the offensive formation and ILB Guyton (59) appears to be responsible for the gap between the D-linemen.

First move: RT Oher blocks the DE 1-on-1. The center engages with Wilfork and Yanda doubles, pushing him to the left. LB Guyton holds his spot in the gap and LB Thomas holds his contain on the edge.

Next frame: Yanda's double team pushes Wilfork to the offensive left. New England's RDE is doubled, but holds his ground. The LDE holds his ground against Oher. All four LBs appear to be in good position to fill their gaps.

Next frame: Wilfork gets a little penetration despite the double, although he is pushed to his right (probably) more than he'd like. LDE disengages with Oher and gets free, but the FB is coming in that direction to follow up on him. Guyton (59) fills his gap. The right side of New England's D wins their battles so there is no running room on that side of the formation.

Here it is: Yanda disengages with Wilfork, pivots, and locates Guyton in the hole. Those two steps were the difference between the play going for one yard and an 83 yard TD. If he had stayed on Wilfork, Guyton makes that play. There's nowhere else for Rice to go here, as the Patriots have the play well defended everywhere else.

Last frame: Yanda engages with Guyton. The FB takes care of the LDE. The LG gets out onto the other ILB to ensure that he can't get over. And Rice bursts through the hole and outraces the S Merriweather (who took a bad angle) to the end zone.

And that's how Marshall Yanda - a guy I'd never heard of, and a guy who was barely mentioned on the broadcast - helped set the table for an easy Ravens victory. This game was defined by the first few plays -- the Rice run, the Suggs strip and recovery, and the subsequent TD. Although Baltimore was in command on the scoreboard throughout, they didn't play a dominant game. Joe Flacco had one of the worst lines you'll see for a winning QB at the professional level - 4/10 for 34 yards and an interception. After the first play, the Ravens rushing attack was held to a measly 2.9 YPC. The early lead allowed the Ravens to play ultra-conservatively on offense and force the undermanned New England passing attack to play catch-up, resulting in multiple turnovers.

Packers-Cardinals

Apparently the sports page of the Wall Street Journal described this as "a game for people who eat Skittles for breakfast". Although the game was entertaining on some level, the fact that pro football is trending in this direction worries me. I've got a post on this topic queued up in my head, so I'll wait until later in the week to give it the full treatment.

In this game in particular, we saw some actions that point towards the videogameization of the NFL -- the surprise onside kick, the Packers going for 2 4th downs on the next drives -- all of which were good decisions on McCarthy's part. I was even wondering if Green Bay should go for 2 after scoring the tying TD with 3 minutes left. At that point in the game, it's a fundamentally unsound move, but I'd be hard-pressed to criticize it there.

Even more ridiculous, with 1:45 left in a tie game the Cardinals had the ball on their own 20 and I was seriously considering whether Green Bay should let them score a TD on the first play -- give away 80 yards and 7 points just to get the ball back. Again - not that crazy. The Cards marched the ball down the field to set up an easy FG with almost no time on the clock, which was exactly what we would've expected to happen. The only surprise was that Rackers pushed it wide.

Does Presumptive Redskins Coach Have a Glass Eye?

2010-01-04T15:02:00.004-05:00

For reasons that escape understanding, my wife has long held that two time Super Bowl winning coach Mike Shanahan has a glass eye. As long as I've known her, every time his name is brought up or his face appears on television, she proclaims this supposed fun fact. I have always dismissed this as ridiculousness; however, in light of the Redskins presumably tapping Shanahan to be the next guy fired by Daniel Snyder, I figured it was time to get to the bottom of this. The other day I decided to google "Mike Shanahan" and "glass eye." Apparently this is a suspicion that has plagued many corners of the internets.

