Ya know, maybe the BCS isn't the worst thing in sports. Maybe it is just so revolutionary that we just can't grasp the entire concept. I mean, why doesn't it just be mandatory in all sports?
I mean, we would have had a Rays-Phillies World Series that certainly would have better ratings than the Giants-Rangers series. No playoffs, just straight to the World Series.
We may as well go ahead place Duke in the NCAA championship. It will fun to see who they might face. It certainly wouldn't be Butler, since they are outsiders and shouldn't get a shot at a title. I mean, winning the Horizon League isn't impressive at all.
Over in the NFL, who knows? There are about 10 teams that have a shot at winning the Super Bowl. Eagles? Patriots? Giants? Saints? Jets? Colts? Packers? Falcons? It would be a mess trying to sort that out but the BCS always picks the best matchup of the most deserving team.
Man, just imagine how much easier sports would be if the BCS just put the Lakers-Heat/Celtics series we all know is going to happen.
Even if it really doesn't.
No more NFL playoffs, no League Championship Series, no Stanley Cup playoffs and no NCAA Tournament.
Just imagine how great all sports would be if we didn't have those things!
**This message brought to you by Sarcasm**
Selasa, 16 November 2010
Minggu, 14 November 2010
Blazers: NBA's Snake Bitten Franchise
This week, it was revealed that Brandon Roy has bad knees that will most likely plague his promising career. Just another twist of bad luck for a snake-bitten franchise.
The Portland Trail Blazers are not the LA Clippers. They are not the Minnesota Timberwolves. They are not even the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Blazers have a World Championship under their belt and have been to two more Finals.
But it could have been so much better.
Portland has had the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft four times. Each time, they selected a center. Only one has worked out. That would be Bill Walton, who led the Blazers to the 1977 NBA championship.
The next season after Portland rushed out to a 50-10 start, Walton hurt his foot. Due to what he deemed as poor medical treatment, he demanded a trade out of the Pacific Northwest. And the would-be-dynasty was over.
Their other top picks haven't worked. In 1972, two years before the franchise drafted Walton, they selected LaRue Martin with the top overall pick. He was selected before future Hall Of Famers Bob McAdoo and Julius Erving. Martin played just four seasons and averaged 5.3 ppg.
In 1978, Minnesota's Mychal Thompson would be selected first overall by Portland (Larry Bird would be selected a few picks later). Thompson did okay in Portland, but was dealt to the Spurs after eight seasons. He would later be dealt to the Lakers and helped them to back-to-back championships.
The other top selection was, of course, Greg Oden in 2007. Oden missed what would have been his rookie season with a knee injury. Since then, he's barely shown an ability to stay healthy or to be dominant. It stings even more when a guy named Kevin Durant was selected directly after him.
Sam Bowie wasn't the top overall pick ... but he is regarded as one of the worst draft picks in history. Bowie was selected with the second pick in the 1984 draft -- one spot ahead of Michael Jordan. Charles Barkley and John Stockton was also selected in that draft.
But that isn't all. How about paying for Moses Malone in the ABA-NBA dispersal draft ... then dealing him away for a draft pick. Malone would go on to a Hall of Fame career, winning three MVP awards and one championship.
In 1986, the Blazers selected USSR's Arvydas Sabonis in the draft. He would make his debut in Portland nine years later. The team drafted Jermaine O'Neal in 1996, only to rarely play him and then dump him off before he had an All Star career.
The Blazers are also the franchise that had to deal with the "Jail Blazers" era, as well as dumping Darius Miles due to what they thought was a career ending injury. Miles came back from his injury and, in doing so, became a huge salary cap albatross to the Blazers (even though he was playing with the Grizzlies).
In 2005, the Blazers took Deron Williams with the third pick in the draft. They immediately dealt him to Utah for the draft rights to Martell Webster.
The Roy injury stings just because it may finally dawn on everyone that the Blazers may truly be cursed.
The Portland Trail Blazers are not the LA Clippers. They are not the Minnesota Timberwolves. They are not even the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Blazers have a World Championship under their belt and have been to two more Finals.
But it could have been so much better.
Portland has had the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft four times. Each time, they selected a center. Only one has worked out. That would be Bill Walton, who led the Blazers to the 1977 NBA championship.
The next season after Portland rushed out to a 50-10 start, Walton hurt his foot. Due to what he deemed as poor medical treatment, he demanded a trade out of the Pacific Northwest. And the would-be-dynasty was over.
