soapbox

Two sports predictions:

First, that in the next 10-20 years, the NFL will be dramatically different from the game/institution that we know today, due to (long-overdue) attention to brain trauma. Concussions will be viewed the way we now view asbestos, where the blithe and dangerous attitude of times gone by will be unfathomable.

Secondly, that Tim Donaghy will eventually be viewed in the same light as Jose Canseco, and that’s meant very complimentarily. Canseco was once a ‘roided-up crackpot who spouted off random and crazy accusations but in the intervening decade or two has been proving correct on pretty much all counts. As for Donaghy, I present you this:

I worked a Knicks game in Madison Square Garden with him on February 26, 2007. New York shot an astounding 39 free throws that night to Miami’s paltry eight. It seemed like Stafford was working for the Knicks, calling fouls on Miami like crazy. Isiah Thomas was coaching the Knicks, and after New York’s four-point victory, a guy from the Knicks came to our locker room looking for Stafford, who was in the shower. He told us that Thomas sent him to retrieve Stafford’s home address; apparently, Stafford had asked the coach before the game for some autographed sneakers and jerseys for his kids. Suddenly, it all made sense.

Okay, no big deal, a ref gave away one game in exchange for some stuff from a Hall-of-Famer, right? Check this out:

In the pregame meeting prior to Game 6, the league office sent down word that certain calls-calls that would have benefitted the Lakers — were being missed by the referees. This was the type of not-so-subtle information that I and other referees were left to interpret. After receiving the dispatch, Bavetta openly talked about the fact that the league wanted a Game 7.

“If we give the benefit of the calls to the team that’s down in the series, nobody’s going to complain. The series will be even at three apiece, and then the better team can win Game 7,” Bavetta stated.

I mean, wow. Not even the Godfather himself (NBA Commish David Stern) will be able to cover this up, even if he sues both Amazon.com and Random House.

P.S. I have spent the last couple hours trying to figure out whether this is an april fools prank or not, given deadspin’s spotty history. But I think this is legit, it just makes too much sense.

I try to avoid saturating the blog with too many sports-related posts, but honestly dactyl is probably more desperate than Steve Phillips these days, so oh well.

So, on to item #1, Brett Favre. I’m not even going to discuss his million-iteration retire/unretire cycle or the tediousness thereof, I’m just going to say that I’m really glad to not have been a Green Bay fan and that I’m not currently a VIkings fan. Favre is a gunslinger, a Jake Plummer who won a Super Bowl, the kind of guy who can win a game with a great play one game and throw 4 stupid INTs the next game – oh wait, he’s done that several times. This past game against the Steelers falls into the latter category, where just a couple plays after Adrian Peterson destroyed Steelers DB William Gay and illustrated who should have the ball with the game on the line, Favre gave the game away with a dumb scramble/fumble. Live by the Favre, die by the Favre, but it just irritates me when Saint Brett’s faults are ignored/explained away…

Which brings us to the second- and third-most overrated QBs in the NFL, Eli Manning and Ben Roethlisberger, you decide the order. Ben is really really talented but does stupid shit just often enough for him to lose my respect, and Eli just sucks, but they fluked into good teams that played into their individual strengths. The football aspect of this is that the Giants will actually be much better off if the NFC championship game is AT New Orleans, so that Eli doesn’t have to deal with NY winter weather – Brees has the arm to deal with windy/bad weather, and playing in the Superdome will actually work to even the playing field.