So, I ask, does Mike Shanahan have a glass eye? And if so, what does this mean? Well, let's take a quick look at some of the greatest glass-eyed humans:

Sammy Davis Jr - Singer, songwriter, dancer, member of the Rat Pack, notable Judaism convert, the "Candyman"--not the scary kind.
Playoff wins without John Elway: Zero

Sandy Duncan: Actress, singer, Peter Pan portrayer, erstwhile matriarch to The Hogan Family following failed contract negotiations between NBC and Valerie Harper.
Playoff wins without John Elway: Zero

Stuart Scott: ESPN anchor, one man "booyah" clearinghouse, accomplished "sexter", bleeds Tar Heel blue
Playoff wins without John Elway: Zero

Peter Falk: American Actor known for portraying absent minded detective "Colombo," appeared as Fred Savage's grandfather in The Princess Bride, wanders the streets mumbling and shouting from time to time, might be insane
Playoff wins without John Elway: Zero

Mike Shanahan (alleged): Los Angeles Raiders and Denver Broncos Head Coach who won two Super Bowls with John Elway in the late 1990's.
Playoff wins without John Elway: One

Here's hoping the DC sports media gets Shanahan to go on record regarding this issue at his opening presser. And for the record, if he does have a glass eye, I'm starting a one man campaign for him to keep it real and to switch over to the eye patch.

Zorn: Fin

2010-01-04T09:46:00.003-05:00

In what has become an annual tradition, I did not watch even one second of the Redskins season ending loss to Billy Volek and the other Chargers reserves. I was busy instead trying to figure out how one buys a new car while taking care of twin 3 month olds. Answer: loudly.

I haven't posted here in quite a while mainly due to my diligent work towards trying to prevent the silent creep of socialism into our healthcare system and due to tending to my spectacularly needy progeny. For the record, I've missed you too.

As to Jim Zorn's departure, its hard to have much of a reaction. Since December of last year this has seemed a foregone conclusion, but it is interesting that no one is remembering Zorn's 6-2 start last season. As the once proud owner of a Zornstar t-shirt, I do remember well what a stroke of genius this hire was believed to be in October '08.

If the rumors prove true and Mike Shanahan is hired, my reaction is "okay, that sounds fine." Of all the candidates out there, no one inspires me any more than Shanahan, though his resume without John Elway at QB is less than inspiring. Same goes for Bruce Allen. I took a look at Allen's drafts while in Tampa. By my unscientific count, he missed on about 75% of his picks. In other words, he'll fit right in here. The bottom line is that Allen and Shanahan are professionals who have seen coaching and managerial success at this level. This is something that could not be said of the previous administration. For that reason alone, there is reason for optimism.

As to who stays and who goes next year, much depends on whether or not this becomes an uncapped year; however, here's who I'd like to see gone:

Portis
Betts
Landry
Samuels (will retire)
R. Thomas
Rogers
Sellers
Randle El
Moss
Smoot

I think it makes sense to retain Campbell in the near term as a stop gap, but plans to replace him should be put into place immediately.

Bodysuit Zorn

2009-12-21T22:20:00.005-05:00

That swinging gate play was just the Costanza "try to get fired" move, right?

Next up, strawberries all over the vintage Sammy Baugh jersey.

I wonder if Bruce Allen Irished up that coffee in the press box. I don't even know what to say about this one -- I think you have to chalk it up to an embarrassment by the Redskins. No pass protection, no pass rush, no pass coverage, no running game, suicidal fake field goals. I mean...it's the 3rd quarter of a must win game against a rival in week 15 and I'm writing a blog post and considering keeping the Cavs-Suns game on TV1 for a while.

One takeaway from a Giants perspective is that their defense can still manhandle inferior offensive lines. Washington is down to some highly questionable components on the OL due to injuries/lack of depth and the Giants still have enough individual talent up front to make them pay. Despite tonight's game, I fear that matching up against competent OLs may still be a problem.

Takeaway number two is that the old Eli Wheel has been reconfigured, featuring quite a few more Good Eli sectors and only a few Evil Eli landing spots. He went through a rough patch in mid-season, but on the year he's had more outstanding games than bad ones. This bodes well for the future. If Eli emerges as a consistently good QB, there's no reason the Giants shouldn't have a productive offense every year. Once they get an adequate defensive coordinator in place, the team should be a contender.

For this year, I'm still not investing too much in these guys. They've been blown out of way too many games to consider them anything other than a fringe playoff team at this point.

4th quarter analysis: While I wouldn't mind seeing a throwdown between Haynesworth and Jacobs, exchanging punches while wearing football helmets seems a bit futile.

Tomlin is Not a Moron

2009-12-21T09:56:00.005-05:00

In football there used to be a time when a QB leading his team down the field for a late score to win or tie the game was surprising, heroic, and impressive. In today's NFL we should now describe it differently: expected. When a team gets the ball with 1:30 on the clock needing a score, we expect them to get it. If you probed the inner thoughts of opposing fans, many of them would prefer to intentionally give up a score on one play so that they could get their offense back on the field. In late, close games it sure seems like it's better to be behind and have the ball than ahead and playing defense.