Their other top picks haven't worked. In 1972, two years before the franchise drafted Walton, they selected LaRue Martin with the top overall pick. He was selected before future Hall Of Famers Bob McAdoo and Julius Erving. Martin played just four seasons and averaged 5.3 ppg.
In 1978, Minnesota's Mychal Thompson would be selected first overall by Portland (Larry Bird would be selected a few picks later). Thompson did okay in Portland, but was dealt to the Spurs after eight seasons. He would later be dealt to the Lakers and helped them to back-to-back championships.
The other top selection was, of course, Greg Oden in 2007. Oden missed what would have been his rookie season with a knee injury. Since then, he's barely shown an ability to stay healthy or to be dominant. It stings even more when a guy named Kevin Durant was selected directly after him.
Sam Bowie wasn't the top overall pick ... but he is regarded as one of the worst draft picks in history. Bowie was selected with the second pick in the 1984 draft -- one spot ahead of Michael Jordan. Charles Barkley and John Stockton was also selected in that draft.
But that isn't all. How about paying for Moses Malone in the ABA-NBA dispersal draft ... then dealing him away for a draft pick. Malone would go on to a Hall of Fame career, winning three MVP awards and one championship.
In 1986, the Blazers selected USSR's Arvydas Sabonis in the draft. He would make his debut in Portland nine years later. The team drafted Jermaine O'Neal in 1996, only to rarely play him and then dump him off before he had an All Star career.
The Blazers are also the franchise that had to deal with the "Jail Blazers" era, as well as dumping Darius Miles due to what they thought was a career ending injury. Miles came back from his injury and, in doing so, became a huge salary cap albatross to the Blazers (even though he was playing with the Grizzlies).
In 2005, the Blazers took Deron Williams with the third pick in the draft. They immediately dealt him to Utah for the draft rights to Martell Webster.
The Roy injury stings just because it may finally dawn on everyone that the Blazers may truly be cursed.
Senin, 08 November 2010
NFL Firings: Who's Next?
We had our first firing of the season when Dallas canned Wade Phillips. That means one less head on the chopping block. So which coaches should keep an eye out for a pink slip?
1-BRAD CHILDRESS (VIKINGS): How Chili hasn't been canned yet is almost a miracle. No coach has had a worse season than him. He cow-towed to Brett Favre, then seems to dis him at every turn. The team has greatly underperformed. The Randy Moss fiasco should have finalized it. This could seemingly happen any day now.
2-JOSH MCDANIELS (BRONCOS): After starting 6-0, McDaniels' Broncos have been 4-14. He ran both Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall out of town and his reign in Denver has been close to a disaster.
3-JOHN FOX (PANTHERS): Fox is a dead man walking in Carolina. He's run his course in Charlotte. With Bill Cowher on everyone's mind, this will be all but inevitable.
4-MARVIN LEWIS (BENGALS): I doubt that Lewis will technically be fired. He's in the final year of his contract and the Bengals will most likely wait until the end of the season to move on.
5-MIKE SINGLETARY (49ERS): A season filled with so much promise has turned sour. His "rat" rant showed everyone that he's losing it.
6-GARY KUBIAK (TEXANS): I doubt he'd be fired during the season, but I'm one of those people who are really disappointed in Houston. To have Matt Schaub, Arian Foster and all that talent on defense and still sitting in last place in the AFC South doesn't make sense. At 4-4, the Texans are at their usual mediocre spot.
1-BRAD CHILDRESS (VIKINGS): How Chili hasn't been canned yet is almost a miracle. No coach has had a worse season than him. He cow-towed to Brett Favre, then seems to dis him at every turn. The team has greatly underperformed. The Randy Moss fiasco should have finalized it. This could seemingly happen any day now.
2-JOSH MCDANIELS (BRONCOS): After starting 6-0, McDaniels' Broncos have been 4-14. He ran both Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall out of town and his reign in Denver has been close to a disaster.
3-JOHN FOX (PANTHERS): Fox is a dead man walking in Carolina. He's run his course in Charlotte. With Bill Cowher on everyone's mind, this will be all but inevitable.
4-MARVIN LEWIS (BENGALS): I doubt that Lewis will technically be fired. He's in the final year of his contract and the Bengals will most likely wait until the end of the season to move on.
