Ranting and Rambling

Eli Manning: Squash Superstar.

2006-12-05T08:24:00.000-05:00

Which Superhero Are You?

2006-12-02T10:22:00.000-05:00

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman		75%
Spider-Man		70%
Iron Man		70%
Green Lantern		60%
Catwoman		50%
Supergirl		45%
Robin		40%
Wonder Woman		30%
Batman		30%
Hulk		25%
The Flash		20%

You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Incidentally, I really think they should screen for gender. I'm not totally comfortable with Catwoman showing up as 5th on my list, well above Batman.

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I hung out with my buddy Pete last night, which is always a good time. Apparently, my previous post about Casino Royale convinced him to see the movie, and he said he's glad he did. MGM, can I get a kickback here?

However, he also called to my attention something perhaps more disturbing. My previous post also left the impression that I was snubbing "Live and Let Die" in the anthology of Bond tunes. Terrible oversight on my part. Let's correct that now with the official list of best Bond theme songs, excluding the classic 007 theme, of course; we're just talking about theme songs from the movies themselves.

1. Live and Let Die
2. Thunderball
3. Nobody Does it Better (Dr. Z, I don't care what you say, this is a quality Bond song)
4. The Living Daylights
5. You Know My Name

Weird Football Weekend

2006-11-25T16:30:00.000-05:00

This weekend, I'm cheering against Arkansas (my wife's favorite team, and therefore one I generally cheer for unless they're playing Miami or Michigan), and for hated rivals Notre Dame and Florida State. All these teams, of course, would help Michigan greatly, especially Notre Dame if they can squeak by USC.

BTW, to anyone who isn't in favor of a Michigan-TOSU rematch, I'd ask this: name one team, apart from TOSU, that's better than Michigan. I'm fairly confident you can't do it.

In any event, it's a bizarre weekend. Cheering for Florida State and Notre Dame makes my stomach churn.

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Speaking of stomach churning, this is not. (Hey, good segue into a recipe, huh?)

I don't like to go all Martha Stewart on you (insert insider trading joke here), but I had to share a recipe I came up with this weekend for leftover Thanksgiving turkey. Try it, and I guarantee you'll like it, unless you're keeping kosher (shalom and l'chaim), or are a vegetarian (pussy). "Southwest Turkey Club" is probably the most accurate name for this creation, but you can call it "Phil's Turkey Club". Or pass it off as your own and thank me later. Whichever.

ingredients:
- leftover Thanksgiving turkey (you can use turkey cold cuts, I suppose, but it's probably not as good)
- thick sliced bread (preferably Texas toast-style, but a loaf of fresh-baked Italian will work just as well if sliced a good 1.5 to 2 inches thick)
- bacon
- lettuce
- tomato
- mayo
- chipotle pepper (these usually come canned, and at least in my supermarket, in the "international" section, which is their way of saying "overpriced")
- pepper cheddar cheese (pepper jack will also work)

how-to:
- toast the bread lightly
- dice the pepper (and whatever you do, do NOT rub your eyes or take a leak before you wash your hands after such dicing)
- mix about 3 tablespoons mayo and 1 diced pepper (if you like it really spicy, use more chipotle peppers)
- pile turkey on the bread, along with bacon, cheese, lettuce and tomato, then spread the chipotle mayo on the bread and serve
- eat and enjoy

Casino Royale: The Review

2006-11-22T08:37:00.000-05:00

I saw Casino Royale for the first time on Saturday night. I'll see it at least once more, then advance purchase the DVD, and make a final judgment as to how it stacks up with the fabled 007 series. I can say this, though: you will not come out of the theater feeling as though you'd be happier setting $8 aflame to see what it smells like. And that's better than you can say for most movies these days.

Let's break down "Casino Royale" by the essential categories.

Originality - Prequels are a tough sell for the brain. On one hand, they expect you to forget everything you know about the character and understand that they're starting from Square One. On the other, they expect you to appreciate the end result of the character development and some of the little moments that hint at what's yet to come. For instance, in one scene, Bond orders a vodka martini. The bartender asks if he'd like it shaken or stirred, and he replies, "do I look like I give a damn?" If you're a longtime fan of the Bond series, it's a mildly amusing in-joke. If you're watching an action movie about a secret agent named James Bond without knowing what's supposed to happen later on, it's a throwaway line without context. So like I said, I think prequels require a little bit of mental gymnastics, and some accomplish their purpose better than others.

This one accomplishes its purpose pretty well, I think. We learn a tremendous amount about James Bond, the man, and how he became 007. Pretty much everything from how a guy on a government salary came into owning a lavishly expensive Aston Martin to how he came to be the misogynist, cold-blooded killer we all know and love is covered. Previous Bond movies were pretty light on character development, and Casino Royale takes up the slack. That alone gives it serious points for originality.

Plot - Good, and pretty realistic, a change from previous Bond movies. Is it that far gone to believe that MI6 would be trying to take down a terrorist financier and that he would be organizing a high-stakes poker game to make money after losing millions in the stock market? I don't think so. Okay, the idea that said financier would knowingly allow an agent of the British government into such a game might be a stretch, but not ridiculously so. The final act (the movie does not, in fact, end with Bond pocketing $150 million from the poker game) advances the plot nicely, not to mention the character of James Bond. It does drag a little in parts, though. For instance, they could have snipped a good 10 minutes of the card game. And the stuff with MI6's contact in Montenegro was predictable.

Action - Excellent. The movie portrays Bond, at first, as something of an amateur at the whole "killing bad guys" thing, as the opening scene shows him dispatch a courier in a rather messy, and somewhat un-Bond-like manner. The scene involving the construction site chase is stellar. My lone complaint: the scene in the sewers, showing Bond tortured in perhaps the most painful of ways for a man, really should have earned the movie an R rating. Yes, when you get old, these are the things you think about. However, since I'm over 17, have no children and have already been as poisoned and jaded as I'm going to get by televised violence, it doesn't bother me. Since that's my only complaint, the action earns full marks.

Cinematography - Is this even the right word to use? Screw it, I'm doing it. Anyway, the movie is filmed well. The black and white opening is a nice touch, and the movie as a whole does a nice job of conveying the dark and gritty feel they're trying to get.

Bond Girls - The brunette in the Bahamas (can't be bothered to remember her name) is an 11 on the 10 scale, a 1 on the binary scale, and a 6 on the Clydesdale scale. Vesper Lynd, the Bond Girl for the bulk of the movie, is well-played, and sufficiently attractive, but she's not blowaway gorgeous or anything. In a neat twist, she's actually there to advance the plot and the character, as opposed to just being good scenery. Unrepentant chauvinist that I am, I can't decide if that's a good thing or not, but it makes the movie work well in this case.

Music - "You Know My Name" is the best Bond theme song in some time, certainly since "The Living Daylights" or "Nobody Does it Better". Chris Cornell was a good choice to do the song. They didn't go for a one-hit wonder (i.e. "Diamonds Are Forever", "The Man With The Golden Gun"). They didn't go for a hot "artist of the moment" with mediocre musical talent (i.e. "Tomorrow Never Dies", "For Your Eyes Only"). They didn't screw around with a superstar who was desperate to "explore the studio space" and thus do too much with it (i.e. "Goldeneye", "Die Another Day"). They just picked a good, solid musician and said, "make a kick-ass rock tune out of this." And he did. Well done, Chris! Also, they do a great job of holding off on the classic 007 theme until the perfect time.

Villain - It's hard to gauge Le Chieffre against previous Bond villains, because unlike most of the previous ones, he's not trying to take over the world or anything. But, as said above, he's realistic. There are almost certainly people like Le Chieffre out there right now (perhaps not possessing a birth defect like bleeding from the tear ducts), making money and financing the bad guys. Chances are, there are NOT men like Ernst Stavro Blofeld out there, plotting world domination. But, in this sense, the movie is hoist upon its own petard. When Le Chieffre gets his comeuppance, we don't feel any grand sense of relief or anything.

Bond - Daniel Craig is easily the most credible physical presence since Sean Connery. He also looks completely comfortable with a weapon, something you couldn't always say for Roger Moore or Timothy Dalton. He lacks Moore's charm, but I think that's partly by design, at least for this movie. Bond's just starting out as 007, and is portrayed more or less as a thug for the first part of the movie, which Craig nails perfectly. He's got the action hero part down pat. We'll have to see how well he can handle being the ladies' man in future movies. In Bond lore, it's universally accepted that Connery and Moore were the best, then a step down to Pierce Brosnan, then several steps down to Dalton and George Lazenby. Right now, Craig is on Brosnan's level, but I think he has a chance to enter the Connery-Moore pantheon.

Gadgets - The whole movie is basically an advertisement for cell phones. But beyond that, there's not much gadgetry. No Q appearances in this one. After the invisible car from "Die Another Day", that's not necessarily a bad thing.

As I said, it's far too early to say where Casino Royale stacks up among the Bond movies. Certainly, we can say it's better than Moonraker, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, The Living Daylights and Licence To Kill. Where it ultimately ranks is a question for history to decide, but my snap judgment is that it belongs among the all-time best in series history.

Phunwin as Movie Geek

2006-11-17T08:02:00.000-05:00

You've seen movie geeks before. We all have. For example, the guy who dresses up as an Imperial Stormtrooper on the opening night of Star Wars VII: The Phantom Cash Grab, or the legions of people who attend Star Trek conventions in hope of bedding the one chick there who actually bears a fleeting resemblence to Seven of Nine (while being perfectly willing to settle any of the dozens of women who look like Worf).

I believe on some level, we all have movie geekishness (is that even a word? No? Screw it, I'm moving on) over some movie series. Well, tonight, my inner movie geek comes out.

From the moment I heard that "Casino Royale" was hitting theaters on 11/17, I was counting the days. In fact, I couldn't wait any longer and went to the North Pole and froze myself with strict instructions for my wife to come get me on the morning of the 17th. Instead, she left me there, had me declared dead, cashed in my 401(k), collected on my life insurance and moved to Hawaii. I was unfrozen 500 years in the future (bad news: Eric Cartman STILL hasn't gotten to play the Nintendo Wii), but fortunately, they had the technology to send me back to today. Yup, my plan worked flawlessly.

I am, to put it mildly, a James Bond geek. I know more Bond trivia than is healthy. I'm fairly confident that little bits of knowledge like "who are the only two people to play different characters in Bond movies?" have pushed out more important stuff like "how does the Rule Against Perpetuities work?". (The answer to the first question is "Charles Grey and Joe Don Baker", the second is, "I haven't got the first damned idea.")

In the style of the guys I mentioned in the first paragraph, I am perfectly willing to show up at the premiere of Casino Royale with a tuxedo and a replica Walther PPK, although I'm somewhat less than willing to pay $100 for a rented tuxedo and another $200 for a replica pistol. Still, I'd do it if the opportunity arose. That's how much of a geek I am for Bond movies.

I'm looking forward to Casino Royale more than any Bond movie before. The Bond series has been careening downhill for sometime now. They're still entertaining movies, of course, but the penchant for gadgets and special effects has gotten out of control, as has the need to suspend disbelief, and not for the first time (who can forget "Moonraker"?). The breaking point came when we saw Bond tooling around in an invisible car, inside an ice palace, trying to chase down a North Korean colonel who somehow accumulates enough money and technological know-how (despite being from a country with a per capita GDP of $1700) to build a massive laser capable of wiping out whole batallions.

Mercifully, MGM opted to hit the reset button and do a prequel. And prequels, of course, are all the rage. As we all know, Hollywood has run out of ideas. But by doing a prequel, they can tell what appears like a new story, when in fact it's a way of admitting that they screwed up the movie franchise and want to start over. It's very clever, and it works. Look at how the Batman franchise (another favorite of mine) has been reinvigorated by a darker, tougher Batman and a more down-to-earth story. They're hoping to do the same thing with Bond in "Casino Royale": there's no grand S.P.E.C.T.R.E. plot to blow up the entire world, just a storyline about targeting a guy who finances terrorists. That's perfectly plausible (and timely, too).

We'll see where they go from here, but I'm looking forward to nourishing my inner movie geek tonight.

Confessions of a Sports Bigamist

2006-11-11T08:49:00.000-05:00

My wife told me it was time to get help. "No, it's cool, I can handle it." No dice. The gaggle of family and friends in my living room agreed with her. They didn't like me the way I was. They didn't like what this problem was doing to me. I couldn't handle their accusing stares and sharp words, and decided it was time.

I checked the local newspaper for dates and times of meetings, found one I liked and went down to the local community center. A few burnouts stood outside, puffing furiously on cigarettes. Inside the community center, the stench of desperation hung like a fog. I looked around, didn't see a soul I knew. "This is hard", I thought. "I'm not sure I can handle it."

I half-listened to the stories of families and friendships torn asunder by this all-too-common problem, thinking, "nah, I'm not like that." I thought maybe I could sneak out without anyone noticing. I started to edge toward the exit, but before I could, the group leader, a man fully recovered from his problem, pointed to me and said, "I see we have a new member with us this evening. Why don't you introduce yourself to the group?"

Damn. Busted.

Time to face the music.

"My name is Phil, and I'm a Sports Bigamist."

"Hi Phil!"

"Hi. I've been following college football since I was 8. That's how I learned to count by sevens...which, come to think of it, is about the only practical use for that skill. Anyway, I grew up in the far reaches of Upstate New York."

"You mean Buffalo?" interjected a guy with a San Francisco Giants cap and an LA Dodgers t-shirt. Wow, I thought I had problems.

"No", I responded, "a lot farther north than that. Suffice to say, there wasn't a lot of big-time sports in the area. The closest thing to a local sports team was the Montreal Canadiens. Well, there was the Montreal Expos..."

"WHO?" asked the entire room.

"Never mind. Anyway, growing up, I was pretty much left to my own devices when it came to picking my teams. Not much local pressure, no real strong family ties to any one team or other, and no real role models when it came to this stuff. I fell in love with certain teams for one reason or another, but when it came to college football, I had a really hard time of it. I loved the tradition of Michigan football, the maize and blue, the most awesome football helmets ever, the famous fight song, the three yards and a cloud of dust philosophy of Bo Schembechler, the 32 (at that time) Big Ten titles. But I also came to love the 'in your face' philosophy of Miami football..."

"Miami-Florida or Miami-Ohio?" asked someone.

"Miami-Florida," I responded. Retard. I continued, "the great passing game, the legitimate 'us against the world' philosophy before it became an embarrassing cliche, the ultra-talented teams. I just couldn't pick between the two, and frankly, I've been conflicted ever since."

"Let's all thank Phil for sharing. And welcome to the group, Phil."

After the meeting, I was talking to the person sitting next to me. He was wearing one of those half-n-half jerseys that people often buy when their favorite player gets traded. The ones Ray Bourque made popular when he was traded from the Bruins to the Avalanche. In this case, he was wearing a Jay Fiedler Jets-Buccaneers jersey, which I didn't even know existed.

"Yeah, there's some real sad stories here. You saw the guy who can't pick between the Dodgers and Giants?"

"Yeah, I did. How's he live with himself?"

"Don't know. There was a guy who used to come around here who cheered for Duke and North Carolina."

"Really?"

"Yeah. We think he shacked up with some girl who cheered for the Cubs and Cardinals."

"Enablers."

"Compared to them, you're not so bad, Phil. Hey, you're not cheering for Ohio State, right?"

I uttered an unprintable expletive at the mention of THE Ohio State University. Not only had they spoiled more than a few Michigan seasons, but they blatantly stole the 2002 national title from The U.

He chuckled and said, "It's not as though Miami and Michigan play each other. The last time it happened was probably before you started following college football."

"It was 1988. I was young and foolish then." As opposed to being old and foolish now.

"What side were you on?"

"Can't remember. It's all a haze to me. Maybe that's why I'm here."

I said my good-byes, promised to return next week, and left the meeting. It was cool outside, with just a slight mist in the air. The kind of weather that reminds you that it's college football season. And that, in turn, reminded me of my problem. But there's hope in the air, too. I'll get through this.

I've just got to take it one day at a time.

The Mets in 2007...And The Perils of Losing Internet Access

2006-10-27T08:12:00.000-04:00

I meant to post this some time ago, but unfortunately, I've been struck with a combination of computer problems at home (we had a combination of a squirrel chewing through the cable line and something I'm not tech-savvy enough to describe, so I'll chalk it up to "computer boo-boo"), and have been buried with work, thus limiting my goof-off time. So, as the St. Louis Cardinals are poised to become the worst World Series champions since the '88 Dodgers (by the way, that's not a dig against the Redbirds; I'd much rather be known as a weak World Series champ than a great team that didn't get there), here's my rather untimely discussion of what the Mets need to do for 2007:

1. Have Plans A through G for the rotation.

As it stands, the Mets are poised to head into 2007 with a rotation that looks something like this: Tom Glavine (who I believe will be resigned for something like 1 year and $12 million), John Maine, Oliver Perez, a free agent to be determined and Mike Pelfrey. Brian Bannister will be waiting in the wings, and Pedro Martinez will hopefully be shoehorned in around July or so. Steve Trachsel will be gone, and Orlando Hernandez may not return, to my wife's chagrin; she loves to call "el Duque" "Dookie"...which might be a more appropriate name for Trachsel, given how he pitched this postseason. It's too bad she's not more schooled in baseball terminology; she could make endless jokes about how he likes to throw the old number 2. (That's baseball-speak for a curveball, for those of you in Rio Linda.)