This week's games were particularly wild, but in reality par for the course in the modern NFL.

The last 5 drives of the Cleveland-KC drive consisted of 3 TDs, 1 FG, and 1 missed FG
The Bengals drove the length of the field to tie the game in the final minute only to concede a winning FG to San Diego
The Lions scored a tying TD inside 4 minutes and Arizona answered with a winning TD inside 2 minutes (although the Lions failed to respond after that)
The Raiders drove 62 yards for a game-winning TD in the last minute. The Raiders. With JaMarcus Russell. At Denver.

Green Bay-Pittsburgh deserves more than a bullet point. The Packers final 3 drives - TD-TD-TD. Prior to that, they punted, kneeled down to end the half, and scored a TD. So going back to 6:55 remaining in the 2nd quarter, the Packers scored a TD on all but one drive.

The Steelers final 4 drives - FG-FG-FG-TD. Prior to that a punt, and another TD. So going back to 3:04 in the 2nd quarter, they scored on all but one drive.

Smart coaches are realizing what's happening in the NFL and adjusting accordingly, leaving them open to criticism from legacy media and unobservant fans who: 1) don't recognize the changes in the game, and 2) can't even conceive that coaches are making reasonable modifications to outdated strategies.

When Mike Tomlin called for a surprise onside kick after going ahead by 2 with 4:00 left in the 4th quarter, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman were incredulous. Over and over, they were saying things like, "I can't figure out why Tomlin would do something like that." Here's some advice: try to figure out why. Maybe Joe/Troy were right and Tomlin was wrong. I could buy that. But if you're going to make a case that Tomlin was wrong, you should at least be able to figure out his motivation. Or you'd have to say that Tomlin is just a moron. (Just to be clear, if you're looking at the drive results I listed above, each team scored its final TD after Tomlin's decision).

Presumably Tomlin's strategy had two elements -- 1) As shown above each offense was scoring at will. The surprise onside kick has a reasonable chance of success and could prevent the Packers offense from seeing the field again. 2) If Green Bay gets the ball, there's a very good chance that they'll score from any field position, so it's in Pittsburgh's best interest for them to score quickly. A by-product of the onside kick is that the Packers would not be likely to run all 4 minutes off the clock on a scoring drive. This is exactly how if played out.

As compared to the Pats-Colts game, this decision is less clear-cut and more difficult to analyze. I'm positive that Belichick made the right call, and I'm not as sure about Tomlin. But if you look at the game conditions, a rational person could see that it's not a ridiculous move. Even if it's wrong, it's not wrong by that much. If you take a bet at even odds that only has a 48% chance of paying off, it's a bad bet, but not a terrible one. It's called playing blackjack or craps. If you take a bet at even odds that has a 25% chance of paying off, it's an awful decision. This is a concept that seems to elude most people, but is important to assessing any decision making process.

Even with the score in their favor at 30-28 with 4 minutes left, I'm pretty sure Pittsburgh was in a losing position, in that they were more likely to lose the game than win under conventional circumstances. Tomlin made a move to try to change up those circumstances. I don't know if the onside kick turned their losing situation into a winning situation or even if it improved their odds of winning. I do know that there is some logic behind it and that we're going to see more decisions like Tomlin's and Belichick's by smart coaches who have job security. Tomlin's call wasn't necessarily correct because his team won just like Belichick wasn't necessarily wrong because his team lost. All a coach can do is make decisions that give his team the best probability of winning.

Teams score with ease at the end of games, making the NFL look more like the NBA. Defenses can not be trusted to hold one score leads at the end of games, so coaches need to try to win games with their offense. It's easy to stand up at the podium and say, "we just needed our defense to make a play" and nobody ever asks a question like, "coach, your defense gave up a TD on 3 of the last 4 drives, why did you kick the ball to them instead of doing something crazy like and onside kick?"

Update: After thinking about it some more, the major difference between the Patriots and Steelers approaches is repeatability. Belichick was right to go for it and he should make that call in that situation every time. Tomlin's decision was dependent on the element of surprise for an increased probability of recovering the kickoff. A coach can't make that call every time, but sprinkling it into the mix in appropriate situations seems like a good idea.