5-MIKE SINGLETARY (49ERS): A season filled with so much promise has turned sour. His "rat" rant showed everyone that he's losing it.
6-GARY KUBIAK (TEXANS): I doubt he'd be fired during the season, but I'm one of those people who are really disappointed in Houston. To have Matt Schaub, Arian Foster and all that talent on defense and still sitting in last place in the AFC South doesn't make sense. At 4-4, the Texans are at their usual mediocre spot.
The Cowboys Should NOT Have Fired Wade Phillips ... Now
Okay, okay, okay! Yeah, I'm a Redskins fan and of course I'm going to say that the Dallas Cowboys should not have fired Wade Phillips at the midpoint of the season. I mean, what Skins fan wouldn't want a few more years of this???
But in all seriousness, I don't think that Phillips should have been fired. Right now. Oh, fire him at the end of the season if you want ... but let him play out the string. I really think Jerry Jones wanted to do that. But back to back blowouts to the Jaguars and Packers pushed Jones over the edge and he did what he swore he wouldn't do -- fire Phillips.
The problem is that firing NFL coaches mid-season rarely amounts to anything.
It can work in baseball or even basketball. We've seen baseball skippers get canned during the year and the interim manager rallies the team into a pennant race. In basketball, a change at the guard sometimes can pay off (just ask Pat Riley). But it doesn't really work in football (just ask Mike Singletary). It hasn't really worked since Marty Schottenheimer took over the Browns in the middle of the 1984 season.
There's a lot of reasons why it doesn't work ... but the main one to me is that you rarely can bring in a guy you really want to take his place. It is usually an assistant coach that takes over and, due to the limited time, actually stays the course with the team and adds in just a few wrinkles. You won't get a big name coach to take the reigns in the middle of a season.
That's why you may as well keep your coach intact unless you really, really, really believe in the assistant you are replacing him with (this could happen in Minnesota as the team may want to keep Leslie Frasier in house).
A few years ago, you knew that Jason Garrett would take Phillips' job. You knew it. He was all but named Phillips' successor as soon as both of them were hired. But a lot of the problems with the Cowboys stem from both men and to fire one and promote the other seems rather odd.
The only way it could make sense is if Jones wants to see if Garrett has anything in him for the second half of the season and if he's worth hanging on to. If not, Jones can either let Garrett go, demote him back to offensive coordinator and hire the man he really wants to take the job.
Odds are, Garrett won't make a difference. And if he does get this team playing a bit better (like Singletary did), chances are it won't carry over down the road (like Singletary). Then you are back to square one. I mean, if Garrett was still thought of as highly as Jones did when he was hired, he would already have replaced Phillips in the last two offseasons.
Minggu, 07 November 2010
Murder Suspect Arrested at Bobcats Game
Here is quite the story: a murder suspect was arrested during a Charlotte Bobcats game.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police captured the suspect during the Bobcats 91-88 loss to the Orlando Magic on Saturday night. Police arrested 24-year old Earle Barranco in one of the V.I.P. sections of Time Warner Cable Arena. Barranco is a suspect in a shooting at a New York City diner that ended in a death of a man two weeks ago.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police captured the suspect during the Bobcats 91-88 loss to the Orlando Magic on Saturday night. Police arrested 24-year old Earle Barranco in one of the V.I.P. sections of Time Warner Cable Arena. Barranco is a suspect in a shooting at a New York City diner that ended in a death of a man two weeks ago.
Barranco apparently had friends in Charlotte and was laying low with them. So going to an NBA game with 18,000 other people seems like a smart idea for a guy who is wanted for murder, right?
Police say Barranco shot 28-year-old Corey Scott twice in the head and three times in the back after a confrontation at Good Stuff Diner on 14th Street in New York City, killing him instantly two weeks ago.
The New York Daily News reported that the shooting may have been sparked by a debt. Barranco and Scott knew each other.
Surveillance video taken from inside the diner shows Scott and several friends walking into the restaurant and confronting another group sitting in the back, the Daily News reported.
Are We Supposed To Make Everything Politically Correct?
ESPN's J.J. Adande wrote a very good piece about the whole Garnett/Villenueva war of words and how any use of the word "cancer" should be taken out of our metaphoric quotes. While I agree with him, I don't think it will happen. It hasn't yet. And it probably never will.
Cancer is a word that some people still whisper when saying it, lest they curse themselves with it. It is a horrible disease that just crushes lives.