Here's the thing about that proposed rotation; it's got more question marks than the Riddler. A 41-year old, a guy with 24 career starts, an ultra-talented headcase who posted an ERA over 6, a rookie and an overpriced free agent. Waiting in the wings are the new Kirk Reuter and a guy being held together with spit and bailing twine. Yikes. I'm not saying it can't work; look at the upside: Glavine should have at least one more good year, Maine looks like the real deal, Perez has filthy stuff and appears to have harnessed it (if he can pitch that well in game 7 of the NLCS, he'll be fine), Pelfrey's got great stuff and won't be relied upon heavily and they should have the money to lure one of the top 3 free agents. But still, there's not a sure thing in the bunch.

I've harped on this before, and probably will continue to do so, but the failure to trade for Zito looks worse now than ever. Did that cost the Mets a berth in the World Series? Amazingly, it probably did not; offense, relief pitching and Tom Glavine in Game 5, the team's supposed strengths, were what let them down. It's hard to imagine any starting pitcher doing much better than Maine and Perez did in games 6 and 7. Only Steve Trachsel's complete and utter implosion in game 3 could have been averted, and even then, Jeff Suppan shut out the Mets. So Zito would likely have changed nothing. So why does it look worse? Look again at that rotation; there's not a 200 inning guy in the group. Glavine's a 6 inning pitcher, as is Maine (who I don't believe has the build or stamina to be more). Perez could be, but one has to assume that he'll be prone to the occasional train wreck, thus taxing the bullpen. Pelfrey will surely be on a 100 pitch limit (thankfully, the Mets organization seems to have learned something from destroying Doc Gooden's arm). The bullpen was taxed like a Massachusetts resident this year, and it showed in the playoffs. Zito's 200+ innings would have been a welcome addition. Instead of having a leg up in signing him, the Mets will go in as co-favorites with the Yankees and Padres.

I am not sanguine about Jason Schmidt; that declining K rate spells disaster for a power pitcher. Anything beyond a 2 year contract will be a poor investment. Daisuke Matsuzaka will probably be a Mariner. The other options on the market are uninspiring. Jeff Suppan has been mentioned, for example. If I was to point to one free agent as a "holy crap, he got HOW much?!?" candidate, it would be him. Suppan is a mortal lock to be dramatically overpaid by someone. One playoff series does not a superstar make.

So if the Mets can't get Zito, they need to go for quantity over quality; pick up a bunch of starting pitchers and hope 5 good ones stick. Bringing back Hernandez and keeping the underrated Dave Williams around would be good progress toward that goal.

2. Make a Decision on the Corner Outfielders.

It's hard to imagine that Cliff Floyd will be back. If he can be resigned for a bargain rate, wonderful. But Floyd's injury history, after a fairly healthy 2005 (150 games, his most since 1998), reared its ugly head once again. He's averaged 109 games per year and turns 34 next year, so that trend seems unlikely to reverse itself. Realistically, he should be DH'ing, with the occasional fill-in as a 4th OF. Moreover, the Mets desperately need another power righty bat in the lineup. Carlos Lee would be a perfect fit, but I think the Rangers signed him to a long-term deal. Endy Chavez is nothing more than a 4th outfielder, pinch runner and defensive replacement; as great as his defense was, his bat was a tremendous liability in the playoffs.

In right field, Lastings Milledge proved he wasn't ready for prime time. Will he be next year? The Mets would seem to have little choice but to find out. They decided he was more valuable than Barry Zito, so they might as well play him and let things shake out where they may. Milledge will be 22 next year, but has little else to gain from AAA. With other expensive needs on the roster, a cheap, homegrown option in right field would seem to be the way to go. Milledge will simply have to sink or swim. One good sign: he showed plate patience in the big leagues, after being a very patient hitter in the minors.

3. Find a Second Baseman.

Jose Valentin did a nice job as a fill-in at second base, but isn't a long-term solution. He wore down as the season went on, which shouldn't be a shock considering he's 37 years old. The problem with that is that Valentin struggled mightily as a utility player. So, he can't be played everyday, because he'll wear down, but he can't play sporadically, because he needs to get into a hitting groove. The ideal solution might be to let Valentin man the position for 120 games or so, and work Anderson Hernandez in steadily, in the hopes that his bat will catch up with his glove.

4. Beef Up the Bench.

The Mets' weak bench was exploited in the NLCS. Julio Franco is the team's only reliable pinch hitter, and he can't play forever (or can he?). Endy Chavez and Chris Woodward are valuable players for their defense and ability to play multiple positions, but neither is going to give the team a big hit off the bench. A good right-handed bat who can make the opposition pay for bringing in a left-handed specialist would be very helpful.

Note that I'm not concerned about David Wright. Yes, he was lousy in the playoffs. Yes, he was clearly nervous. Well, why shouldn't he be? He's a young player in the playoffs for the first time. It happens. He'll be fine. I'm less optimistic about Aaron Heilman. The track record of relief pitchers who give up big playoff home runs is not a real positive one, and the psychological scars could linger.

On balance, it's still a very good team, and they should be the favorites to recapture the NL East next year.

I Need to Read More PJ O'Rourke...

2006-10-17T08:48:00.000-04:00

...and so do you. This is about the best thing I've read about the 2006 midterm elections.

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Must-win game for the Mets tonight. With Tom Glavine taking the mound, they can't afford a loss when they're looking at the less-than-stellar John Maine in game 6, and probably someone even worse in game 7. If the Mets win tonight, it will be interesting to see whether Willie Randolph goes all out in game 6, or whether he holds part of the bullpen back for a possible game 7.

Honestly, I don't even know what the right call is there. I suppose the situation will dictate things, as it always does. The Cardinals have possibly the NL's best starting pitcher going in game 6, but might have an even greater advantage in a possible game 7, since Jeff Suppan has had a very good second half, and has some big-game experience on his side as well.

Of course, if the Mets lose tonight, none of it matters. They'll have to go all-hands-on-deck for game 6, and hope for the best in game 7.

I suppose if it was me, I'd make every effort to save Aaron Heilman for game 7 and start him. If Glavine gives the team 7 innings tonight, that can be accomplished easily enough. He's been agitating all year to start and is probably a better bet than Darren Oliver, though Oliver has been effective as a long reliever, including his 6 scoreless innings in game 3. Failing that, I'd send Oliver to the hill.

---

I've been meaning to write about The U, but that will have to wait for another time.

Whither Ohio?

2006-10-16T13:22:00.000-04:00

Kos, no friend of the Republicans, had some words of caution for his party recently. You can read it on your own, and should, if you're interested in the Senate elections. Here's the pertinent part, though:

We're leading in the polls in Ohio, but DeWine (R) had $3 million more cash on hand than Democrat Sherrod Brown, with the RNC and NRSC already dumping what could end up being $5-15 million more into the state. They consider this a "firewall" state, and will absolutely drown out what Democrats can throw into the fray.

However, this is somewhat at odds with a New York Times report that the Republicans have given up the ship in Ohio. Again, the pertinent part:

Senior Republican leaders have concluded that Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, a pivotal state in this year’s fierce midterm election battles, is likely to be heading for defeat and are moving to reduce financial support for his race and divert party money to other embattled Republican senators, party officials said.

Ordinarily, the Gray Lady would get the credibility edge over a lefty blogger, except that now, Election Projection is reporting that the NYT story is false, and the RNC will continue funding Ohio the same as before.

Ah, the Information Age. You gotta love it.

Incidentally, I'd dump every penny the RNC was planning to spend in Ohio into New Jersey; anything to make the Dems play defense SOMEWHERE. DeWine's going down, and I don't think he can be saved. But then, I don't get to make these decisions.

Carlos Beltran and the Senate

2006-10-13T08:08:00.000-04:00

That's two separate topics. Carlos Beltran is not, to my knowledge, opposing Hillary Clinton. He could be, though, for all we know about the former First Lady's challenger.

If I had an MVP vote, I'd probably vote for Albert Pujols. I hate to say it, but it's true. Without Beltran, the Mets probably still win the NL East. Without Pujols, the Cardinals probably win 65 games. That said, Beltran is generating, in me, that confidence that only the absolute best players generate. I don't know that it's on the level of what Red Sox fans feel about Jedi Knight David Ortiz, but it's a pretty huge level of confidence.

Case in point: in last night's game, when Beltran came to the plate in the sixth with LoDuca on first, I didn't just hope he was going to deliver a big hit, I expected nothing less. I actually would have been a little surprised if he DIDN'T homer. And indeed, he hit a ball that would have landed in Chappaqua if it hadn't hit the scoreboard.

In other words, take how Yankee fans feel when Alex Rodriguez comes to the plate in a big situation, and make it the complete opposite.

Here's the weird thing, though: the Mets are generally considered overwhelming favorites to win the NLCS, yet they probably needed last night's game a lot more than the Cardinals did. The Mets will now start John Maine, Steve Trachsel, and Oliver Perez on three straight days. In each of those matchups, the Cardinals will have an advantage. Moreover, the Mets' bullpen will probably end up working at least 10 innings in that time, which would wear out even the deepest bullpen. So, a game 1 win was crucial for the Mets, but a luxury for the Cardinals.

---

I'm following, as closely as I can, the important Senate races. When one lives in a thoroughly non-competitive state, that happens.

Our current Senate, of course, features 55 Republicans and 45 Democrats. So, a pickup of 6 seats gives the Dems control of the chamber. There are, right now, 9 races worth watching: Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington. I'm ignoring Connecticut because whoever wins will be part of the Democratic caucus; the Republican candidate is running around 6 percent.

Washington is a stretch to include in that group; incumbent Maria Cantwell (D) leads by 9 and Mike McGavick hasn't been closer than that for months. Moreover, Washington has voted fairly consistently Democratic over the last few years, and given the national trend toward the party of the jackass, there's little reason to believe that will be competitive.

The other 8 races are more interesting...

Conrad Burns (R-MT) wasn't the most popular Senate incumbent to begin with, and he's trailed John Tester throughout. Burns looked headed for defeat in 2000, as I recall, though, so maybe he can come back again. Last poll showed him trailing by 6.

Rick Santorum (R-PA) pretty much needs a miracle; he's trailed Bob Casey throughout (by as much as 17 at one point). One voter (can't remember the story in which I read it, and so I'm paraphrasing) summed up what's probably the prevailing sentiment about Santorum: "I admire him because you know where he stands at all times. The problem is, I don't agree with a lot of those stands."

Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) has been running neck and neck with Sheldon Whitehouse, but the challenger has opened up a 6 point lead. Since Chafee is the most liberal Republican in the Senate, one doubts the GOP would miss him much if they could still hang onto a majority. Still, that majority is obviously in doubt.

So Montana, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island look increasingly like likely Democratic pickups, which would give them 48. That leaves the Senate to be decided by five races: Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee and Virginia.

Virginia is the only one that doesn't appear to be a genuine toss-up. George Allen (R) had this race locked up, and then shot himself in the foot by referring to an Indian-American volunteer as a "macaca", which apparently is a slur in some cultures. This raised concerns about Allen's good old Southern boy background. Of course, since good old Southern boys still predominate in Virginia, and since the only pollster who hasn't had Allen leading this thing throughout is the unreliable John Zogby, he should hang on to this seat. Put another way, if Allen DOESN'T hang onto the seat, it won't be a question of whether the GOP loses the Senate, it will be a question of by how much.

New Jersey is the GOP's only real chance for a pickup. This was Jon Corzine's (D) seat, which he vacated to run (successfully) for governor. So, Bob Menendez is the incumbent, and apparently a vulnerable one. Republican Tom Kean has been running neck and neck with Menendez throughout. Everyone but Zogby has this thing within a couple points. Given the national trends, it's hard to imagine a Republican winning in New Jersey, which hasn't gone for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988 and hasn't had a Republican senator since the earth's crust was cooling. Still, if the Republicans could swap Rhode Island for New Jersey, I'm sure they'd take that.

In Ohio, I do not understand how incumbent Mike DeWine (R) is still in this thing. He's looking like Santorum in 2000 or Al D'Amato in 1992 the way he's hanging around despite rampant voter disaffection with the state party and high negative ratings. I don't know a blessed thing about Sherrod Brown, but he must be a terrible candidate; a Democrat with even a hint of charisma or competence would be running away with this election.

Tennessee is another race that's closer than it should be. Most expected Bob Corker (R) to succeed to the seat of the retiring Bill Frist with ease, but Harold Ford Jr. has made this an extremely close race. The most recent SurveyUSA poll has Corker up 2. Ford, like Illinois' Barack Obama, is a young, good-looking, intelligent career politician for whom bigger things within the Democratic Party probably lie in store.

Finally, Missouri is the one state that everyone can agree is a dead heat. The last poll showed Jim Talent (R) tied with challenger Claire McCaskill, which is pretty much where the race has been throughout. Missouri has long been considered a battleground state (going back to the Civil War, when that was quite literally true), though it's been veering to the right in recent years. This one's a coin flip.

So what happens on Election Day? I say the Dems pick up Montana, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Ohio. They hang onto New Jersey, and the Republicans hang onto Virginia and Tennessee. As for Missouri, heads it's Talent, tails McCaskill...(flip)...tails.

So, the new Senate is 50-50.

It's a Great Sports Weekend

2006-10-08T11:10:00.000-04:00

You know what, the Dolphins could lose 40-0 today (and they probably will; Jo-Jo Harrington is starting), and it would still be a great weekend. The Mets are in the NLCS and the Yankees will be watching them. Huzzah!

As an aside, I think I'd rather have the Mets face St. Louis than San Diego. I like San Diego's pitching a lot better, and think they've got the lefties to give the Mets' lineup a problem. Ideally, that series would go to five games, with extra frames in games 4 and 5 to wear out the Cards' bullpen.

Meanwhile, the Mets' pen will be well-rested, and thank God for that. They'll need it. With John Maine, Steve Trachsel and Oliver Perez most likely starting games 2-4, the bullpen could easily work 13 innings in 4 days. Actually, I like Maine, but Willie Randolph doesn't trust him, which means it's a miracle if he works more than 5 innings. He should distrust Trachsel, whom I'm going to nickname "Leprosy", because like leprosy, having him pitch is a slow, painful way to die. Perez, at least, is fully capable of throwing 8 innings of shutout ball, although he's equally capable of throwing 3 innings of 10-hit, 7-run ball. At some point, Randolph will have to let one of those guys go more than 5; in a 7 game series, you can't use the bullpen for 4 innings per night, no matter how deep it is. He got away with a quick hook in the NLDS because the Mets closed things out in a swift and brutal manner, but unless they win the NLCS in 4 or 5, that's not going to fly.

Of course, the sports media is rightfully all over the Yankees' story today. Most talking heads liked this team to win the Series, and why not? (So did I, lest you think I'm blaming others for being foolish.) From the first man to the ninth, that was baseball's strongest lineup, and by a decent margin. Fortunately, the Yankees couldn't pitch. Wang and Mussina pitched fairly well, but after that, they had nothing. Randy Johnson is absolutely cooked; I think he's on Steve Trachsel's level at this point. Jaret Wright's career peaked 9 years ago, which seems odd considering he's still fairly young. Not sure why they didn't start Cory Lidle instead, though it doesn't really matter, given how well Jeremy Bonderman pitched.

I was saying to someone, either my wife or my friend Nick, maybe both, that I wasn't sure whose impending exit from the Bronx I was looking forward to most: Joe Torre, Brian Cashman or Alex Rodriguez. I wasn't totally serious, but now word is that Torre is, in fact, done. It's good to see the old George Steinbrenner back; when all else fails, blame the manager. Because, you know, it's his fault that the Yankees have spent their money in a haphazard fashion over the last five years, and can't piece together a decent pitching staff. I think Cashman's a decent GM, but his firing I could understand, given how poorly the team has spent their money the last couple years (i.e. Johnson instead of Carlos Beltran, Carl Pavano, Kyle Farnsworth, Jaret Wright). Torre's, not so much. We'll see if Cashman follows. Hopefully Steinbrenner will appoint one of the infamous Tampa Mob to replace him. I like the impending Lou Piniella hiring though. He did wonders with those Tampa Bay Devil Rays. I'd toss out a guy with four World Series titles for him in a heartbeat.

The A-Rod situation bears watching. He'll get a TON of blame for this, given his 1-14 average in the series, coupled with his litany of postseason failures as a Yankee. His confidence clearly failed him this year, and it's only going to get worse. I think they have to consider trading him, but where? Even though the Yankees got Texas to pay part of his contract, there's still a LOT of money remaining, and only so many teams can pay that. The only teams with the money to handle that kind of deal are probably the Mets, Red Sox, Dodgers, Orioles, Cubs, and Angels.