No Parity and Little More About the Colts

2009-12-18T00:26:00.004-05:00

The Colts have won 23 consecutive regular season games. That's ridiculous, and I feel like it's not getting a ton of publicity. Maybe that's just my perception though. Certainly the Colts have 90% less hype than the 2007 Patriots, which I'd put down to two reasons. One, going undefeated is not as novel. Two, the Patriots were winning a lot more impressively than Indy.

One thing we can say is that the early '00s era of parity is dead and I'm going keep beating this drum until it's widely accepted. We just had a 16-0 team two years ago, an 0-16 team last year, and now we've got 2 undefeated teams well into holiday shopping season. 2009 also features a large collection of some of the worst teams we'll ever see. Consider that there are five teams with worse records than the Oakland Raiders of Jamarcus Russell, Bruce Gradkowski, and now Charlie Fry.

Then consider the earlier part of the decade when a team like the 2000 Giants was the top seed in the NFC and rolled through two playoff games into the Super Bowl. As much as I enjoyed that team, they weren't particularly impressive and they had a lot of weak spots (dozens of which were exposed in the Super Bowl).

It seems that the concept of parity gets muddled because people use the word to describe several different phenomenon. We'll break it down into more concrete definitions.

1) Parity: I'm keeping the word because it has a meaning. Actually according to Webster it has six meanings, the least scientific of which is, " the quality or state of being equal or equivalent". For sporting purposes, we'll say that parity describes a collection of teams in which there is a smaller than normal differential in quality across the population. The highs aren't that high, the lows aren't that low, and there's a big, juicy middle ground.

2002 would be a good example. 12-4 won the top seed in the NFC and 11-5 got it done in the AFC. Sixteen of the 32 teams had 7, 8, or 9 wins. I could actually run all these numbers to prove that the spread of records has increased as the decade has proceeded, but I'm not up for it right now. Let's just stick with the anecdotal evidence that parity as defined here is gone.

2) Fluidity: This is the concept of major swings in the performance of teams from year to year. It's related to parity in that if a team is exceptionally good or bad in a given year, that team likely to perform similarly in the subsequent year, barring any major changes in its composition. I'd argue that fluidity has decreased over the decade as well -- for the most part, the Patriots, Colts, Steelers, Chargers, Ravens, Giants, Eagles, and Cowboys have been good for a while and the Lions, Browns, Rams, Raiders, and Chiefs have been bad. That's a fairly large number of teams that are reliably good or bad. There's also a consistently mediocre group.

To be fair, there are a few teams that surprise -- the Saints and Bengals this year, Tennessee last year. Although New Orleans might not be a great counter-example because I don't think anybody would be surprised if they remain a force in the upcoming seasons. For the most part, the recent fluidity resides in the NFC South, which has been turned upside down almost annually.

3) Playoff Upsets: This is a different class of concepts, but it is important to mention because it can obscure that state of the league to some degree. People can point to the 2008 Cardinals (not a very good team), or the 2005 Steelers (actually a pretty good team despite being the 6th seed) making/winning the Super Bowl. I'm not so sure those playoff runs reflect parity as much as the small sample size of the playoffs. Arizona benefited massively from two horrific QB performances in the divisional round -- Delhomme handing them the game in Carolina, and Eli crapping the bed in the Meadowlands giving the Cards a home game in the NFC CG. If either QB performed adequately, I don't think Arizona wins the NFC. Playoff upsets in general and Arizona's run in particular are a case of a few events having a major impact on the overall perception of the state of the league.

Another consideration is that road victories have become more prevalent in recent years. I'd hypothesize that it's partially due to the post-season setup that gives weaker division winners home games in the first round. In a lot of cases the competition for the two wild card spots is stiffer than that of some of the divisions and the road teams in the wild card round are often just as good, if not better than the home sides. Overall, the evidence is somewhat mixed in this department and I'm willing to wait and see what happens in the next few years before drawing any conclusions based on surprises in the playoffs.

Simple Quick Point About the Colts

2009-12-17T01:51:00.004-05:00

The Colts first playoff game takes place on January 16th or 17th. In sports terms, that's quite a while from now.

Peyton Manning has now made 189 consecutive starts. Obviously anything can happen, but I think it's safe to say that the guy is not injury-prone.