Item #4: I fully recognize that any time a team becomes a “dynasty”, a lot of people start to dislike them. Easy to root for the underdog, but once you become the favorite, then you’re irritating/arrogant/etc. And as such, it isn’t surprising to me that a lot of people don’t like the Patriots and thus when they destroyed Tennessee a couple weeks ago (58-0, ouch) there was much self-righteous pontificating and blowharding, decrying the running up of the score and the return to the bad sportsmanship of ‘07. Now, I’m not going to defend the general concept of running up the score, or the intent of Belichek and Brady to humiliate their opponents, but from a strictly football angle, those arguments miss one key element… the Patriots’ defense really really sucks. It was weak in ‘06, really bad in ‘07, and with injuries and trading Seymour, it’s not great this year. And this is what every critique of “running up the score” ignores, that the point of scoring 50 points a game is to (a) keep your own defense off the field as much as possible and (b) to prevent the opposing offense from gaining their rhythm. Additionally, if you can influence the playcalling of the other team into taking more risks (so as to be able to keep up) then you gain an additional advantage, especially if the other team’s roster isn’t designed for a quick-strike/high-scoring pace.

Anyway, that’s no defense for the Pats, I admit that WonderBoy and SuperCoach can be grating, but from purely football grounds, I totally get where they’re coming from. Up until the Titans game, Brady had looked pretty rusty/downright sucky, and so it also made sense for him to get in some more “practice”.

Is it hypocritical to trash Favre, Roethlisberger, and Eli Manning while praising Brady? probably, but that’s the prerogative of being a sports fan right? Objectivity is for PBS/NPR.

P.S. Great quote from my buddy Greg, huge Packers fan. “[Favre] has AP and gives the game away. He is who we think he is. Roethlisberger is him [Favre] 2.0, just as annoying, will be worshipped by home fans despised by others. one difference is that favre is actually pretty smart”

P.P.S. Tomlinson is DONE. Unlike last year where SD didn’t give him as many opportunities as he was used to, and tried to rest his legs by giving Sproles more work, the past couple games Norv has given LT multiple goal-line cracks, only to see the Visored One get stuffed. If you play fantasy fb and can get 80 cents on the dollar, sell! That said, do I blame SDs struggles on LT? no – blame Norv Turner. This is an amazingly talented team hamstrung by coaching that is sub-par both motivationally and strategically. And yes, Andy Reid deserves firing just as much as does Norv. Philly fans, I defy you to convince me otherwise.

In a weekend with a bunch of crazy/dramatic sporting events, there have been a lot of heroes and conversely, a lot of goats.

Here’s one of the goats. For the money shot, fast forward to ~1:20 or so.

So, in last week’s (9/25) podcast, Bill Simmons was discussing the issue of constructing a baseball lineup of “clean players”, i.e. guys for whom you would be truly shocked, surprised, and disappointed if they turned out to have been on the juice/HGH/etc (one assumes from a pool of players from the last ~20 years). He and Jacko name Jeter, and note that SS is well-represented since Ripken would qualify as well.

So, the question is, what lineup can you come up with if you you have to bet your ____ [something you like more than poptarts] on the fact that these guys were clean.

For pitcher, I’d go with Greg Maddux.

Catcher is tough b/c they almost deserve to be allowed to juice given all the pounding they take, and are there any all-stars who really stand out? Simmons threw out Jason Kendall just for fun, but I’m really not sure.

At first base, I’d have to go with Rafael Pamiero, or Mark McGuire, or … sorry, but it’s too easy. : ) Let’s go with the obvious – I would be supremely bummed if Pujols turned out to be juicing – and really there’s no way he can actually take steroids, since he’s a machine.

I’m not going to be able to finish the full list here, but go ahead and try for yourself, it’s a tough list. Which is pretty sad, really.

I try to keep sports-posts to a relative minimum here, so I’ll condense two items into one:

(a) The bidding war between the co-founder of RIMM (blackberry maker) and the NHL has seen both sides sweeten their offers; the Phoenix Coyotes have been losing money hand over fist (hockey in Arizona, losing money, no way?!?) and going bankrupt, and so both parties have offered to pay the city for the rest of the lease, pay all parties to which the team is indebted, etc… and sadly, I’m forced to hope that the NHL is allowed to buy the team. Not because I believe in the NHL’s handling of anything, or in the NHL’s administration, but because it sets a horrible precedent for a team to be able to just declare bankruptcy and negotiate its purchase to somebody else and get moved to a different city, all without the League’s consent or input.