The Red Sox and Mets can be eliminated for obvious reasons. In any event, I'm fairly sure the Mets would refuse to deal Jose Reyes or David Wright for Rodriguez at this point, when you factor in youth, money, appeal to the fan base and now the very legitimate questions about whether Rodriguez can play in NYC. Not only that, but both Wright and Reyes had more win shares than Rodriguez this year, so statistically, they were actually better players. And yes, that digression was really just a vehicle to point out that both Reyes and Wright were better players than A-Rod this year.

That leaves the Dodgers, Orioles, Cubs and Angels. The Cubs and Orioles are both competely directionless franchises and should be discounted because whether they have the personnel or not, it seems unlikely they could get their stuff together. (Although a Rodriguez for Carlos Zambrano deal would certainly be interesting.)

The Dodgers might make some sense; they're hardly set at third base, and though their lineup is solid top to bottom, they could use a masher to tie it all together. Plus, A-Rod might appreciate the more laid-back climate of Southern California. What could they give up, though? The Yankees would likely want a competent 3rd baseman and a bunch of pitching in any such deal. Even at 75 cents on the dollar, A-Rod would be an extremely expensive acquisition. The Angels might make sense; they've got the pitching to make a deal work, and desperately need another slugger in the lineup.

At this point, I'd put the odds on a Rodriguez trade at about 40%. I think the Yankees will look around, but the question will be whether anyone can come up with enough in return and can get the Yankees to pay for enough of his contract. The bigger question is how they're going to come by some more pitching. Right now, they've got one guy set in stone for next year: Chien-Ming Wang. Mussina figures to be back, too. After that, the rotation is an open question. Johnson figures to be gone; I believe he's a free agent. Neither Pavano nor Wright can be counted upon. Lidle is a journeyman whose spot they figure to try and upgrade. The bullpen might be in better shape than some think: Bruney and Proctor are both young and promising, and figure to get better. Building a bullpen around those two and Mariano Rivera isn't the worst thing in the world. Still, that leaves arguably 7 of the 12 spots on the pitching staff open to question.

I'd expect the Yankees to make a very strong run at Barry Zito; that's probably the one bad thing to come out of this otherwise-glorious Yankee collapse. The Mets need him badly, and now the Yanks figure to exceed any bid for him. I'm tired of harping on how dumb it was not to trade Milledge for him when they had the chance, so I'll just let that slide. Hopefully they'll turn their money to Jason Schmidt, instead, who's pretty much a lock to get overpaid by someone and then disappoint them horribly. If Cashman's still in charge, that might be a possibility, given his recent track record.

Thoughts on the MLB Postseason to Date

2006-10-07T07:45:00.000-04:00

The funniest thing happened the other day: I was watching "The Godfather", and it turns out that there's a deleted scene that no one knows about. It's a very well-hidden easter egg, and it comes up right before Sonny gets in his car to do some more severe bodily harm to Carlo. Right before Sonny gets in his car, one of the Corleone soldiers yells to him, "Hey Sonny, stay off the Meadowbrook Parkway, I heard there's a traffic jam there!" So Sonny takes another route to Carlo's house, avoids getting gunned down at the toll booth, puts a bullet in Carlo's head, and lives happily ever after.

On a related note, the Oakland A's have advanced past the first round of the playoffs.

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I can't enjoy an AL team more than I'm enjoying the Detroit Tigers right now. It's simply not possible. I enjoyed the Red Sox run in 2004, but that was tainted by the knowledge that their fans and the sports media would be insufferable for the next few years (and that, of course, is precisely what happened). No such problem with the Tigers.

Of course, that series isn't over, not by a long shot. But the Tigers have looked excellent so far, and as mentioned by someone yesterday, maybe Jayson Stark, Jim Leyland has hit on the perfect formula (probably the only formula), for handling his pitchers: tell the starter "you've got 100 pitches. After that, at the first sign of trouble, you're gone." This marks a dramatic change from the Leyland of old, who often ground young pitchers' arms into hamburger. The hope is that the starter will be effective enough to take the game into the sixth, then piece it together after that using a deep bullpen. Not sure too many other teams can pull that off in a 5 or 7 game series.

I didn't like what Leyland did with the bullpen last night, though. Why use Joel Zumaya and Todd Jones with a 6-0 lead when you need just 5 outs? I understand that he wanted to make sure the Yankees don't come back, but there's a good chance he'll need those guys today, and they're not going to be quite as effective, having pitched for three straight days. Detroit's pen is deep enough that surely someone else could have gotten five outs without allowing 6 runs. We'll see if it comes back to bite him.

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There are a few reasons it sucks being a Mets fan, so here's one of them. Here's a list of the closers the Mets have had over the last 10 years: Billy Wagner, Braden Looper, Armando Benitez, John Franco.

Stat-wise, all those guys were pretty good. Even Looper's numbers as a Met weren't all that bad. Realistically, Met fans haven't felt comfortable with a lead late in the game since Jesse Orosco was around. None of those guys are exactly renowned for a 1-2-3 ninth inning. Benitez and Wagner have both surrendered huge postseason home runs. Even though Wagner was probably the best closer in the NL this year, I absolutely do not trust him with a 1 run lead in the ninth.

Now, here's a list of all the closers the Yankees have had over the last 10 years: Mariano Rivera.

When, apart from the 2004 ALCS, have Yankee fans ever failed to rest easy with Rivera on the hill? That must be a nice feeling, knowing that the door will be shut with extreme prejudice.

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Speaking of closers, I'm pretty sure that if Dr. Frankenstein were to design one from scratch, it would probably look an awful lot like Joel Zumaya. Imposing build, check. Tattoos all over the arms, check. Nasty beard, check. Bloodshot right eye, check. (Okay, that was a one-game feature, but still, it added something.) Virtually unhittable 100+ mph fastball with good movement, check.

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Jeez, why couldn't Kenny Rogers pitch like that for the '99 Mets?

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Further proof that the Empire is evil, corrosive and will stain your soul: I went to my buddy Sal's restaurant/bar last night to watch the game. Sal is a lifelong Red Sox fan, so I said, "hey, you must be loving the Tigers right now." He said, "you know, I hate to say it, but it's hard to hate the Yankees. They're awfully good for business." Sad day, really.

When I'm Czar of the NFL

2006-10-04T12:40:00.000-04:00

I think the title of this post is pretty self-explanatory, save for the term "Czar". Personally, I've always thought "Czar" was a better title than "King", and certainly well ahead of "Commissioner". If a cooler title, one that conveyed even more power, could be thought of, I'd certainly go with it. Maybe "Maximum Proconsul" would work, but people would start abbreviating it MP before long, and that could be construed as "Member of Parliament", which is the exact opposite of what we're shooting for.

Anyway, the NFL is the greatest pro sports league in the world. But, there are some changes that it could stand. With me at the controls, drunk with power, and given a healthy David Stern-like level of authority, here's what would happen:

1. Fines for shoddy announcing. The first time an "end-around" is called a "reverse", the announcer gets a warning. The second time, the network gets a $100,000 fine, and the fine doubles for each successive offense. I don't know what would be more fun, watching an announcer who's pissed at his network and in the last year of his contract trying to ring up the fine, or angry network execs firing guys at halftime. Also, announcers will be limited to using the term "gunslinger" once per season with Brett Favre. So, pick your spot wisely, guys.

Also, all announcers will be forced to attend the "Cris Collinsworth School of Honesty". Collinsworth (aka Kev's Boy, or "Chicken Neck"), is a smart-mouthed pain in the ass at times, but he's knowledgeable as hell, and is one of the very few guys in the business who has the balls to call a bad team bad, as opposed to finding lame and obscure things about which to compliment them. Adjunct instructors will include Mel Kiper, Jr., Bill Simmons, and Merril Hoge.

2. Hire Vince McMahon as a PR Executive. Here's the problem that Gene Upshaw has: he's viewed as too close to the commissioner. Upshaw foolishly subscribes to the notion that public animosity and posturing only hurt negotiations and prevent both sides from getting a deal done. This leads to hacks like Bryant Gumbel (do we still have to take him seriously as a journalist? Can I get a ruling on this?) calling him a lapdog. Upshaw has only ensured a long period of labor peace and prosperity that has served to line the pockets of his consitituents in a better and more consistent fashion than any other sport. Clearly, he's doing a horrible job.

What Upshaw needs to be taken seriously is a public attitude of hostility, but with a privately reasonable and conciliatory stance. Who better to pull this off than Vince McMahon, the man who has successfully choreographed the two-faced sport/entertainment of pro wrestling for over 20 years? Upshaw can talk tough and be rude, nasty and swing chairs in public, and in private, continue to be himself. That way, everyone's happy.

3. End the DirecTV monopoly on Sunday Ticket. The NFL is the world's best pro sports league, but when it comes to television, they shoot themselves in the foot repeatedly and with deadly accuracy. You can read almost any given Gregg Easterbrook column for a better rant on game selection, but my focus is on the deficiencies of Sunday Ticket. The NFL signed a long-term, exclusive rights deal with DirecTV for the NFL Sunday Ticket package.

Here's the problem: for about 90% of this country, DirecTV is significantly worse than digital cable. The movies suck, there's no On-Demand programming, the control is less user-friendly, it costs more, you get even more channels you'll never use (as if that was possible) and it's prone to weather problems. The only significant advantage DTV has is the Sunday Ticket. I don't blame them for this; it's good marketing. They know their product is otherwise inferior to digital cable, so they get something to actually draw an audience. I would bet that at least 1/3 of the people who currently have DirecTV would drop it if Sunday Ticket wasn't available.

Basically, the NFL has consciously limited their audience by going with an exclusive-rights deal with DirecTV, as opposed to going with digital cable, or doing what the other major sports did: go with both. Yes, DirecTV paid a MASSIVE sum of money for this right (I think it was $2.1 billion), but in the long-term, I think the NFL would have done much better to cater to a wider audience.

4. Full-time refs. NFL officiating reached an all-time low with last year's Super Bowl. Something obviously needs to be done. Personally, I don't see how full-time refs will help that much; these guys are already extremely well-versed in the rules, and it's their judgment and ability to see things a little quicker that require improvement. How will paying them enough to quit their day jobs help? I have no idea. I do know that pretty much everyone complains about this though. If we hire full-time refs, that will at least give coaches and columnists one less thing to whine about. And I'm all for reducing the amount of whining.

5. Five minutes per draft pick. Is there anything more asinine than a team knowing darn well who they're going to take with their first-round pick, but milking their entire 15 minutes on the clock? I think not. This reached a new height (or depth) of absurdity a couple years ago, when the Bengals, picking first, had already SIGNED Carson Palmer, and still took about 14 minutes to get their card to the podium. Enough. All this does is leave more times for camera shots of brain-dead Jets fans and for Chris Berman to quote songs from before I was born. While we're at it, let's just limit the commentary to Dan Patrick and Mel Kiper, Jr.

6. Put a team in Los Angeles. Strong-arm the stadium folks, and move a team there. If they have to play in the Rose Bowl for a couple years while the city gets it's act together, so be it. Personally, I'd move either the Jaguars or (once the feel-good story wears off in a year or so) the Saints.

As an aside, I don't buy this "New Orleans needs the Saints" schtick for one second. Yes, we all feel bad about what happened, but let's not make this bigger than it is. This was a team with no identity, in a city whose fan support and financial support were at best tepid, and now that city lacks the means to seriously support an NFL team. Let the feel-good story run its course, and then let cold, hard mathematics take over.

7. Set up a Super Bowl rotation. Forgive my obvious bias, but H.Wayne Huizenga had a phenomenal idea that didn't go anywhere. HWH is in the process of a massive renovation of Dolphins Stadium, and wanted to have the Super Bowl hosted in Miami every other year or every third year. He planned to make the stadium a (for lack of a better term) giant football experience, and set up huge week-long festivities around the Super Bowl. Now THAT'S a great idea. The Super Bowl is how the NFL charms the corporate sponsors who pay the bills. Why not go all-out to make sure they have a great time and keep coming back? If someone like Huizenga is going to put the means together to make it a giant event, then go with that, and make sure the game's hosted there every couple years. This push to host the Super Bowl in places like Jacksonville is nice, but misguided. It's not about being fair, it's about making money, and making sure that money keeps coming in. If we're not going to rotate the Super Bowl among each of the 32 cities, let's narrow it to the few that have been the most successful: Miami, Atlanta, San Diego and Los Angeles. New Orleans, of course, is out for obvious reasons.

That's all I can think of at the moment, at least for big ideas. But, given my love of football and my tendency to rant and ramble, there's a fair chance this will be an ongoing series.

The Pedro Fallout

2006-09-29T10:01:00.000-04:00

Pedro is done for the year.

The optimist will say that the Mets have pretty much been without Pedro for half the season, and been just fine. And in fact, the way he's pitched when injured, he would have been more of a liability than anything.

I, unfortunately, am not an optimist. I am worried about the Mets in the postseason, and think the Yankees will end up with World Series title #25. The AL has gotten weaker in the last couple weeks; Detroit suddenly doesn't look like all that, Minnesota doesn't have Liriano, and Billy Beane's shit still don't work in the playoffs.

The Mets' one genuine advantage over the Yanks was pitching; the Yankees are probably the only team that can boast a better lineup than the Mets. Now, that advantage has been eliminated. I am unbelievably pissed that they didn't go out and get Zito at the deadline. I was pissed at the time, and now, I'm super-pissed. Think "Eddie (bleep)in' Moore" pissed.

Now, Steve Trachsel (a near-lock to get rechristened "Steve (bleep)in' Trachsel" in the playoffs) will be in the rotation when he should have been an emergency starter or long reliever. Instead of a perfectly acceptable rotation of Zito, Glavine, Hernandez and Maine, it's Glavine, Hernandez, Maine, Trachsel, which would probably give the Mets the worst starting rotation of the 8 playoff teams.

None of those current playoff starters have a fastball worth the name and make their living on the corners and off the plate. That may be fine against free-swinging, mediocre lineups, but in the playoffs, you're facing the best lineups baseball has to offer, and so hitters will be more disciplined. This is a point made very astutely by Orel Hershiser, who knows a couple things about pitching in the playoffs. The Yankees, with their patient, disciplined lineup, would absolutely kill the Mets pitching staff as it stands. Honestly, I would feel better with Oliver Perez in the rotation than Trachsel. That sounds crazy, but at least Perez gives the Mets a different look, with his electric, if sometimes eccentric, fastball and seems to be on the rebound since he started working with Rick Peterson. His ERA for August, with 4 starts, was 4.74, and he had a very nice 28/9 K/BB ratio in 24.2 IP. That won't happen, of course, because Willie Randolph loves him some Proven Veterans.

At this point, the game plan has to be to pray for 6 solid innings, and then the bullpen takes over. But, that 'pen is going to get worn down if the Mets play many extra inning games, and extra frames always happen in the postseason. I still have nightmares about Bobby Valentine trotting out Armando Benitez in the 1999 NLCS. Benitez takes much of the blame for that infamous Game 6, but in truth, he was completely out of gas from having been used so much.

The only saving grace is that the Kris Benson deal worked out better than anyone could have hoped. Well, anyone except me; I said from the start that I thought John Maine, not Jorge Julio (who was soon moved for El Duque), was the key to the deal. The Mets effectively dealt Benson for two superior starters, Hernandez and Maine, who cost much less.

I still think the Mets are the class of the NL, even without Pedro, but that's more a statement on the weakness of the rest of the NL than anything else. And if they run into the suddenly-hot Houston Astros, who boast an Oswalt-Clemens-Pettitte trio, they may be in trouble. But at least that won't be in round 1; it looks like the Mets will get the wild card in the first round, since the Phillies are doing their usual fade.

T.O., B.S., and More.

2006-09-28T15:07:00.000-04:00

How could ESPN run this graphic without a subtitle like "Do you smell what Jeff Gordon is cookin'?"

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I'm not sure what happened with Terrell Owens, but I'm not buying this "allergic reaction" story. The guy's probably been taking painkillers for ages. He's a football player; he gets beat up every single week. Further, he's probably been taking whatever supplements he's been taking for a long time, too. Now, all of a sudden, he develops an allergic reaction to the two? I know that sometimes that can happen with penicillin and related drugs, but it seems unlikely. (Actually, my first thought was that he had a drug problem, which appears to have been ruled out.)

I'm also not entirely prepared to dismiss the report from the cops as easily as many others are. These guys were there, on the scene, saw everything that was going on, and said it was an attempted suicide. Everyone else is Monday Morning Quarterbacking (and not in the good, Peter King-like, way). That first-hand observance counts for a lot with me.

Do I think he tried to kill himself? I think it's more likely than it's being given credit for right now. The outward signs would seem to point against it; it's hard to believe that someone so phenomenally arrogant would do that, but we don't know what he's like on the inside. Does he compensate for a low feeling of self-worth with endless bragging, posturing and general behavior consistent with a jackass? It's certainly possible. More possible, I believe, than a suddenly ultra-fit football superstar suddenly developing a mysterious allergy to a combo painkillers and supplements that he's probably been taking for some time.

We're probably never going to find out what happened, though, so at this point, it's all academic.