From where I sit, it seems a whole lot more risky for a team to change their approach for an entire month and hope to gear back up in the playoffs than it is to allow football players to play football for the remaining three regular season games. You have a few guys with minor injuries who need to heal? Yeah, I could see giving guys like that a rest. But don't shut it down. It's just football. And it's entirely possible for guys to get through a football game without suffering a serious injury. It happens every week.

- Also, if you're in a pinch in your fantasy playoffs, I'd recommend taking a look at Jason Campbell. He's posted solid numbers in the 2nd half of the season and the Giants pass defense is so bad at this point that they could make JaMarcus Russell look like Bruce Gradowski.

- Watching the Wiz-Kings - Donte Green was so baffled that Earl Boykins hit a floater over his outstretched arm that he didn't even both running upcourt on the subsequent possession.

Tiger's "Sexts" + Regular Friday Post

2009-12-11T08:24:00.002-05:00

I found these to be quite amusing.

- Tribe: In 2004, I thought it might be our last reasonable chance to excel in the playoffs. With the CAA tough and constantly improving and the athleticism ceiling on the W&M program imposed by academic standards and the worst social life in 1-AA, it was hard to picture everything coming together again for another playoff run. Well, here we are with another Friday night semi-final, this time on the road. Villanova is 3 point favorites and if I had to bet that line, I'd take the Wildcats. Simply put, they're better than us...but not so much better that we can't win. The last 6 years have been an even split between Appalachian State and 1st time 1-AA champions from the CAA. Right now one side of the bracket is App State/Montana. On the other, 2 CAA powers that are looking for their first championship. Looks familiar -- for the 5th time in 6 years, the final will be App State or Montana vs. the CAA. I'm really fired up for this one.

- Landon Donovan will be at Everton on loan from January-March. This is interesting. By my account this is one of the better destinations and potential roles for a USA field player in recent times. You'd have to throw McBride/Dempsey at Fulham into the mix, but Everton is a higher profile club. Granted, Landon was at Bayern Munich last year, but he never really fit in there and didn't contribute a whole lot. Everton currently sit 15th in the Premier League, but they are a good side, finishing 5th, 5th, 6th, and 4th in the past 4 years and they're a team that's easy to pull for, as they achieve that level of success while spending very little money. They're kind of like the Twins of the EPL. It will be interesting to see how/if he plays. They're not a particularly deep team so there should be some opportunity.

- Staying on the subject, Jozy Altidore is getting good minutes with Hull City. Unfortunately Hull Cityt is not exactly a striker's dream situation. From what I've seen, his biggest role is watching clearances from his defense fly over his head and then chasing after them. Atltiodre has appeared in 12 games, starting the last 6, with no goals and 1 assist to his name. In the games I've seen, he is active and tries to make things happen, but they're a bad team. Still, he's getting playing time, which is a vast improvement on last year.

- Giants-Eagles: Not much to say here other than I hope the Giants win, I expect them to lose, and I'm going to be really hungover and tired on Sunday night.

- Steelers? WTF? Losing to the Raiders and the Browns in consecutive weeks? This is a puzzle.

ROLL TRIBE

Sporcle

2009-12-09T11:18:00.001-05:00

www.sporcle.com

Trivia. It will keep you entertained for hours. Guaranteed. Except for Ted. He'll hate it and might even destroy his computer after reading this.

Just a Few Lame Thoughts

2009-12-07T23:10:00.002-05:00

Why does everyone call the slant and go the "sluggo"? Shouldn't it be the "slaggo"? I mean...neither on is a word and slant doesn't have a "u" in it.

Also, why does that lame couple need to rent a car from Enterprise for a weekend getaway? They've got a house with a garage.

The CBS guys were selling the Mark Ingram for Heisman product pretty hard on Saturday and I'm not buying. I'm not going to go through a whole analysis here, but to me Ingram looks like a regular good RB on an elite team. I don't see anything particularly special there. And for the record, I don't think Tebow should even be at the ceremony. Give me Gerhardt, Suh, or Kellen Moore.

Matt Bonner - 28 points of 10/13, 8 rebounds, 3 assists. Nobody saw that coming.

I'm really torn on this Tiger Woods thing. On the one (more reasonable) hand, he's just an athlete screwing around on the side. This is not newsworthy in any sense. If it were, we'd need dozens of new TV shows, dedicated sections of newspapers, etc. On the other (scummier) hand, I'd probably watch/read all that stuff. I stop by the NY Post every morning to see check out the pictures of whichever girl went public the night before.