That said, the smartest possible move after the NHL buys the Coyotes would be to turn around and sell the team to Balsillie and let him move the franchise to Hamilton.

(b) Perhaps the most charismatic & talented young star has preemptively told the NHL that he’s going to play in the 2014 Olympics, with or without permission, saying that he will risk suspension and play for his country, Russia, regardless of whether the NHL is formally involved or not. “Nobody can say to me, ‘You can’t play for your country in the Olympic Games.’”

“Who can say you can’t play for your country in the Olympic Games? I think it’s …”

Unfair?

“It’s not unfair; it’s stupid,” he said. “Somebody don’t like it, see you next year.”

And good for him. Seriously, if watch only one game of hockey all season, I highly recommend it be Washington against some other star team – Pittsburgh, Philly, Detroit, or Chicago or Boston – and you won’t regret it.

This evening we had a prime example of why soccer in the US is struggling to gain/keep/improve its standing in the American sports scene. The MLS “game of the week” was hosted by ESPN2, not a top-end network but pretty much ubiquitous in cable/satellite packages. The game was even moved from 8pm PST to 7:30, perhaps in an attempt to be more family friendly (90 minutes of game time with ~20-30 for halftime) to the national TV audience… but it’s not a national audience if it’s starting at 10:30pm Eastern, so oh well.

But, through bad luck and perhaps poor contingency planning on the ESPN programming department, the previous time slot on ESPN2 was devoted to the Arkansas-Virginia College World Series (baseball) game. Neither one a powerhouse, but when a horrible call from behind the plate (Orel Hershieser was beside himself) in the bottom of the 9th inning sent the game into extras, the network was stuck. So, nobody except for the 73 people who paid for the MLS satellite special package got to see a very entertaining first half between DC United and the Seattle Sounders, a team that sold out for the entire season in something like the first month that tickets were available.

So in a sport mocked for boring, low-scoring games, a 2-1 halftime score was promising, except that nobody got to watch it on TV. Finally, the stupid baseball* game was done and ESPN2 switched over to the feed from Seattle just in time to see a brilliant third goal for the home team. Good stuff, right? just what the network and the home crowd wanted. Then, even better for the producers, DC United scored against the run of play to narrow the gap and set up and exciting finish.

And it WAS a good finish, if you are a fan of open-play soccer with aggression overcoming smart play: Seattle continued to attack even though it was a up a goal, frequently getting caught with too many man up the field, and narrowly dodging an equalizing goal even as it was clearly the better side. Then with 5 minutes to go, the visiting side finally scored the seemingly/cynically inevitable tying goal, setting up a very frantic last 10 (5 minutes of stoppage time) minutes of soccer.

But here’s the other reason why soccer gets slammed – no overtime. A great game, 6 goals, plenty of end-to-end action, but then after a seemingly arbitrary number (90 + x) of minutes the ref blows the whistle and that’s it, game over. 1 point for each in the standings, no overtime, no shootout, no winner. Seattle played entertaining but stupid soccer and wasted two points, DC got lucky and had enough skill to earn a valuable away point, good for them… but many fans, at home and on TV, were probably left with a sour taste in their mouths. All in all, a very ironical and perfectly-titled “MLS Game of the Week.”

* don’t get me wrong, I love baseball. And I love the drama of the double-elimination tourney, I liked watching the “upset” championships of Fresno State and Oregon State in the past couple years, but the sub-pro level of play and the ugly “clank” of metal bats just doesn’t do it for me. I’m sure I’ll get sucked in again this year, but for #&$%’s sake, ESPN was busy reshowing a taped NFL Live on the mothership channel… are we not saturated with Brett Fahv-ruh stories? Do we need to know exactly when/where T.O. picked his new apartment in Buffalo? don’t you think they could have done some switching around? Seriously, bleh.

In light of yesterday’s re-affirmation that the California proposition system is a dumb one, y’all need to take advantage of your enfranchised status and vote! Or just peruse the samples, and if you’re feeling photo-critique-y, then contribute your expert opinion.