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Jason Whitlock got fired by ESPN? Wow, what a f*&kin' tragedy, let's go buy some butts.

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Every time Bill Simmons cranks out a turd for a column, like this, or this, or pretty much anything that has the header "Note: this appears in an upcoming issue of ESPN The Magazine", and I get pissed, I have to remind myself of that fourth-wall breaching exchange from the Poochie episode of "The Simpsons"...

Comic Book Guy: Last night's episode of Itchy and Scratchy was the worst episode ever. I was on the internet within moments expressing my displeasure.
Bart: Hey, I know it wasn't great, but what right do you have to complain?
CBG: As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe it to me.
Bart: Owe you? What could they possibly owe you? They've given you thousands of hours of free entertainment! If anything, YOU owe THEM!
CBG: Worst...episode...ever.

I try very hard to maintain a sense of perspective about this stuff. I think Bill Simmons is the most entertaining (if not the best) sportswriter I've ever had the privilege to read. I've burned many crappy workdays sifting through his Page 2 archives and spent hundreds of lunch hours devouring his Friday NFL column along with a sandwich. But there's little denying that his work's gone downhill. Maybe it's because he's been overexposed. Maybe it's because he's become a different person since getting married and having a kid. Maybe it's because the taste of failure from his stint on Jimmy Kimmel's show still lingers. Maybe he got a big new deal from ESPN, cashed out and stopped giving a shit. I don't know.

Don't get me wrong, he's still fun to read most of the time, and still at least marginally informative. It's not like he's become Rick Reilly or anything. But the belly-laughs are a lot fewer and farther between, and it seems like most everything is a rehash of something he's written before, with a slightly different cast of characters.

Anyway, I'm not sure how to feel about all this. Disappointed, sure, but what right do I have to bitch? I'm genuinely conflicted about this; I'm not trying to make some sort of grand point with a rhetorical question.

Sport + TiVo = ???

2006-09-15T20:23:00.000-04:00

Some traditionalists will tell you that the only way to watch a sporting event is live. TiVo, they say, is for losers. To them, I say this: "horseshit". Hey, I love playoff baseball as much as the next guy, but when those jerks at FOX start the game at 9:07 pm on the East Coast, and the game's set to finish around 12:49 am, and I've got to get up for work at 6, it's a major pain in the ass. I love watching the World Cup, but I'm not about to risk my job by coming home at noon and returning at 3. This ain't Europe, you know.

From an officially licensed couch potato and certified sports junkie, here's my official rating of the major sports, and how they translate to TiVo. For the purpose of this article, we're using hockey, basketball, baseball, football, soccer and auto racing as the major sports. I recognize that hockey's a stretch, but let's throw those traditionalists a bone, okay? We'll also include tennis and golf, just to make all things fair...even though I'd sooner watch paint dry.

Here we go, from worst to first:

8. Hockey - Hockey's the fastest paced sport to begin with. What could possibly be gained from speeding it up even further?

7. Tennis - See above; tennis already moves pretty fast. The only advantage is being able to hit the slo-mo button and see how high Maria Sharapova's skirt comes up on a serve. And no, I'm not above trying that. Come to think of it, that alone should move tennis up on the list.

6. Basketball - The 30 second feature might help you get through a timeout, which is nice, while the announcers prattle on about who's getting the ball, and what the teams are trying to do (usually inane). And at the end of games, when you get timeouts by the dozen, it's a big help, but it's really no help to the in-game action.

5. Golf - Do we REALLY need to see Tiger Woods kneeling, lining up his putt, kneeling to look at it some more, lining up again, stepping out, lining it up...you know what, screw it. If you're watching golf in the first place, you're too damned old to figure out TiVo anyway.

4. Baseball - If you've got a very slow pitcher on the mound, you can probably utilize the 30 second skip between pitches. But otherwise, you end up skipping into the middle of the next pitch. Fast forwarding through pitching changes is helpful, as is the fast forward while someone like Nomar Garciaparra does his Rain Man routine. And if you're the type that wants to compress a 3 hour game into 45 minutes, baseball lends itself marginally well to a continuous fast forward. Personally, I embrace the strategy and thought that goes into each and every pitch, but your mileage may vary.

3. Auto racing - Let's not kid ourselves, sometimes you're just looking for a big wreck. I've watched entire races on fast forward before, and you often don't miss a lot. The only downside is that NASCAR announcers tend to be, in my opinion, the best of any major sport. They tend to be very informative, and not to fill the air with lots of idiotic platitudes. It might be the only sport where the announcers are genuinely a plus.

2. Soccer - Soccer lends itself extremely well to a continuous fast forward. It's a slow moving sport to start with, so the guys just end up looking like they're running really fast. You miss just about nothing.

1. Football - Here's the fantastic thing I discovered about football on TiVo once: except in a hurry-up offense, there's almost always at least 30 seconds between plays. So, as soon as the play is dead, you hit the 30 second skip, and you get right to the next snap. It's amazing, you miss absolutely nothing but inane announcer patter and massive steroid freaks pulling themselves off the ground. And you wonder why DirecTV was able to produce "Short Cuts" so efficiently.

I Hate You, Brian Maxie.

2006-09-14T17:21:00.000-04:00

I don't know Brian Maxie personally. But, I know his old phone number.

I know this not because I stalk random people in the 585 area code, but because, for reasons unexplained, when I changed my cell phone number a few months ago, I got Brian's old phone number, whoever Brian may be. I know I got his old phone number because, for the last few months, I got calls asking for him.

I accepted the first couple as a simple wrong number. Maybe he's got a lot of friends who aren't too bright and who mix up phone numbers. Hey, I've got friends like that, too. Then I got a phone call from Sprint. Then another, and another. I would have been less bothered by this if: a. they weren't calling about a delinquent account, b. Sprint was actually my cell phone carrier, and oh yeah, c. the phone call was for me. Nope, it seems Brian owed Sprint some money, which they repeatedly, despite clear instructions to the contrary, called me in a feeble attempt to collect.

My friends do not know me as a patient man, though I believe they would agree that I very rarely lose my temper. Yet, perhaps because my sister once worked as a telemarketer, I displayed the patience of Job with these hapless individuals. One day, I lost it. I lost it because, just 3 hours after I had been assured I would never receive another phone call from Sprint for the ne'er-do-well Mr. Maxie, I received another, from Sprint, attempting to collect. My voice rose several octaves, as did my decibel level. I may have dropped a few F-bombs, and at least one threat to contact the Better Business Bureau and maybe the FTC.

(This is a major reason I don't lose my temper. See, I have a very nasal voice, so when I start to shout or scream, it's somewhat hard to take seriously because of its nasal, somewhat high-pitched quality. My buddy Alex has a much better "angry voice". It's not on par with Clint Eastwood's or anything, but it's quality. I envy it, quite frankly. Back to the story...)

That ended the calls from Sprint. And so, I hoped, would the saga of Brian Maxie. Alas, once in a blue moon, I'd get a call, and politely point out that "no, this isn't his number and no, I don't know how to reach him." I still got a few more wrong numbers that I couldn't identify, and then a few more people asking for Brian. The phone calls would slow down, and then the last few weeks, they became greater in number. Finally, I gave up. I went to my wireless carrier to ask for a new phone number. It was a sign of defeat, really.

I can only assume that Brian fled town on the heels of a warrant. In his haste, he neglected to contact his friends and loved ones. (Not to mention the good people at Sprint.) I like to imagine he's adopting a new identity as a Jeffers-worshipping bigamist in Utah, or a fluffer for a B-level pornographer in Southern California, or perhaps a Cherokee hair tampon producer in Colorado. We'll never know.

So Brian, if you're googling your name, and happen to be reading this, you're a lousy friend and a deadbeat. But, I wish you all the best on your new life, wherever it might take you.

Chase For The Nextel Cup Odds

2006-09-13T10:02:00.000-04:00

With that title, I just lost 75% of my readers. Yup, three readers just tuned out. Bummer.

Anyway, here's my attempt at handicapping the field...

3-1 - Matt Kenseth. He's peaking at the right time, he's consistent, and he runs pretty well just about everywhere. Better still, the bulk of the tracks on the schedule are the intermediate-type tracks at which he runs best. Right now, he's the guy to beat.

5-1 - Jimmie Johnson. I don't buy the whole "they've gone into the tank" yap. Rather, I think they've been sandbagging for a couple months, just like Tony Stewart did last year. Here's the thing, though: when Stewart did it, the #20 car still ran well. Johnson hasn't. A month ago, I thought he was the class of the field. Now, I'm not entirely sure he's the best bet at Hendrick Motorsports.

5-1 - Jeff Gordon. Before Richmond, the four-time champ was running better over the last two months than anyone. Even Kenseth. They've got the intermediate track program figured out, which killed them last year. There are just three tracks at which he's never won a race: Texas, Phoenix and Homestead. The last three tracks on the Chase schedule? Texas, Phoenix and Homestead. But if that intermediate track setup looks as good as it did at Michigan, Chicago and California, he could run away with it.

6-1 - Kevin Harvick. Harvick's another guy who's looked really good over the last two months, after some early season jitters. Only problem is, the schedule doesn't set up real well for him: he's historically weak at Charlotte, Martinsville, Atlanta and Kansas.

13-2 - Kyle Busch. With some coaching from Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, Busch has learned to be a more patient driver. I'd rate him higher if I didn't have the eerie feeling that he was going to do something really stupid and kill his chances at some point.

8-1 - Kasey Kahne. Leads the field in wins, and would be a lot higher if not for some rotten luck. I'd rate him higher if I didn't have the nagging feeling that he used up his best stuff just to make the Chase, and will let down now that he's there.

1-0 - Tony Stewart. Wow, what a f&*kin' tragedy. Let's go buy some butts.

10-1 - Dale Earnhardt Jr. Earnhardt is actually my nominee for driver of the year. Yes, NASCAR has an award for "Driver of the Year", and it doesn't automatically go to the champion. I know it's somewhat inane, so don't bother bringing it to my attention. That said, Junior has been saddled with some lousy cars this year, and has nursed them to good finishes. I used to think he was overrated as a driver, but I happily retract that opinion. If anything, he's underrated; it's his equipment that's overrated. If Earnhardt drove for Hendrick or even his daddy's old team, he might well be the odds-on favorite this year. Instead, he's a longshot because there's no guarantee that DEI will give him a top 10 car every week.

15-1 - Denny Hamlin. No Pocono on the Chase schedule. Sorry, Denny. Hamlin's "checker or wrecker" style just won't cut it in the Chase. I would bet he'll win a championship in the next five years, though.

20-1 - Mark Martin. After the Richmond race, Martin called Tony Stewart "the greatest driver of this era". Absolutely. Good call, Mark. Because Tony's got two championships. To be considered a greater driver in this era, you'd have to still be active, and have more championships than Stewart. I mean, it's not like there's an active driver, currently in the Chase, who has, say, FOUR.

30-1 - Jeff Burton. Looked great early in the year, but faded badly over the last couple months and made the Chase by the skin of his teeth. Really the only guy in the field I would write off immediately.

AFC Preview

2006-09-11T11:12:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I’m cheating a little. I had hoped to have this up before week 1. Unfortunately, real life has a way of intervening sometimes. Okay, that’s a lie; I could have done this Saturday, but opted to sit on my butt and watch college football all day instead. Like you wouldn’t have done the same thing.

Anyway, I didn’t make any big changes, except for one division. Apart from the AFC West, everything is where I originally predicted it.

As for the AFC East, I tried hard. I really did. But in the end, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pick the Phins to knock off the Patriots. Not this year, not even with the Patriots so decimated at receiver that Irving Fryar, Hart Lee Dykes, Ben Jacobs and Scott Rollins are getting tryouts.

But believe me, no one hopes I’m wrong more than I do.

AFC East
Predicted record and order of finish:
1. New England (12-4), 2. Miami (11-5), 3. Buffalo (6-10), 4. New York Jets (5-11).

New England Patriots
What I Like: The Patriots could surround Tom Brady with 10 underclassmen from Northeastern, Tufts and UNH, and Bill Belichick could still coach them to no worse than 8 wins. And yes, it hurts me to dispense that sort of praise, but three Super Bowls in five years commands tremendous respect. The defense remains one of the NFL’s best, particularly in the front seven. The depth in that unit is impressive. The Pats should run the ball extremely well this year between Corey Dillon and Laurence Maroney, and if their wide receivers are weak, they do have plenty of good targets at tight end.

What I Don’t Like: They need Deion Branch back, and soon. Even if Branch wants more than he’s worth, the passing game will struggle without him. Also, the defense is getting on in years, and it seems the Patriots keep plugging holes with old-timers like Junior Seau. At some point, that’s going to cease being effective. I’m still not wild about their corners, though they do have talent.

Outlook: It hurt me to do it, but in the end, I asked myself, “if my life depended on getting it right, who would I pick to win the division?” The answer, sadly, has to be New England. The Patriots are plenty good enough to challenge for another AFC title.

Miami Dolphins
What I Like: His fourth quarter jitters in the opener notwithstanding, Daunte Culpepper should lead an explosive offense. Chris Chambers is on the cusp of being an elite wide receiver, and Ronnie Brown should become a top running back this year. Randy McMichael remains one of the best receiving tight ends in the business. On defense, no team is deeper on the defensive line than Miami, and the Phins should rush the passer extremely well. Even if Jason Taylor is blocked effectively, there are simply too many guys who can get to the QB. Zach Thomas and Channing Crowder are both excellent linebackers, and the corners, assuming Travis Daniels is healthy, are in good shape.

What I Don’t Like: The season opener exposed Miami’s two big weaknesses for all the world to see: interior run blocking and safety help in the passing game. The guards and center simply are not that talented, and Hudson Houck will have a major task on his hands to make the interior run blocking even adequate (the pass blocking is already fairly good). While the corners seem pretty good, the safeties were a disaster; the combination of a holdout and injuries have hindered the development of Jason Allen. If Allen doesn’t improve, and fast, the Phins will get beaten deep a fair amount.

Outlook: The Dolphins have the talent to win the division, if enough things go right. But right now, they look like an “almost but not quite” team: good enough to beat the weak to mediocre teams on the schedule, but not enough to win the big games, particularly those on the road. They should make the playoffs, however.

Buffalo Bills
What I Like: The Bills have a decent defense, with some star talent (i.e. Takeo Spikes, London Fletcher, Nate Clements). Couple that with RB Willis McGahee, and teams have won with less. WR Lee Evans is a burner who can stretch the field.

What I Don’t Like: The offensive line, as ever, remains a problem. And we might never find out Evans’ ceiling until the Bills get a real QB. JP Losman seems not to be the answer, and this will probably be his make or break year. The Bills really needed a run-stuffing defensive tackle, and I’m not sure drafting John McCargo was the answer. More than anything, I’m not wild about the direction of this team: a retread coach and an ancient GM whose first draft was not distinguished.

Outlook: Cheer up, Bills fans; hockey season starts soon. At least that should be good.

New York Jets
What I Like: The linebackers, led by Jon Vilma, are quality, and only getting better. Eric Mangini seems, at least early on, to know what he’s doing, and in any event, the team needed a change in coaching. I also like the overhaul on the offensive line, which will be good sooner than later. The secondary isn’t bad either. I realize that’s not a ringing endorsement, but the pickings are slim on this team.

What I Don’t Like: The Jets stink at the skill positions; Kevan Barlow, Laveranues Coles and Door #2 at wide receiver? Ugh. In 2003, that would be an impressive collection of talent, but the bloom has fallen off those roses. Chad Pennington is an injury waiting to happen, which may not be a terrible thing, given his noodle arm. The loss of John Abraham hurts a defensive line that wasn’t great at rushing the passer to begin with. If Dewayne Robertson doesn’t finally step up then Vilma’s going to be exhausted from having to make about 200 tackles.

Outlook: The Jets seem headed in the right direction, but it will be at least a year and probably more before they’re ready to contend in the AFC East.

AFC North
Predicted record and order of finish:
1. Pittsburgh (12-4), 2. Cincinnati (10-6), 3. Baltimore (9-7), 4. Cleveland (7-9).

Pittsburgh Steelers
What I Like: Having the best defense in the NFL (yes, better than Chicago) goes a long way in my book. The Steelers simply have no weaknesses on defense; every single player is at least league-average, and most are better. Hines Ward is an excellent wide receiver, and is outstanding in pressure situations. Willie Parker looks like the real deal, and TE Heath Miller might well be the #2 receiving target that they need in the absence of Antwaan Randle-El. Finally, the Steelers are in good shape at QB, even with Roethlisberger’s health in question.

What I Don’t Like: Defending Super Bowl champions tend not to have lots of problems. I’m not too wild about their receivers after Ward, and I’m still unsure whether Parker will hold up for an entire season. But there’s not much to complain about, though the situation with Bill Cowher possibly leaving after the season could become a distraction.

Outlook: If they’re not the AFC’s best team, they’re darn close.