But you know what else crushes lives? War.
The fact that we have yet to eliminate ... or even care to ... words that war brings us should show where we are in this discussion. Those words will last forever. Ever see how war can damage a person or an entire nation? It is one of mankind's most horrible capabilities, yet we don't have any problem throwing those terms around.
"It's a war out there", "blitz", "bomb", "shoot" and "battle" still are in our lexicon. Even words like "fore" and "caddie" have their roots in the military. "Dog fight" is still used even though it is both a war battle as well as the despicable act that imprisoned Michael Vick. Even other words, such as "killing" and "murdering" and "bloodshed", still have life.
Those will not go away. No matter how much you try, it won't. Just this morning, I heard Mitch Albom on ESPN's Sports Reporters say how Randy Moss was a locker room cancer ... which is usually how the term is used in sports and the manner Garnett says he used it.
Granted, we as a people have tried over the last 20 years to be a lot more careful in what words we do use. "Cancer" is one that does cause pain and should be removed, but we're not going to see that happen.
The fact that Garnett allegedly called Villanueva a "cancer patient" does need to go. There is no need for that. None. But no one is going to remove "he is a cancer to his team" from the sports world.
Cancer is a word that some people still whisper when saying it, lest they curse themselves with it. It is a horrible disease that just crushes lives.
But you know what else crushes lives? War.
The fact that we have yet to eliminate ... or even care to ... words that war brings us should show where we are in this discussion. Those words will last forever. Ever see how war can damage a person or an entire nation? It is one of mankind's most horrible capabilities, yet we don't have any problem throwing those terms around.
"It's a war out there", "blitz", "bomb", "shoot" and "battle" still are in our lexicon. Even words like "fore" and "caddie" have their roots in the military. "Dog fight" is still used even though it is both a war battle as well as the despicable act that imprisoned Michael Vick. Even other words, such as "killing" and "murdering" and "bloodshed", still have life.
Those will not go away. No matter how much you try, it won't. Just this morning, I heard Mitch Albom on ESPN's Sports Reporters say how Randy Moss was a locker room cancer ... which is usually how the term is used in sports and the manner Garnett says he used it.
Granted, we as a people have tried over the last 20 years to be a lot more careful in what words we do use. "Cancer" is one that does cause pain and should be removed, but we're not going to see that happen.
The fact that Garnett allegedly called Villanueva a "cancer patient" does need to go. There is no need for that. None. But no one is going to remove "he is a cancer to his team" from the sports world.
Senin, 01 November 2010
College Football: "Every Game Counts", My Butt!
I've said this before on this blog and I'll say it again: the BCS sucks! College football is fun to watch ... but the people who run it suck!
Today's sermon is about any college football honk's declaration of "the season is its own playoff". Get out of here with that crap! It isn't. Not in the slightest. In fact, more games DON'T count than do.
With the new BCS rankings out, one of the biggest benefactors was Alabama. Bama is the defending champion and probably the best team in the land. But they lost at South Carolina pretty handily. Meanwhile, Boise State, TCU and Utah are scrutinized by everyone for who they haven't played.
I'll admit: Alabama is most likely a better team than any three of those schools ... even if they had two regular season losses. But they shouldn't be National Champions ahead of those schools if they didn't follow your "every game counts" crap.
If "every game counts", they how can a one-loss Bama team get a shot at the title game ahead of an unbeaten TCU/Utah (these two play this Saturday giving one of them their first loss) or Boise State? If "every game counts", then Alabama's loss counts. I mean, isn't that like if Alabama played Boise in a playoff, Boise won, but they still advanced Alabama because ... well, they are really the better team?
Everyone with some sense (and who doesn't have their hand in the bowl money) knows that we need a college football playoff. As great a spectacle as college football is, it has the worst post season of anyone.
I mean, I love all the bowl games as much as the next guy and one of the few people that aren't completely put off by half the field getting bowl bids. Let these kids have their shine! But we must wait six weeks or so after the regular season ends to see the championship game. And don't give me "well, the NBA and NHL playoffs are nearly two months long" stuff because at least those teams in the Finals actually played games in the meantime.
But teams like Ohio State play their final regular season games before Thanksgiving ... then don't play again until the second week of January. It's ridiculous and even more of a sham to have your sport's title game happen between two teams that haven't played in such a long time.
Every game does not count. Just ask Boise State or TCU or Utah in a month.
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