So maybe the best solution is to maintain this operation, but make it less Woods-centric. Every morning the NY Post picks some celebrity and releases a set of photos of some girl he slept with. That way we get the same enjoyment, but Tiger doesn't have to carry the full burden. Eventually it would even generate some positive externalities, like betting pools for who the next celebrity would be.

Roll Tribe

The World Cup Draw - Friday

2009-12-03T21:40:00.005-05:00

UPDATE:

England, USA, Algeria, Slovenia

We couldn't have done much better than that. There are no walkovers in this tournament except New Zealand, but that's about the best group we could've hoped for. England isn't a killer top seed and we go arguably the weakest teams in Pots C and D.

If they had TV in North Korea, they'd be bummed - Brazil, Ivory Coast, Portugal.

-------

The World Cup draw occurs on Friday. As much money, attention, and effort go into the World Cup, the hopes of a lot of teams hang on the draw of 32 ping ping balls tomorrow in Cape Town. The reasonable objective for at least half the teams in the tournament is just to get out of the group stage. We only get three games every four years and those games will be selected by the luck of the draw tomorrow.

Here's how it's going to work -- the 32 qualifiers (sorry, Ireland) have been segmented into four groups, or "pots" in Euro-parlance. Each of the eight groups will consist of one team from each pots. The pots are as follows:

POT 1- Brazil, Spain, Argentina, Netherlands, England, Italy, Germany, South Africa

POT 2- USA, Mexico, Honduras, South Korea, North Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand

POT 3- Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Nigeria, Algeria

POT 4- France, Portugal, Denmark, Slovenia, Greece, Slovakia, Serbia, Switzerland

Pot 1 is seven best teams in the world and the host country. Pot 2 is CONCACAF, Asia, and Oceania. Pot 3 is South America and Africa and Pot 4 is UEFA.

Obviously this does not favor the USA, as many of the weaker teams are in our pot and thus can not be in our group. Basically every person living in countries in Pots 2-4 went to bed tonight praying to see their name below South Africa in the draw (except the US of course where nobody really cares).

In the likely case that the US does not draw RSA, we probably won't be favored to get out the group. The remaining seven in Pot 1 are a nightmare, as is most of Pot 3.

As best I can tell, the Sky Sports coverage of the draft will be broadcast live on Fox Soccer Channel at 11:00 Friday. Analysis to follow. EDIT -- Looks like the draw is at Noon on the Deuce. I had a little time zone conversion trouble there.

Nodding My Head Like Yeah

2009-12-01T17:00:00.003-05:00

Push out the jive. Bring in the love. I'm casting off the Giants misery and going positive. There's a lot of good stuff going on.

First, it's time to congratulate myself on a magical college fantasy run that ended in a championship as everyone expected. Natale's Pickles finished with a 10-2 record and 1738 total points, 448 clear of our nearest competitor. And when the playoffs came around we really stepped it up, posting a league season-wide high of 225 points in the semi-finals. The championship round resembled the Florida-Florida State game in many ways, with a juggernaut being opposed by a coach who isn't quite in the game anymore. Geoff, in one of his trademark moments of generosity, started three players on byes, but it didn't matter as the Pickles put up a ridiculous 224 to take home the crown. Can't wait for next year…especially because my NFL fantasy teams suck ass.

Speaking of Florida, I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed Tim Tebow Day. I know it's easy to get all cynical with all the media coverage these days, but Tebow really is one of the great college players of all-time and it was appropriate for all media outlets to set aside a day to pay tribute. It's hard to fathom what it was like down in Gainesville on Saturday, but I'd imagine that more than a few grown men did things that they're not going to share with the rest of the class – crying, going to bed wearing a Tebow jersey, snuggling with a life size Tebow cutout – nothing was off limits. The only upcoming event of that flavor that I can see being in the same ballpark as Tebow's last game is when Derek Jeter plays his final game in Yankee Stadium. That's going to get a little weird.