Cincinnati Bengals
What I Like: There may not be a team in the league with a more impressive offense, now that the Colts have lost Edgerrin James. Carson Palmer looks fully recovered from his knee injury, and their talent at the skill positions is outstanding. The offensive line is among the top 5 in the NFL with three potential Pro Bowlers: Levi Jones, Eric Steinbach and Willie Anderson. The defense has a high talent level, and the team is well-coached.

What I Don’t Like: WAY too many headcases. Enough has been written about this, so I won’t bore you, but teams with that many problem children frequently underachieve. Despite the talent level, and the presence of defensive mastermind Marvin Lewis, the defense seems to be more about the sum of the parts than the whole.

Outlook: There’s a compelling argument to be made for the Bengals, but for now, I’ll put them behind the Steelers, and slot them into a wild card spot.

Baltimore Ravens
What I Like: For a few years, this team was a decent QB away from making some noise. Well, now they have Steve McNair. Granted, he’s over-the-hill at this point, but still, I’d take McNair on one leg over Kyle Boller. Jamal Lewis looks to be in good shape; he ran very well against a super-tough Tampa Bay defense in week 1. RB depth is a strength, and McNair will have a couple good weapons in Derrick Mason and Todd Heap. The defense, as ever, is pretty strong top to bottom, especially in the back 7.

What I Don’t Like: The offensive line has been sliding for a few years, and at this point, it’s a declining (if still excellent) Jon Ogden and four below-average guys. With an injury-prone QB and RB, that’s an issue. The defensive line lacks its usual stoutness, unless Haloti Ngata comes along quickly. Ray Lewis lacks his old quickness and will need guys taking on blockers in front of him more than ever. Finally, Brian Billick is very much on the hot seat, and with one losing streak, his job security will become an issue.

Outlook: In the NFC, the Ravens could probably challenge for a wild card, but there are just too many teams that are better in this conference.

Cleveland Browns
What I Like: Romeo Crennel seems to know what he’s doing, and the defense is coming along pretty well, especially the front seven. There are few standouts, but things are definitely progressing. The Browns are in better shape than one might think at the skill positions; you could do worse than Reuben Droughns, Braylon Edwards, Joe Jurevicius, Dennis Northcutt and Kellen Winslow II.

What I Don’t Like: I think they’re a little too in love with Charlie Frye, personally, even if it’s commendable that they’re actually giving a young QB a chance to succeed. The offensive line stinks, and the secondary still has a long way to go. Even if Droughns is a decent RB, he’s nowhere near good enough to make up for that line. The signing of Willie McGinest adds leadership to the defense, but his tank’s on E at this point.

Outlook: The Browns aren’t a terrible team, but they’re stuck in a really tough division. Finishing 3rd would be a huge accomplishment, actually.

AFC South
Predicted record and order of finish:
1. Indianapolis (12-4), 2. Jacksonville (9-7), 3. Tennessee (5-11), 4. Houston (4-12).

Indianapolis Colts
What I Like: Peyton Manning and his merry band of wide receivers are as good as it gets in this league. (I love his new Sprint ad, by the way.) The Colts pass-block as well as anyone, and that ensures that Manning stays upright. Tony Dungy is a quality coach who doesn’t deserve his label as a guy who can’t win the big one. The defense has come light-years from the unit Dungy took over. And if they’d had Adam Vinatieri LAST year, they probably win the Super Bowl.

What I Don’t Like: I’m not bullish on their corners, and I don’t think their run defense is quite as good as it looked last year. The run game looks like a real question mark at this point; I’m sure they would have much preferred that either Dominic Rhodes or Joseph Addai had become The Man by now. Finally, whether it’s fair or not, the legacy of playoff catastrophes in the Manning/Dungy Era has got to take some sort of psychological toll.

Outlook: They’re the best team in the division, but are they good enough to finally make the Super Bowl? Anything less will brand the season a failure.

Jacksonville Jaguars
What I Like: Booing by ignorant Jaguar fans aside, Byron Leftwich is a good quarterback. And the Jags have stockpiled a pretty talented collection of receivers and running backs, even if there are few standouts. I like the defense as a unit, and love their defensive tackles. This team is hard to run against, and if you can stop the run, you can win. It’s that simple.

What I Don’t Like: Leftwich is a good, but injury-prone QB, and there’s almost certainly going to be a controversy at some point. While the Jags’ depth at RB and WR is impressive, they don’t yet have a guy they can point to as a go-to man when they need a first down. And the aged, oft-injured Fred Taylor doesn’t count. While the defense is solid as a whole, LB depth is a concern, and their secondary could stand an upgrade. The loss of Reggie Hayward will hurt an already mediocre pass rush.

Outlook: The Jags look just a little bit short, but if a couple things break right, they can make the playoffs.

Tennessee Titans
What I Like: They’ve got some talent at running back: a tandem of Chris Brown and Travis Henry, with LenDale White waiting in the wings, should be effective. And a pass-catching tandem of Drew Bennett, David Givens, late bloomer Bobby Wade and TE Ben Troupe isn’t bad. They’ve got a few good pieces in place on defense, with DE Kyle Vanden Bosch and LB Keith Bulluck. And with Jeff Fisher on the sidelines, they’re at least well-coached.

What I Don’t Like: Apart from Vanden Bosch and Bulluck, the defense is a disaster, especially at DT, where they have no depth whatsoever. The offensive line is inside-out; the interior is pretty good, but the tackles aren’t. At QB, the front office’s insistence on forcing Vince Young into the lineup will disrupt many perfectly good drives.

Outlook: It’s sad to say, but this season may end up costing a good coach his job. The Titans can’t hope for better than third in the division, and with Young a long-term project, the Titans may look to change things up after the year.

Houston Texans
What I Like: I like the steady infusion of talent, especially on defense. The Texans are doing a decent job of adding talent in the place where it can turn a team around quickly. DeMeco Ryans, Mario Williams, and Dunta Robinson will be anchors for what should be a good defense sooner than later.

What I Don’t Like: Williams over Reggie Bush remains an absolutely indefensible decision that made no sense at the time and less now. Williams should be a good player in his own right, but unless he becomes Reggie White, this will haunt the Texans for years to come. Apart from Andre Johnson, there’s not even a mediocre skill position player on the roster. The offensive line remains lousy until conclusively proven otherwise. And even if things are moving in the right direction, the defense still has a long way to go.

Outlook: Maybe they can catch the Titans, but anything more than 6 wins is a pipe dream.

AFC West
Note: I originally swore that I wouldn’t dramatically change my preseason picks based on week one performances. Well, after some of the events of week 1, that seems foolish for this division.
Predicted record and order of finish: 1. San Diego (10-6), 2. Denver (9-7), 3. Kansas City (7-9), 4. Oakland (6-10).

San Diego Chargers
What I Like: LaDainian Tomlinson and a very good defense. It’s not a traditional recipe for success in the wide-open AFC West, but it’ll work. The offensive line is in decent shape, and Philip Rivers should at least be just good enough to keep the defense from stacking 8 in the box against Tomlinson. As long as he knows where Antonio Gates is on the field, the kid will be okay. The front seven on defense is among the very best in the NFL.

What I Don’t Like: We’ll see how Rivers plays; he should be at least respectable, but he’s a definite unknown at this point. The wide receivers are, to say the least, uninspiring. Maybe second year pro Vincent Jackson can step up, but a tandem of Keenan McCardell and Eric Parker scares no one. And as awesome as the front seven is, the secondary is still an area for concern. Finally, there’s the assurance that somehow, some way, Marty Schottenheimer will honk a big game.

Outlook: Best team in a very flawed division.

Denver Broncos
What I Like: As ever with the Broncos, their offensive line and running game (for whomever the Bell tolls) should be good. And their talent at wide receiver is still excellent; Rod Smith can still get it done, and Javon Walker is plenty good. The defense is pretty good, and features some imaginative scheming; for example, I like the idea of using Elvis Dumervil as an undersized DT pass rusher. The linebackers, led by Al Wilson, are excellent, and CBs Darrent Williams and Domonique Foxworth have progressed much faster than expected, meaning that throwing away from Champ Bailey is no longer a winning strategy.

What I Don’t Like: Jake Flippin’ Plummer. If you discount quarterback play, the Broncos are the best team in the West, and it’s not particularly close. Mike Shanahan did a phenomenal job of getting Plummer to “play within himself” last year (coachspeak for “don’t suck as much as usual”). Well, Plummer fell apart in a very winnable AFC Championship, and it looks like that’s carrying over to this season. Plummer absolutely killed the Broncos against the Rams, with three interceptions…and the Rams aren’t even that good on defense. It was a miracle that Denver’s defense held the Rams to 6 field goals.

Outlook: If Shanahan gets Plummer back to the 2005 pre-AFC Championship version, they win the division. As you can see, I’m betting against that.

Kansas City Chiefs
What I Like: Larry Johnson is the best running back in football and is single-handedly capable of putting this team on his shoulders. The defense is making gains, and has steadily been adding talent, with guys like Jared Allen, Derrick Johnson and Kendrell Bell. The corners are old, but still good. Tony Gonzalez remains a reliable, if suddenly underused, red zone target.

What I Don’t Like: Missouri is called the Show Me State. Well, until the Chiefs Show Me a good defense, I’m not buying all the talk. They remain crappy where it counts: up the middle. The loss of both starting OTs is obviously having an effect, and is forcing Gonzalez to stay in and block more, rather than playing to his strength: catching passes. The injury to Trent Green is a major problem; it sounds like he’ll be back before too long, but every week he’s out, they’re playing Damon Huard, which is a recipe for disaster. But more than anything else, the Chiefs have a major problem on the sidelines. His name is Herm Edwards. Allow me to digress for a moment: my buddy Lan is a huge Chiefs fan. He’s been excited with the Edwards hiring (though he wanted Al Saunders instead). I told him that Edwards is a lousy coach, and he challenged me to name 10 better coaches. I was barely halfway through the AFC, and he had already rejected my claim that Nick Saban, Marv Lewis and Jeff Fisher were all better coaches. At that point, I gave up; arguing with a wall would have been more effective. Here’s the point: Edwards is just good enough to give people hope…and thus stick around long enough to really screw things up. He’s a powerful speaker, he seems reasonably bright in interviews, his players love him and he’s had just enough success to look competent. Unfortunately, he’s a terrible, awful, putrid in-game tactician. Someone once said that Edwards is a great coach six days of the week, and lousy on the seventh. That’s a perfect description. Edwards was terribly overmatched in that Bengals game; the Chiefs got creamed at home in week one, despite having an entire summer to prepare for the Bengals. That doesn’t happen to well-coached teams.

Outlook: Way too many holes to seriously challenge for the playoffs; LJ can only do so much.

Oakland Raiders
What I Like: No team with Randy Moss and Lamont Jordan should be all that bad on offense. And the Raiders are making strides on defense; like the Chiefs, they’ve been adding some talent here and there. The offensive line should be pretty good; this could be the year Bob Gallery becomes the road grader they expected.

What I Don’t Like: Bill Simmons once proposed a scale of rating how shaky a team’s QB and coach were, on a scale of 1 to 10, with Tom Brady and Bill Belichick each being a 1. The theory was that if they added up to a 15 or higher, that team couldn’t possibly make the playoffs. The Raiders are at least an 18 on that scale. Aaron Brooks and Art Shell put together inspire plenty of confidence…in the opposition. The Raiders can also be put in the Chiefs’ class; the defense stinks until conclusively proven otherwise.

Outlook: Maybe they challenge for third if everything breaks right, but on paper, this is definitely the division’s worst team.

Playoffs:
NFC Teams and seeds: 1. Seattle, 2. Carolina, 3. NY Giants, 4. Chicago, 5. Tampa Bay, 6. Dallas. (Boy, do these picks look great one week later. Ugh.)

AFC Teams and seeds: 1. Pittsburgh, 2. Indianapolis, 3. New England, 4. San Diego, 5. Miami, 6. Cincinnati.

First round NFC Playoffs: NY Giants over Dallas, Chicago over Tampa Bay.
First round AFC Playoffs: New England over Cincinnati, Miami over San Diego.

Second round NFC Playoffs: Seattle over Chicago, NY Giants over Carolina.
Second round AFC Playoffs: Pittsburgh over Miami, Indianapolis over New England.

NFC Championship: Seattle over NY Giants.
AFC Championship: Indianapolis over Pittsburgh.

Super Bowl: Indianapolis 31 Seattle 24.

NFC Preview

2006-09-04T17:33:00.000-04:00

You’ve probably read a few dozen NFL previews by now, so there’s not really much need for a great big intro. Because I’m still making up my mind about the AFC, let’s get this thing started with the NFC.

I will add this before getting started: for all the talk about how the AFC is so much better than the NFC, it seems to me that the gap has closed considerably. I still think the AFC is the better conference, of course, but there’s a pretty good case to be made that the NFC has the two best divisions in the NFL: the NFC East and NFC South. I could see any of the four NFC East teams taking that division, and in the South, you can make at least a plausible case that if a few things go right, New Orleans could challenge for the playoffs. The big difference in the conferences is not at the top, but in the middle; the AFC’s 8-8 teams look a lot better than the NFC’s 8-8 teams, if that makes sense. But the playoff teams from each conference should be pretty evenly matched. It’s not like Major League Baseball, where the Mets are the only NL team that would contend for the playoffs in the AL.

Without further ado, the NFC preview:

NFC East
Predicted order of finish and record:
1. New York (11-5), 2. Dallas (10-6), 3. Washington (9-7), 4. Philadelphia (7-9).

New York Giants
What I Like: This might be the best offense in the NFC; it’s almost certainly them or Seattle. I think Eli Manning is ready to make a huge leap this year, he’s got tremendous talent at the skill positions to work with, and a quality offensive line, and I love the connection he’s building with Jeremy Shockey, and how Shockey complements Plax Burress. Tiki Barber remains awesome, of course. The defense is also better than advertised and they’ve got the best pair of defensive ends in football, with Michael Strahan and Osi Umenyiora. Finally, it’s year three of the Tom Coughlin Regime, which means the players are still responding to his dictatorial style, and won’t turn on him for at least two more years.

What I Don’t Like: The secondary really doesn’t light my fire; they’ve got Sam Madison on the downslope of his fine career, and Corey Webster’s injuries last year hurt his development. I also think they’re banking on a lot from a pair of injury-prone LBs: Lavar Arrington and Antonio Pierce. If both those guys stay healthy, they should be excellent. But otherwise, they’re in trouble. They’re also very shaky at DT. Run defense as a whole may be a problem. The schedule is a killer, however, and could easily cost Big Blue that crucial first round bye in the playoffs.

Outlook: The present and future both look good in New York, and if the Giants’ run defense is even mediocre, they stand an excellent chance to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl.

Dallas Cowboys
What I Like: Bill Parcells has his most talented defense in several years. The Cowboys should make big strides from last year’s unit and could easily be a top five defense. The line is nothing to write home about, but the back eight are stellar, and there’s sufficient depth. There’s also plenty of talent at the skill positions on offense, with Terrell Owens, Terry Glenn, Julius Jones, Marion Barber and Jason Witten all capable of big plays. Parcells, of course, remains one of the best coaches in NFL history, and is a guy you want on the sidelines in a tight game.

What I Don’t Like: The Owens situation is already becoming a problem (boy, I’m sure glad the Dolphins didn’t sign him like this hack writer was hoping), which shatters T.O.’s previous record for wearing out his welcome. While one suspects things will go better when the lights go on for real, this isn’t going nearly as well as many thought. And if Bill Parcells is a guy you want on the sidelines of a close game, so is Drew Bledsoe. Bledsoe’s developed a penchant for game-killing interceptions of late. The offensive line also isn’t up to usual Cowboy standards, and that’s a problem exacerbated by Bledsoe’s lack of mobility. If Bledsoe gets hurt and is replaced by Tony Romo, there will be a big-time QB controversy, as Dallas fans (as fans often do) are solidly behind the backup.

Outlook: More than a few people like the Cowboys to win the East, and it’s understandable; they look a little better on paper than the Giants. But the Owens situation, and the potential for a QB controversy, coupled with the fact that the Cowboys aren’t great in the trenches on either side of the ball makes me put them in the second spot.

Washington Redskins
What I Like: Phenomenal defense, top to bottom. I like the addition of Andre Carter; the Redskins lacked that one really good pass rusher, and now they have him. There’s plenty of depth, as well. The team as a whole is very well-coached, and the defense in particular has benefited from Gregg Williams’ presence. The offense has quality at the tackle spots, and with Santana Moss now flanked by Brandon Lloyd and Antwaan Randle-El, he’ll no longer be double or triple teamed all the time. Chris Cooley has also become a fine receiver. Clinton Portis, if healthy, is phenomenal, and if he’s out, TJ Duckett is more than capable of carrying the load.

What I Don’t Like: Mark Brunell is getting old and is very brittle. You’ve got to wonder whether he can last the season. Todd Collins is not what you’d like from a backup and while Jason Campbell should be ready to take the reins if need be, the Redskins would probably opt for Collins instead, under the theory that they want a veteran QB under center. Moreover, the offensive line is very shallow; if they lose a starter to injury, they’re in big trouble. Portis’ injury could be a problem as well.

Outlook: The Redskins are capable of winning the East and perhaps much more, but so much hinges on Brunell’s health, and that’s why I’m going with the Giants instead.

Philadelphia Eagles
What I Like: Donovan McNabb remains an elite quarterback and has succeeded with much less offensive talent than he has now. The tandem of Donte Stallworth and Reggie Brown could be a very intriguing pair of receivers. Brian Westbrook might actually be the team’s best pass catcher, and could be in line for a 1000-1000 season if everything goes right. The return to health of Correll Buckhalter is a nice bonus as well, as he’s the complement the team needs for Westbrook. The defense still features one of the best secondaries in football, and the addition of Darren Howard will definitely help the pass rush.

What I Don’t Like: Westbrook is the key to the offense, and has a hard time staying healthy. And while Brown and Stallworth have talent, they’ve proven little so far. The front seven and the offensive line, both long-time strengths for this team, are not what they used to be. Jevon Kearse is no longer the monster he was in Tennessee, and the trade of Mark Simoneau leaves the Eagles very thin at linebacker.

Outlook: Right now, the Eagles look like the weakest team in the NFC East, but they’re still dangerous, and could be dangerous if a few things go right.

NFC North
Predicted order of finish and record:
1. Chicago (9-7), 2. Minnesota (7-9), 3. Green Bay (6-10), 4. Detroit (5-11).

Chicago Bears
What I Like: Geography. Seriously, that’s the only reason this team wins the division. I feel like the Bears caught a ton of breaks last year, and in almost any other division, wouldn’t seriously threaten. The Bears’ defense is superb, of course, particularly if they can keep Mike Brown healthy. Brian Urlacher justifiably gets the lion’s share of credit, but Brown is a fantastic safety who serves as the glue for a very good secondary. The running game and offensive line are both respectable as well, whoever ends up carrying the ball between Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson.

What I Don’t Like: I’m not sure I understand the fascination this franchise seems to have with Rex Grossman. He’s in his fourth year, has played a total of 8 regular season games, and has a QB rating of 68.8. Brian Griese will win the job by week 6, either because Grossman gets hurt or plays poorly. The Bears have a very weak receiving corps; Muhsin Muhammad really should be a #2, and no one else looks ready to make an impact. Any way you slice it, this team will struggle to score points.

Outlook: The Bears do one thing extremely well: play defense. And that alone makes them better than the rest of the NFC North. In reality, they’d be a second or third place team in any other division in football, but they fattened up on the NFC North last year (5-1, 5-5 against everyone else), and should do so again and take the title.

Minnesota Vikings
What I Like: The Vikes should have a monster offensive line this season, with the addition of Steve Hutchinson flanking what was a pretty talented (if poorly coached) line. Chester Taylor may not be faster than the departed Michael Bennett was, but he definitely brings stability to the running game, and Mewelde Moore is a fine third down back. The defense has loads of talent, some of which may be ready to make a major leap this season, especially on the line, with Kenechi Udeze and Erasmus James at end and the Williamses, Pat and Kevin, in the middle.

What I Don’t Like: It just seems like this is a case of the sum of the parts being greater than the whole, especially on defense. The Vikings have recent first round picks and Pro Bowlers all over the place, but can’t seem to put it together and become a quality defense. The wide receiving corps follows the same path: Troy Williamson, Travis Taylor and Marcus Robinson all have plenty of talent, but the results are questionable. I’m also far from sold on Brad Johnson, who looked washed up before last season. The season-ending injury to Chad Greenway was a major blow; they really could have used him there. Finally, Brad Childress’ constant bad-mouthing of Daunte Culpepper after his trade to Miami seems a sign of poor judgment.

Outlook: Though I like the Bears to win the division, I think the Vikings would be more dangerous in the playoffs, if that makes sense. If the Vikes are in the playoffs, it means all that talent has come together and Brad Childress has pried his head from his rear end.

Green Bay Packers
What I Like: They’ve got Brett Favre, and with Favre, it’s hard to ever truly count the Packers out of a game. They’ve also got better offensive personnel than they showed last year; any offense with Ahman Green and Donald Driver can’t be that bad. The defense should rush the passer well, with Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila and the rising Aaron Kampman at end, plus the addition of AJ Hawk at LB to play next to the unheralded Nick Barnett. Finally, the Packers play a Charmin-soft schedule.

What I Don’t Like: They’ve got Brett Favre, and with Favre, it’s hard to ever truly count the Packers’ opponents out of a game. The roster is pretty much devoid of depth everywhere outside the skill positions. The loss of Ryan Longwell will hurt a lot more than the team seems to appreciate; Longwell’s skill at kicking in rotten weather might have been worth a win every other year. Kids and journeymen man the interior lines on both sides of the ball, and as we all know, winning football starts in the trenches.

Outlook: In such a weak division, the Packers can’t truly be counted out, and if they stay healthy, a run for the division title isn’t totally out of the question.

Detroit Lions
What I Like: New offensive coordinator Mike Martz is just the guy to get the most out of Detroit’s talented underachievers: Kevin Jones, and Roy and Mike Williams. Jon Kitna is a short-term improvement at QB, and Josh McCown could be the Lions’ long-term answer there. The offensive line is also better than most think, with Jeff Backus and Damien Woody on hand. The defense has some talent, and Shaun Rogers’ presence should help the development of guys like Shaun Cody and LBs Ernie Sims and Boss Bailey.

What I Don’t Like: Right now, apart from Rogers and maybe CB Dre Bly, there’s not an established, above-average player on defense. And Bly takes way too many chances in coverage to be rated as well has he often is. On the whole, the defense will probably be in the NFL’s bottom third. At the moment, Roy Williams is the only quality wide receiver on the roster; Mike Williams looks like a bust, even if it seems a bit premature to judge him. And even though Backus and Woody are good, and the other starters are at least serviceable, the offensive line has no depth to speak of.

Outlook: Too many lousy drafts have crippled the depth of this team, and that’s going to spell doom for the Lions.

NFC South
Predicted order of finish and record:
1. Carolina (11-5), 2. Tampa Bay (10-6), 3. Atlanta (7-9), 4. New Orleans (5-11).

Carolina Panthers
What I Like: The team is solid from top to bottom. Steve Smith is perhaps the NFL’s most dangerous receiver, and if Keyshawn Johnson checks his ego at the door, the Panthers could have a tremendous passing game, as Jake Delhomme is capable of lighting it up. The running game will be quality, whoever ends up carrying the ball. The Panthers also boast arguably the NFL’s best defensive line, with Julius Peppers, Mike Rucker, Kris Jenkins and Ma’ake Kemoeatu, and a very good secondary. The special teams are very good, and probably got even better with the addition of DeAngelo Williams. John Fox is one of the NFL’s best coaches.

What I Don’t Like: Johnson has screwed up a good thing before, and has always griped when he hasn’t gotten the ball enough. Delhomme’s connection with Smith means Key will seldom end up with more than 3 or 4 catches per game, and that may not be enough to keep him happy. The offensive line lacks depth, and while the team has depth at defensive tackle, the injury-prone Kris Jenkins could go down at any time.

Outlook: There’s a pretty convincing argument to be made that this is the NFC’s best team. Only a rough division schedule might keep the Panthers from home field throughout the NFC playoffs.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers
What I Like: Chris Simms is becoming a better QB every day, and with Cadillac Williams, Joey Galloway and the sure-to-improve Michael Clayton at wide receiver, he’s got plenty to work with. The defense remains a top unit, without a weakness in the starting 11. Few defenses can boast as many elite players as the Bucs can: Simeon Rice, Derrick Brooks, Shelton Quarles, Ronde Barber and Brian Kelly are all among the very best at their respective positions.

What I Don’t Like: What on earth did Jon Gruden do to tick off the NFL schedule maker? Tampa’s last eight games are against Carolina, Washington, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland and Seattle. And they visit the Giants two weeks before that murderous stretch begins. They’ll have to start extremely hot just to make the playoffs, let alone challenge for the division title. The special teams are lousy, save punter Josh Bidwell, and the offensive line is adequate at best. Simms looked dreadful in the playoffs last year, too, and one wonders if that will haunt him. A repeat of Michael Clayton’s 2005 season could really cripple the offense, given the lack of depth behind him and Galloway at receiver.

Outlook: On paper, the Bucs have enough to challenge for the Super Bowl if Simms continues to progress and Clayton returns to form. But there are too many little things that are a concern for this team to be considered a favorite.

Atlanta Falcons
What I Like: The addition of John Abraham gives the Falcons a tremendous pass-rushing defensive line; Abraham, Patrick Kerney and Rod Coleman can all get to the quarterback. Keith Brooking and DeAngelo Hall are also stars on defense. Michael Vick, of course, is the most gifted quarterback in the NFL, and probably NFL history, for that matter, and his mobility allows him to make something out of nothing on a lot of plays. Warrick Dunn remains a reliable running back and he and Alge Crumpler give Vick quality short-range passing targets. The team also has some downfield speed at wide receiver.

What I Don’t Like: I’ve never liked the idea of shoehorning Vick into the West Coast Offense, and I like his receivers in that system even less. Vick was frustrated last year, and if things don’t improve soon, the team may have a battle between its star player and head coach. The offensive line isn’t great, and suffers from a ridiculous lack of depth, as does the defensive line. The secondary, outside Hall and safety Chris Crocker, is a liability. The ancient Lawyer Milloy lines up at one safety spot, and rookie Jimmy Williams figures to start at corner opposite Hall.

Outlook: Like the Bucs, the Falcons have several elite players on defense. Unlike the Bucs, they don’t have the solid guys everywhere else to make the unit top-five material. Even if Vick makes strides with the West Coast Offense, I still think this team will struggle to score points consistently.

New Orleans Saints
What I Like: The Saints have an embarrassment of riches at the skill positions, with Joe Horn, Deuce McAllister and Reggie Bush all threats to scorch a defense and Drew Brees is a good enough quarterback to make it all work. If the Saints can figure out how to keep Bush involved in the offense, and if Brees is healthy, the team will have no problem scoring points. Will Smith and Charles Grant are a very good pair of defensive ends, too.

What I Don’t Like: The Saints may have the worst back seven in football. Even with the addition of Mark Simoneau, their linebackers are terrible, and their secondary has been a travesty for years. Mike McKenzie has underachieved since leaving Green Bay, and absolutely must play back to his former level for the Saints to stop anyone through the air. I’m also not sure how this team will stop the run; they just aren’t that strong at DT. Brees’ health remains a concern, as he didn’t exactly set the world afire in preseason, and one wonders if Sean Payton is creative enough to ensure that Reggie Bush gets the touches he needs. The Saints also, despite winning all of 3 games last year, managed to somehow draw the league’s third toughest schedule.

Outlook: Look for the Saints to lose a lot of 35-28 games.

NFC West
Predicted order of finish and record:
1. Seattle (12-4), 2. St. Louis (7-9), 3.Arizona (6-10), 4. San Francisco (4-12).

Seattle Seahawks
What I Like: Everything. The ‘Hawks have an explosive offense with Matt Hasselbeck throwing to Darrell Jackson, Nate Burleson and Bobby Engram (and soon, maybe Deion Branch, too), and Shaun Alexander on the ground. The offensive line should be plenty good enough to make up for the loss of Steve Hutchinson. The defense features few standout performers, but has enough depth and quality to be a good group as a whole. And perhaps as a consolation prize for having to deal with some of the worst officiating in recent memory in the Super Bowl, Seattle managed to draw one of the league’s easiest schedules.

What I Don’t Like: Jackson’s health is a potential concern, obviously enough to the team that they’re looking at Branch, and Burleson looked great in 2004, but lost in 2005. So, there’s at least the potential for the receiving corps to go south in a hurry. The team’s reliance on the Julian Peterson signing to bolster the linebacking corps could backfire as well, given his injury history. The corner spot opposite Marcus Trufant may be a concern, with rookie Kelly Jennings and the so-so Kelly Herndon competing for a spot.

Outlook: There is no bigger lock in the NFL this year than the Seahawks in the NFC West. This team remains a serious threat to win the Super Bowl.

Arizona Cardinals
What I Like: Loads of skill position talent; there is no better receiver tandem in the NFL than Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin. The addition of Edgerrin James will take lots of pressure off those two, and give Kurt Warner a short yardage passing option as well. The defensive line is better than you might think; Bertrand Berry and Chike Okeafor are a quality pair of ends, and Darnell Dockett and Kendrick Clancy aren’t bad in the middle. Adrian Wilson’s standout play at safety should ease the pressure on the corners. Neil Rackers and Scott Player are two of the best specialists in football.

What I Don’t Like: This might be the worst offensive line in football. It’s certainly in the bottom five. Having spent his whole career behind a top-10 line in Indianapolis, James may struggle at times. And having a QB as injury-prone as Warner behind this line is going to end badly at some point. Karlos Dansby is becoming a very good linebacker, but the rest of that group leaves much to be desired, and apart from Wilson, the secondary is a mish-mash of inexperienced, if talented players, and journeymen. I’ve also never been sold on Denny Green as a coach; his teams always seem just good enough to look impressive in defeat.

Outlook: New Orleans West; look for lots of 35-28 losses.

St. Louis Rams
What I Like: Mike Martz and the Greatest Show on Turf are gone, but there’s still plenty of talent on offense. Few teams wouldn’t trade their skill position personnel for Marc Bulger, Steven Jackson, Torry Holt, Isaac Bruce and Kevin Curtis. After years of searching for an adequate right tackle, it appears that Alex Barron is the quality bookend for Orlando Pace the team needs. As a result, the offensive line should be pretty good. The addition of Will Witherspoon, coupled with Pisa Tinoisamoa means the Rams have a pair of decent linebackers to build upon. DE Leonard Little provides a quality pass rush.

What I Don’t Like: The defense will be one of the worst in football. The secondary is poor, the defensive line can’t stop the run and depth is absent everywhere, and apart from Little, the team lacks a quality pass rusher. The Rams drafted a lot of quality players on defense, but it’s going to take time for them to come together. In the meantime, opponents will run the ball down their throats. The youth movement goes to the sidelines as well; Scott Linehan is a first-time head coach, and will make the mistakes that first-time coaches always do.

Outlook: If the defense comes along faster than expected, the Rams could make a run at the playoffs, but in reality, they’re probably a year or two away.

San Francisco 49ers
What I Like: The defense is coming along pretty well, which shouldn’t be a surprise, considering the success head coach Mike Nolan had with building defenses in Baltimore. There are no standouts, but it’s a reasonably good unit, especially if LB Manny Lawson develops quickly. You can do much worse than to have Derek Smith, Jeff Ulbrich and Brandon Moore as the inside LBs. Frank Gore has the ability to be a very good ball carrier, and the offensive line isn’t bad. Nolan’s philosophy of simply grabbing the best available player has led to two quality drafts in his two years so far.

What I Don’t Like: QB Alex Smith will show progress, but he’s got a long way to go, and looked dreadful last year. He doesn’t have much to throw to; I’ve never been a big Antonio Bryant fan, and TE Vernon Davis is a rookie who didn’t look great in preseason. The secondary needs some work, too; the Mike Rumph experiment failed, and now the Niners are looking at the over-the-hill Walt Harris as a starter, which isn’t a good thing.

Outlook: The Niners are getting better, and if Smith keeps progressing, they could make life difficult for someone at the end of the year. But for now, Niners fans will have to be content with the knowledge that it looks like Mike Nolan knows what he’s doing, and the rebuilding program is on track.

BALCO, Brady and Bad TV

2006-08-17T07:51:00.000-04:00

Maybe this explains how an unknown sixth-round draft pick rose to become a three-time Super Bowl champion. It probably makes me a bad person, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not feeling a little bit joyous from this. (In a related note, one of my fantasy team names is Puck the Fats.)

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I've complained about this before, and will continue to do so, but the amount of crap on TV now is absolutely stunning. And when watching TV with my wife, I'm exposed to even more of it. When I came home from the race, she was watching a show called "What's Your Sign Design". In a clear sign that the people at HGTV have simply run out of ideas, they came up with a show where an interior decorator works with an astrologer, who, apparently, moonlights as some sort of decorator. This guy, possibly after a few ounces of pot, gauges the type of decoration the person (or in this case, persons) would want based upon their astrological sign. Apparently, one of the victims was an Aries, which my wife thought was wonderful, because she is also an Aries. After watching for awhile, I said, "this is horse s**t" and grabbed a book.

But apparently, as a Capricorn, I'm predisposed to a skeptical state of mind.

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Another show we were watching is called "Miami Ink". Apparently, you can make anything really cool just by adding "Miami" in front of it. There's no show called "Peoria Ink", and for good reason. Long story short, it's a show about a tattoo parlor in Miami. So at least it delivers what it promises.