As for the game itself, it's almost hard to believe how far Florida has risen and how far FSU has fallen in a few years. What used to be a bitterly competitive game with national championship implications has turned into a novelty walkover exhibition. The fact that the only frustrating part of the game for Florida was that Tebow finished his regular season career with a rushing touchdown instead of a jump pass touchdown is mind-boggling when you put it in perspective. FSU was never in the game, never even had a chance to keep it close. It was like playing a video game where you set up challenges for yourself because there is no way the computer can beat you. Saturday didn't look a whole lot different than the rest of Florida's out of conference schedule which featured Florida International and Charleston Southern. There's a reason Bobby Bowden was forced into retirement.

It's not a playoff, but there are a lot of playoff-ish elements to this weekend. Obviously Florida-Alabama is a championship semi-final and one of the two games that everybody has been waiting for all year. We've got the formality of Texas beating an impotent Nebraska team to cement their spot in the NCG. Plus the schedule has fallen remarkably kindly for the Big East and Pac-10, both of which stage de facto championship games. The Oregon Civil War should be especially interesting, even though it's probably televised on some Fox Sports affiliate. Oh, and the ACC Championship will be contested amidst dozens of mildly interesting on-lookers and a few thousand orphans who received free tickets.

Speaking of the ACC, it wasn't a good week for SEC-haters. We all knew what would happen in Gainesville, but the fact that both of the ACC CG participants lost to middle of the road SEC teams is either mortifying for the ACC or impressive for the SEC or both. Either way, the ACC CG, which hasn't drawn any attention in years is about to draw a little less because of last week's results.

In their rivalry game with Missouri, Kansas had the ball at their own 3 yard line with a 3 point lead and 3 minutes on the clock. Missouri had 1 time out. The score of the game was in the the high 30's and Kansas had racked up something like 498 passing yards and something like 50 yards rushing. Fatty Mangino called 2 passes and a QB draw, which resulted in a safety. When Missouri got the ball back, they moved the down the field as quickly as they wanted to and won the game with a FG on the last play. Sure enough, everybody on TV was killing the play-calling at the end (even Jesse Palmer), saying that Kansas should've run the ball. What is wrong with these people? This one is way more straightforward than the Belichick call. If Kansas runs the ball, they probably don't convert a 1^st down, they take 1:30 off the clock, and they give the ball back to Missouri (who has a great kicker) on the wrong side of midfield. Their defense hadn't stopped Missouri all game. You have to win the game on offense and Kansas's passing game was unstoppable. This is such an easy problem and people on TV who are paid to be football experts can't get anywhere close finding the right solution. This is the kind of thing that makes me question everything -- knowledge, analysis, logic, life, etc. What's the point of knowing the right answer if nobody else can even figure out how to approach the problem?

OK – back to the positive – Rooollll Tribe. First playoff appearance in five years and a smooth 38-0 victory over Weber State in a game that could've been a lot closer than the score would indicate. On to Carbondale for a date with the Salukis. It's hard to gauge these teams from other regions, but all signs point to Southern Illinois having a strong team – they're 11-1 with a 3-point loss to Marshall and quality 1-AA wins over Northern Iowa and South Dakota State. The rest of their schedule was a little soft. The line is SIU (-1) so the Tribe is getting some major respect from last week's game and the overall strength of the CAA. It's a noon kickoff and it should be on TV in some fashion. Saturday is shaping up to be a brilliant day. And astonishingly, the Tribe beat Wake Forest in basketball. Men's varsity basketball. I have nothing to add.

Technology: Gotta love it. I once had the idea that if I could control a satellite with 24-style camera zooming capability, I could watch any outdoor game from an overhead view on my TV or computer. As the Greek scooter vendors would say, "this idea…she is bad." But CBS Sports has provided the next best thing with their ability to stream games on the internet using a single camera and a synced radio broadcast, enabling hundreds of W&M fans to watch Saturday's game live. Nice work, CBS.

You gotta love sports: TV this week is looking good. After a little investigation, I've determined that the Oregon-Oregon State game is on Thursday at 9 on ESPN. Perfect. It's a game I want to watch and it's relatively unopposed. I'm really enjoying the Saturday lineup – 10 AM: Various soccer games, including Arsenal needing to break a 2 game skid, Noon: Tribe-SIU, Cincy-Pittsburgh (perfect time for this game), Rutgers-West Virginia, 4 PM: Gators, basically unopposed. Perfect. 8 PM: Dueling Big 12 and ACC championship games. In all likelihood, one of them will suck so it's nice to have a backup plan.