This show, at least, has some good qualities. For one, the scenery is first rate. As we all know, Miami is arguably the most appearance-conscious city in the country outside Los Angeles. This may make for some mighty shallow individuals, but the women who stop into the tattoo shop are, to say the least, easy on the eyes. For another, most of the customers on the show are a solid 90 on the Unintentional Comedy Scale. One guy came in requesting a full sleeve of fire-breathing skulls on his arm. Apparently, he used to be hooked on dope, but now he's hooked on Jesus. Obviously, that's a major upgrade, but apparently he wants the full sleeve of fire-breathing skulls to remind him of his old life and how awful it could be. Said my wife, "why doesn't he just look down at the tracks on his arm?" After getting a full sleeve of fire-breathing skulls, this guy confided that he's on his way to dental school. I can't imagine what would turn off a potential patient more: the massive, frightening tattoo, or the story behind it.

Sometimes, like chocolate and peanut butter, or beer and cheese, the combination of unintentional comedy and pleasant scenery comes together to create a product where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Miami Ink is just such an example. Another scene featured an extremely attractive blonde come in and ask for an orchid to be tattooed on her ankle. We, of course, got the story behind it. Her grandfather died recently, and he raised her from a small child. And she's sad. So she wants an orchid tattoo. Did her grandfather have prize-winning orchids? Not so far as we know. Nor, for that matter, is there any indication he grew them or had any connection whatsoever to that particular flower. She just wants an orchid tattoo to remind her of her grandfather, despite the apparent lack of any connection whatsoever between the two.

Best of all, they showed photos of this young maiden with her grandfather, and her chest was at least two cup sizes smaller and her hair was brown. Sweetheart, the guy died to leave you an inheritance sufficient to pay for your mammary upgrade and first-class dye job, isn't that reminder enough?

Best of all, though, was a woman who came in the shop requesting a tattoo on her hip. The tattoo she wanted? Herself. Yup, this lady had pictures taken of herself, posing in her underwear, and wanted that picture on her hip. And then, she asked the tattoo artist to make the chest and rear end a touch bigger. I would be remiss not to mention that this woman was a 1 on the binary scale, a 10 on the 10 scale, and a 7 on the clydesdale scale. Added around the tattoo of herself were a wad of cash and a champagne bottle. My wife and I immediately agreed that this was the most shallow person we had ever seen on TV. This made Ralph Wilson naming the Bills' football stadium after him look downright humble by comparison. And this was before this woman said, "I just don't want to forget myself." Glasses, wallet, keys, I've forgotten all these things. But forgetting myself entirely? I can't say I've ever done that.

The Ralph vs. The Glen

2006-08-15T08:59:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the long delay between posts. In keeping with my status as a member of Flyover America, I went to the NASCAR races at Watkins Glen over the weekend. The Busch race (this is what AAA is to Major League Baseball) was on Saturday, with the Nextel Cup race on Sunday. This was, in fact, the first time I've attended a race, though I've obviously watched plenty of them on TV. It struck me that the atmosphere had some similarities to the many football games I've attended at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo (actually, Orchard Park). So, here's the tale of the tape...

Accessibility: Both places are in the middle of nowhere. The difference is that The Ralph is just outside "somewhere". Say what you will about Buffalo, but people actually know where it is. The stadium is pretty easy to find, with several different routes to get there.

To get to Watkins Glen, you have to take I-390 to Nowhere, turn left at God's Country, go straight through B.F.E. and it's just past Where-the-Hell-Are-We, New York. You're never going to believe this, but we got lost a couple times on Saturday. On Sunday, we found a better, but only slightly better marked, route.

Edge: Ralph.

Food and Beverage: At The Ralph, you can pay a lot of money for a crappy steamed hot dog. At The Glen, you can pay a lot of money for a decent, grilled hot dog. At least, they looked decent; I didn't try one. Frankly, anything I cook in the parking lot is bound to be at least five times better than the food inside. Would you opt for freshly grilled Johnsonville bratwurst that's been soaking in a mixture of dark beer and diced onions for 12 hours, with grilled peppers and onions on a toasted bun, or a hot dog? Easy call there.

As for beverages, they're best described as "overpriced" at both places. I went up to a beverage vendor, and the sign said, "premium beer - $4". I asked for a Budweiser. He charged me $4. What, precisely, is premium about a Budweiser? I don't mind paying $4 for a beer if that's what the price is, but don't crap on my plate and call it ice cream. Call it what it is: "Beer - $4". By the way, my buddy Pete just hopped in his car to drive to Rochester and beat the crap out of me. Just thought you should know.

Here's the thing, though: at Watkins Glen (and apparently at all racetracks), you can take stuff in with you! So long as it's in a soft-sided cooler (i.e. something that, if thrown, won't reach the track unless you're a member of the Manning family) and it's not insanely huge, you can carry in a cooler full of beer, soda, snacks or whatever. Trying this at Ralph Wilson Stadium will go over about as well as wearing an Al-Qaeda t-shirt with sticks of dynamite strapped to your chest.

Huge edge: Glen.

Atmosphere: The thing about a football game is there's two sides. That's it. You're with us, or against us, dammit. There's a definite sense of finality to it. I like that.

At a race, there's 43 different drivers, and all sorts of different scenarios that come into play. For instance, I wanted Jeff Gordon to win, but as long as he finished ahead of a few other guys, that would be fine too. But I liked some of those other guys, like Dale Earnhardt, Jr., so one's interests can get a bit conflicted. As the race goes on, and contenders fall by the wayside, people tend to pick a side amongst the lead cars, and follow that.

Edge: Ralph.

Friendliness to All Things Phil: Wearing Dolphins paraphenilia at a Bills game is tantamount to putting a bulls-eye on your chest. Most Bills fans are decent people and knowledgeable football fans, but there's a definite Neanderthal element out there. Fortunately, my general good nature (and 6'4 frame) have generally kept me out of trouble. I am at best, an unwelcome, barely tolerated guest.

At some racetracks, wearing a #24 hat can invoke the same reaction. For the uninitiated, cheering for Jeff Gordon is a lot like cheering for the Lakers, or Duke basketball, or a baseball team that shall remain nameless except to note that they reside in the South Bronx; either you love them or hate them, and there's not much middle ground. However, Watkins Glen draws a very civilized crowd, particularly by NASCAR standards, and if there were a lot of folks who didn't care for Jeff Gordon, they didn't act like jerks.

Edge: Glen.

First Impressions: I don't remember the kickoff of my first football game. I'm not even certain I remember who played. I think it was the Bills and Patriots (this was when the Bills were good and the Patriots weren't, just to give you an idea of how long ago it was).

On the other hand, I will NEVER forget the start of my first race. 43 racecars revving up their 800 horsepower engines at the same time. That's 34,400 horses roaring to life simultaneously. Red state, blue state, purple state, whatever; if you've got even an iota of testosterone in your body, it's pretty damn cool, and something you'll never forget. As an aside, the engines actually don't all sound exactly the same. The Dodge engines were louder than the Fords, for example, but the Chevy engines were the nastiest sounding by far. Tony Stewart's car sounded like it had an engine forged in the depths of Hell, in a machine shop guarded by Cerberus.

Edge: Glen.

Watching the Action: A football field is 120 yards by 33 yards and even the farthest end of the field is clearly visible from any seat. If you don't know precisely what may have happened on the previous play, you've got a very good idea.

Watkins Glen is a 2.45 mile racetrack that winds around behind trees, grandstands and other stuff in the race infield. At best, 1/4 of the track is visible from any given seat, and one is resigned to watching the other 3/4 on one of the jumbotrons that's visible from your seat. It's still okay, but it detracts somewhat from the excitement.

Huge Edge: Ralph.

Following the Action: And no, it's not the same as watching the action. At a football game, there's a break in between plays, and it's clear where everything stands on the field and in the score. A referee will kindly explain any infraction to you, and the jumbotron operator will often replay the action...unless of course it goes against the home team, in which case, it never happened. Oceania is at war with Eurasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.

At most racetracks, there's a scoring tower showing the field from 1 to 43. Except, at The Glen, there's only a scoreboard showing the lap count and the standings from 1 to 4. You can usually tell who's where in the field, but in a long, green flag run, it gets very difficult to tell who's where, as the cars get spaced out around the track, while some pit, and some don't. As for black flag infractions, the jumbotron will usually tell you what happened, but for yellow flags, you're on your own.

Edge: Ralph.

Relief: The Ralph has restrooms with a long trough, and you wait for a place at the trough. The lines are immense and could easily be the leading cause of kidney failure in Erie County. There are also private toilets for those who are either shy or need to relieve themselves of solid waste.

The Glen has port-a-potties, with a small trailer with a couple toilets for those who feel shy or require something more sanitary. I cannot imagine what would possess anyone to actually sit on a port-a-potty. I believe that forcing women to use these things violates the Eighth Amendment. The lines for the trailer are arguably longer than those for the restrooms at The Ralph.

As an aside, most stadiums have added more women's restrooms and have instituted handicapped restrooms, both of which are a good idea. But could someone please institute a special restroom for men prone to stagefright or prostate problems? Seriously, if you're standing at the urinal for more than 60 seconds, and it's not happening, swallow your pride and zip up. If we can't have minimum prostate standards for the men's room, let's at least make this a public service announcement during a break in the action.

Edge: Neither. Just hold it and use the trees that surround the parking lots in both places after the game/race.

Scenery: At The Glen, lots of women in the 18-29 demographic, generally attractive or at least not unattractive, all working desperately on their suntans, often concealing as little as possible behind a Budweiser #8 tank top.

At The Ralph, well, I don't want to be unkind, but one of the big advantages to cold weather football games is that the local women keep as much clothing on as possible.

Enormous edge: Glen.

"Children of the Corn" Factor: Not a factor at The Ralph, but at The Glen...well, I'll just relate this story:

On the drive back from Sunday's race, we saw a lot of people sitting in the front of their front yard, waving to the passing cars. Oh, okay, that's friendly of them. Well, as we kept driving, it became apparent that just about everyone in the towns along route 16 was in their front yard, or someone else's. We started seeing signs asking passers-by to throw hats and shirts out, always held by a small child. And this wasn't one little run-down house with grubby little kids, I'm talking about just about every house along route 16 had some little brat asking for hats. The farther we drove, the more aggressive these folks got. Some shirtless yahoo wearing a Budweiser 12-pack as a hat (presumably having consumed the contents already) was hooting and hollering, and of course, demanding an upgraded chapeau. Then there was a big sign that said, "show tits". There was another that asked for hats and had all sorts of nasty things written about Tony Stewart, which I won't print here. I happened to agree, but with a bunch of kids around, that sort of language seemed inappropriate. Then there was a giant "coin toss", which involved tossing your coins into a giant, hastily constructed box. Then, more requests for hats.

Apparently, the race at Watkins Glen is some kind of redneck Mardi Gras, except that none of the locals are showing mammaries in exchange for hats. Maybe they'd have had better luck that way. Then again, maybe not. Anyway, the creepiness factor was off the scale.

Edge: Ralph.

The Final Verdict: By a 5-4 decision, The Ralph remains the king of Upstate New York pro sports. But hey, I'll definitely be back to The Glen next year, and the year after, and the year after...

Standards Are Getting Low in Corporate America

2006-08-07T14:35:00.000-04:00

Please read the following passage (from this article) and try to figure out which part of it blew my mind. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Inta Juice and Randy Moss Sponsoring Haas, Green at Brickyard 400: One of the nation's fastest-growing smoothie and juice bar franchises is heading to the nation's most prestigious speedway. Inta Juice has signed an agreement to sponsor Haas CNC Racing and the #66 Inta Juice Chevy driven by Jeff Green in this weekend's Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Randy Moss, professional football player and Inta Juice executive, will grace the quarter panels of the #66 Inta Juice Chevrolet.

Am I hallucinating, or did that refer to Randy Moss as a corporate executive? I'd bet you $10,000 Moss can't balance his checkbook on his own. I'll go double or nothing that he thinks MBA stands for "Major Bad Ass".

---

I enjoy Starbucks coffee. I really do. It's piping hot, stronger than hell and competitively priced with places like Dunkin' Donuts. Further, vis-a-vis Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks has the advantage of having counter people who just hand you the coffee and tell you to put your own damn cream and sugar in it.

You might think that's not so good, but I have yet to find a Dunkin' Donuts employee that can handle the words "easy on the sugar". When you talk to your dog, it seems like they only hear certain words. For example, you might say: "Petey, sit down. That's a good boy. Later, we'll go for a walk, okay, Petey?" And Petey hears: "Petey...walk...Petey". I think Dunkin' Donuts employees have the same problem. When I say "coffee with cream and very little sugar. Don't go nuts with the sugar this time, okay?", I am convinced they hear "coffee...cream...sugar...sugar", and think you want coffee with cream and a metric ton of sugar. And yet, I digress.

The coffee's great, but it's the Starbucks Experience I've got a problem with. First, you can cut the pretension with a knife. They can't use small, medium and large like the rest of Planet Earth. Oh no. I've been corrected before for my failure to use the word "venti".

Then, there's the music selection, which is best described as a collection of lame white people trying to be black. Hey, I'm white, I'm lame and I've come to grips with these facts. I listen to my guitar-heavy music and enjoy my life. But at Starbucks, you can get a wonderful variety of white people signing blues music, having little to no idea what it means to actually have the blues. As George Carlin once said, "What do white people have to be blue about? The espresso machine is jammed? Banana Republic ran out of khakis? Hootie and the Blowfish are breaking up?...White people don't get the blues, white people GIVE people the blues." The blues, I am told, are a state of mind. I don't have the blues, I don't pretend I do or even understand them, and I definitely don't take my thimbleful of musical talent and try to pass myself off as the next B.B. Freakin' King.

But no amount of lame attempts at playing the blues can compete with the CD I saw the other day. There's a guy named (I think) Matisyahu. Matisyahu is a rapper. An (by all appearances) orthodox Jewish rapper. If you want to know what he looks like, just remember Weird Al Yankovic during the "Amish Paradise" video, lose the wide-brimmed hat, and add a yarmulke and a serious expression.

Of course, after soaking in the faux snobby atmosphere and crappy music, there's the matter of waiting in line, as you may often do at Starbucks. You are waiting in line because there's an excellent chance that the person in front of you wants a half-caf, double-decaf, whipped, soy Tazo Chai tea, with a twist of lemon, a shot of raspberry and no foam. It takes longer for someone to complete their damn order than it does to consume the drink.

Finally, it's my turn to order:
Lady Behind the Counter (this "barista" nonsense must go): And for you, sir?
Me: Coffee. Super size it.
LBC: One venti regular!
*SIGH*

Upon leaving, I notice a little message on the coffee cup. Usually, they're a bit on the PC side, but I actually saw an enjoyable anti-gun control rant once, so I'm not upset with Starbucks for those little messages. What does bother me, though, is this disclaimer (paraphrased): "The opinions on this coffee cup do not necessarily represent those of Starbucks." Starbucks is a major, multinational corporation, not a singular person. A corporation is an artificial person created by statute for the purpose of doing business. It is, in effect, legalized fiction. A fictional person cannot have opinions!

But still, it's damn good coffee. And that's why, even with my inner blue-collar schmoe screaming all the while, I keep going back.

Wal-Mart Wears a White Hat

2006-08-05T08:17:00.000-04:00

I was at my doctor's office recently and was looking for a magazine to read. I found the new issue of "Fortune", with the headline "Wal-Mart Saves the Planet".

Surely, you can't be serious.

They are serious. And don't call them Shirley.

Do they really mean to say that Wal-Mart, that embodiment of all that is horrible and wrong with American business, is working to become not just an environmentally-responsible company, but working to force others to become one as well?

Yup.

Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott announced an initiative including some ambitious environmental goals: increase the efficiency of its vehicle fleet by 25% over the next three years, and double efficiency in ten years. Eliminate 30% of the energy used in stores. Reduce solid waste from U.S. stores by 25% in three years. This appears to be more than just rhetoric, it's already gotten started, in fact: Wal-Mart says it will invest $500 million in sustainability projects, and the company has done a lot more than draw up targets. It has quickly become, for instance, the biggest seller of organic milk and the biggest buyer of organic cotton in the world. It is working with suppliers to figure out ways to cut down on packaging and energy costs. It has opened two "green" supercenters.

The whys and wherefores of this sudden transformation are, to me, unimportant. The article tries to play it up as some sort of personal religious discovery by Scott and other Wal-Mart honchos. Personally, though, I think this passage is far more telling, as it describes the outcome of a meeting between Wal-Mart execs and an environmental management consulting firm:

Fairly quickly, the environmentalists spotted waste that Wal-Mart's legendary cost cutters had overlooked.

On Kid Connection, its private-label line of toys, for instance, Wal-Mart found that by eliminating excessive packaging, it could save $2.4 million a year in shipping costs, 3,800 trees, and one million barrels of oil.

On its fleet of 7,200 trucks Wal-Mart determined it could save $26 million a year in fuel costs merely by installing auxiliary power units that enable the drivers to keep their cabs warm or cool during mandatory ten-hour breaks from the road. Before that, they'd let the truck engine idle all night, wasting fuel.

Yet another example: Wal-Mart installed machines called sandwich balers in its stores to recycle and sell plastic that it used to throw away. Companywide, the balers have added $28 million to the bottom line.

"Think about it," Scott said in his big speech to employees last fall. "If we throw it away, we had to buy it first. So we pay twice - once to get it, once to have it taken away. What if we reverse that? What if our suppliers send us less, and everything they send us has value as a recycled product? No waste, and we get paid instead."

Huh, I'll be darned, being green saves you green. Who knew that changing the environmentalist sales pitch from "you evil, tree-killing monsters!" to "by doing it this way, you'll save money, and as an added bonus, help the environment" would work?

What Wal-Mart has discovered, with the help of these pragmatic environmentalists, is that by pushing environment-friendly products, they'll ultimately help their own bottom line. Some other examples:

Packaging is another thorny issue. On my grocer's shelf are a bulky, 100-fluid-ounce, orange plastic jug of Procter & Gamble's bestselling Tide and a slim 32-ounce aqua plastic bottle of Unilever's "small and mighty" All.

Both contain enough detergent for 32 loads of wash, but the smaller package, made possible by condensing All, saves energy, shipping costs, and shelf space - a big win all around, right?

Not quite. Bigger packages command more shelf space, provide more surface area for advertising, and suggest to consumers that they're getting more for their money. Unilever executives voiced all those worries when they went to see Scott. He agreed to make "small and mighty" All a VPI (that's Wal-Mart code for "volume-producing item," and it means that Wal-Mart will promote it heavily). "That helps to increase their confidence," he says. You can now find "small and mighty" All in supermarkets everywhere.

And guess what? This fall Procter & Gamble will replace the bulky plastic jugs with condensed, slimmed-down versions of all its liquid laundry detergents - Tide, Cheer, Gain, Era, and Dreft - in a test in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to prepare for a likely national rollout.

We wondered if Wal-Mart had anything to do with that. "We've been doing sustainability for quite some time," replied a P&G spokeswoman. "And we're pleased to work with all our distributors, including Wal-Mart." You figure it out.

This is why Wal-Mart's eco-initiative is potentially more world-changing than, say, GE's. GE sells fuel-efficient aircraft engines and billion-dollar power plants to a few customers. Wal-Mart sells organic cotton, laundry soap, and light bulbs to millions. When shoppers see a display promoting "the bulb that pays for itself, again and again and again," they'll be reminded of their own environmental impact.

By buying CF bulbs they'll also save money on their utility bills, leaving them more money to spend at, you guessed it, Wal-Mart. The bigger idea here is that poor and middle-income Americans are every bit as interested in buying green products as are the well-to-do, so long as they are affordable.

Plenty of places sell fair-trade coffee, for example. Only Wal-Mart sells it for $4.71 a pound. "The potential here is to democratize the whole sustainability idea--not make it something that just the elites on the coasts do but something that small-town and middle America also embrace," says CI's Glenn Prickett. "It's a Nixon-to-China moment."

Personally, I believe they view benefitting the environment as a nice side benefit...which is precisely how I view it. I have no problems buying organic milk, but when it costs three times what regular milk costs, to hell with it. But show me how I can save money on my bottom line with some of these products, and I'm a happy consumer.

Of course, it seems not all environmentalists have come around to this sort of sales pitch:

Jeffrey Hollender is president of Seventh Generation, a Burlington, Vt., maker of nontoxic household products. Though Scott met with Hollender in Bentonville and offered to carry some of his line, Hollender declined. "We might sell a lot more products in giant mass-market outlets, but we're not living up to our own values and helping the world get to a better place if we sell our soul to do it," he says.

Right on, Jeffrey. Don't sell out to "The Man"! Or maybe his attitude's got something to do with the fact that it's a whole lot easier to sell that merchandise in hippie boutique shops near the UVM campus for 5 times what a Wal-Mart in Lawrence, Kansas would sell it for. Hey, maybe Jeffrey is more pragmatic than I'm giving him credit for, come to think of it.

The Trouble With Cars

2006-08-03T08:25:00.000-04:00

Ever get the feeling that you're getting ripped off, and there's not a thing you can do about it? I had just such an occasion recently. On Sunday, I was changing the oil in my car. I do this because I'm reluctant to pay some high school dropout $40 to do something that I can do for about $10. It's also a good way to get some quality alone time and boost my testosterone levels. Grunts, motor oil stains and F-bombs are manly, you know. It was also a good way to break in my brand new DuPont Racing hat.

Unfortunately, I didn't change the oil on my car the last time it was done. I left that job to one of the high school dropouts at the service station up the street. I can't remember why I did this, to be honest. Anyway, the oil pan plug wasn't just tight, it was overtight, to the point that I wonder if some idiot savant used an air gun to tighten the damn thing. After doing my best He-Man imitation, I managed to get the plug off, and discovered a healthy crack in the oil pan. My suspiscions were (and remain) that this was caused either directly or indirectly by Forrest Gump choosing to practice for his next career with a NASCAR pit crew.

The last thing in the world that I wanted to do was take it back to the same guys who may have screwed it up in the first place. However, when one's car has no oil in it, and will not retain oil, location must take priority over competence, and so I went to the station up the street, and was ultimately informed that I needed a new oil pan (duh), and that parts, labor and oh yeah, an oil change, would cost me $440.

I spoke to the manager about this the next day. "Yeah, it was on there tight, but I've been doing this for 34 years, and I've never seen anything like that. I think you just hit something, and it caused the oil pan to crack."

The sad part is this: I can't prove that they screwed up. Certainly not to the satisfaction of a small claims judge. I can just see the line of questioning going like this:

Judge: How did you notice the oil pan was cracked?
Me: After I removed the oil plug, I saw it, and it continued to leak even after I replaced the plug.
Judge: Was it leaking before you removed the oil plug?
Me: No.
Judge: So, it wasn't leaking before you removed the plug, and therefore didn't appear to be cracked before you removed the plug?
Me: Uh, yeah.
Judge: So, it wasn't cracked before you removed the plug, but was afterwards?
Me: Judge, I'm going to object to your question.
Judge: And I'm going to overrule you, counselor.

Heck, maybe I did hit something. Maybe the manager's being honest with me. After all, they checked out a squeak in my left front and said, "it's really nothing to worry about, and certainly not worth dropping $600 to fix." Still, the whole episode leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

McLane!!

2006-08-01T10:02:00.000-04:00

Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane has settled firmly into the spot of my second least favorite baseball owner. (#1, of course, is Kaiser Steinbrenner.) Apart from Jayson Stark's shameless hand-wringing over McLane's failure to OK a deal to send Roger Clemens back to Boston (when, of course, Clemens needed only to sign with Boston as a free agent 3 months ago), McLane apparently vetoed a deal that would have catapulted my beloved Mets from "best team in the JV league" to "honest-to-goodness World Series contenders".

The Mets, it seems, were set to trade Lastings Milledge and Brian Bannister for Roy Oswalt. McLane shot that down, apparently because the 3.4% chance the Astros have of making the postseason and getting thumped in round 1 outweighs the need to have a star outfielder around whom they can build their lineup for the next 5 to 6 years. Unbelievable. Even Peter Angelos isn't that stupid. Okay, that's not true, but still. Very frustrating.

As for the title, "McLane!!", it sounded like something that a member of the Gruber family would yell at Bruce Willis. (Except that his name was John McClane, but hey, I'm entitled to some poetic license.) Remember, there's a difference between not liking one's brother, and not caring when he gets dropped out of a window by some dumb Irish flatfoot.

----

Nick Saban apparently declined to have dinner with President Bush. I feel torn, like there's a fight in my family, like the time my two aunts got in a snit stopped talking to each other for a year, except that one was clearly right and one was nucking futs. (Actually, I suppose more than a few people would argue that's the case here too.)

Personally, I think too much is being made of this. Could you see Jedi Master Parcells, or Sith Lord Belichick cutting out from training camp to have dinner with the President? I don't think Bill Cowher even stops camp to take a crap, which is why he looks so angry all the time.

On the plus side, this might be what Nick needs to finally push the Dolphins ahead of the Bears.

----

Trade Deadline Winners and Losers...

Winners:
Yankees - I love what they did. They got two guys who dramatically upgrade their outfield (Abreu and Wilson) and a competent fifth starter (Lidle), for a collection of spare parts. Excellent work by Brian Cashman. I hate to anoint them as AL East favorites, but right now, they're better than the Red Sox.

Dodgers - Got Lugo and Maddux for a prospect they'd soured on and a couple spare parts. Only problem is that they're in a hole a little too deep to climb out of.

Rangers - Loved the Carlos Lee pickup. Nothing else they did impressed me, but when you get the best hitter on the market, that's enough. Could be enough to push them to the AL West title.

Royals - Got Ryan Shealy, who will be really good, for fairly cheap, though it's sort of like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic at this point.

Mets - They're winners...kinda. They didn't need Xavier Nady, who has an OPS of 761 since April, which is pretty weak for a corner outfielder, particularly one on a good team. In exchange, they got a good reliever and a headcase with a million dollar arm. If Perez pans out (or can be moved for Scott Linebrink after this year, as was rumored), it's a steal. If not, they still did well to fill the hole created by Duaner Sanchez's bizarre injury. Lastings Milledge is probably as good as Nady right now, so they lose nothing. I say they're only "kinda" winners because they really needed another starter and failed, though apparently not for lack of effort.

Losers:
Nationals - Jim Bowden outsmarted himself. There were plenty of good deals for Soriano, and he didn't grab ANY of them. This was a team in dire need of a tear down and rebuilding of the farm system. Now, Soriano will almost certainly walk, and the farm system rebuilding will be set back as the Nationals play dice with draft picks, as opposed to quality prospects.

Angels - Why did this team fail to make a move for Abreu or Soriano? They really could have used a real on base guy, thus making Abreu a perfect fit, but another power hitter would have also been welcome, thus making Soriano perfect. Instead, they did nothing.

Tigers - Another team that needed Abreu or Soriano. The Tigers instead got Sean Casey. In theory, that's not terrible, if they hit Casey second and take advantage of his ability to get on base. However, they needed a left handed power hitter, which Casey most certainly is not.

Red Sox - Rumors abounded about Andruw Jones and Roger Clemens, and the Red Sox instead got...nothing. With the Yankees greatly improved, and the wild card no guarantee, the Red Sox had to keep pace and didn't. I don't like their starting pitching at all and it looks more and more like they're content to just let Ortiz and Ramirez carry the offense as far as it will go without much help.

Pull the Trigger, Omar!

2006-07-25T08:47:00.000-04:00

Good news: there's more Phil to go around. No, I haven't put on 10 pounds. Shut up. Jerk.

I've been writing for Dr. Stats for about three years now. If you haven't checked it out, that's a subscription-based fantasy football website. And it's, like, WICKED good. There's a lot of excellent stats and projections, hence the name. Anyway, we recently added a free blog to the website, which I will be updating regularly. (As opposed to this free blog, which I update somewhere from "sporadically" to "who the #$%& knows?". The difference, of course, is that I'm paid for that blog. No one cuts me a check for "Ranting and Rambling".)

Anyway, I'll be updating the fantasy football blog 2-3 times per week with useful tidbits and such. Check it out at http://www.drstatsfantasyfootball.com/.

---

On the subject of real football, with the season upon us, I'll be updating finheaven.com a bit more often, and we'll soon be launching canesheaven.com, where I will once again be a featured columnist. Really, I should just move to Miami. It would make a lot more sense for everyone. Anyway, I'll post those articles, or at least links, here, under the guise of actually putting up a real post.

Okay, onto the substantive part...

I absolutely do NOT understand the Mets' reluctance to pull the trigger on a Barry Zito for Lastings Milledge trade. All indications are that the A's would do this trade and this would give the Mets a postseason rotation of Martinez, Zito, Glavine and "To Be Determined" (probably Orlando Hernandez). That would be, by far, the best playoff rotation in the NL. When combined with perhaps the best lineup in the NL, that would make the Mets heavy favorites to represent the Senior Circuit in the World Series. And that rotation stacks up with anyone in the AL, too. Only Detroit and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, California, United States of America on Planet Earth could seriously rival that. Maybe Chicago too, if Mark Buerhle, Jon Garland and Freddy Garcia start pitching more like Buerhle, Jon Garland and Freddy Garcia.

As it stands, the Mets are prohibitive favorites to represent the NL and take the AL representative to a semi-competitive 6 game series. With Zito, they become a bona fide World Series contender, certainly the rival of Chicago or Detroit, who I believe to be easily the two best teams in the AL. Boston can join that group if Josh Beckett starts pitching more like Josh Beckett, as can the Angels if they get another bat or two, and the Yankees can if Sheffield and Matsui get healthy bodies and Alex Rodriguez gets a healthy head. Oh yeah, and Randy Johnson turns back the clock five years and Mariano Rivera's arm doesn't fall off from overuse. (Suffice to say, I'm not exactly sanguine about their chances.)

Where's the downside here? All we hear is "oh, he's represented by Scott Boras, and they might not be able to resign him." Okay, so if they don't, they've traded Milledge (a top 10 prospect) for two months of Barry Zito, and therefore a greatly improved shot at a World Series title. And oh yeah, two first round picks. This is conveniently overlooked by almost every sportswriter out there, save the brilliant Buster Olney. If Zito walks, the Mets still get two potentially excellent prospects in return. And in recent years, they've parlayed those high picks into quality players. Milledge was a first round pick. David Wright was a sandwich pick (that means he was a pick between rounds 1 and 2, not that they pulled him out of the Wonder Bread factory). Mike Pelfrey was a first round pick. Scott Freakin' Kazmir was a first round pick. That's a heck of a lot better track record than most teams have.

Incidentally, I believe the Mets could definitely resign Zito after the season. They're already considered at least co-favorites to do so, and with a two month trial period of Pennant Fever: Queens, one has to think Zito would be excited to stay. But even if they don't, that's hardly a tragic worst-case scenario.

Chances at a World Series title don't come around often. And yeah, Milledge is a special talent and all, but it's been 20 years since the last one in Queens, and a lot longer in most other places. This team was built to win now; Carlos Delgado, Pedro Martinez, Tom Glavine and Billy Wagner have far more years behind than ahead. There is an impressive core of younger talent, but the Mets have to assume that those guys I just mentioned will fall off at some point, some sooner than others. I've long believed the Mets signed Pedro to a four year deal counting on two excellent years, one good one and one write-off. Well, this is his second year.

I don't think the Mets will be as strong a team next year as they are this year. And in 2 or 3 years, there will be other contenders emerging. The Marlins, for example, should be able to make a run then...and then they'll dump everyone a couple years after that, because they're cheap and start over yet again.

Omar, pull the trigger, get Zito, and bring the pennant back to Shea Stadium, where it belongs.

WWJGD? and Hollywood Sucks, Part XVI

2006-07-19T16:05:00.000-04:00

When I drive, I try to keep a simple philosophy in mind. I call it "WWJGD?" Or, "What Would Jeff Gordon Do?"

See, the way I figure it, Gordon is one of the very best drivers in the world. Every week, he hops out on a track with 42 other infantile egomaniacs (10 points for that movie reference), and he's managed not only to stay alive, but almost always avoid an accident and drive well enough to capture 4 Winston Cups. This separates him from, say, Dale Earnhardt, who drove his way to 7 Winston Cups, but unfortunately didn't meet the "stay alive" requirement that I find to be so important.

This philosophy has served me well. The other day, I was on the Thruway, and my lane was ending, with a car on my left. There were two choices: slow down or accelerate. Actually, I suppose a third choice was "drive into the guardrail", but I rejected this out of hand. What would Jeff Gordon do? Would he slow down and let some soccer mom from Poughkippsie in her 3 ton Volvo with a "I Derek Jeter" bumper sticker get in front of him? Or would he mash the gas, zoom by and yell "Yanks Suck!"? I think you know the answer to that one.

Oh sure, this has cost me a couple speeding tickets, and given a few passengers heart attacks. And the other day, I tried to run a DeWalt Tools delivery truck off the road. But by and large, I'm a fan.

The other day, my wife and I were driving to Buffalo. In the eastbound lane of the Thruway, there was someone obviously having a bad day. I deduced this from the several emergency vehicles with flashing red lights. My wife asked me to slow down so she could get a look. I said, "Jeff Gordon wouldn't slow down so you could look at an accident."

She replied, "sure he would. If there's an accident, the caution flag would be out."

I may need to rethink this new philosophy.

---

I watched the movie "Firewall" recently. (Yeah, I know, I'm like SOOOO up on movies. Coming soon: Phunwin's review of "Citizen Kane".) It sounded cool; bad guys kidnap good guy's family and make him rob a bank, before getting their comeuppance. Had a great cast, too. Here's the problem, though: it was like a 1 hour, 45 minute episode of "24"...only with a feeble old man doing Kiefer Sutherland's action scenes, and a plot so implausible that it made the infamous "mountain lion" storyline look reasonable by comparison. But it did have Mary-Lynn Rajksub saying things like "Screw you, Jack!" (As an aside, if she's trying to avoid being typecast as Chloe O'Brien for the rest of her career, this isn't helping.)

You know what's really sad? Harrison Ford hasn't done anything good in almost 10 years. He's a lot like Aerosmith that way. Hollywood Homicide wasn't anything great. K-19: The Widowmaker sucked. That flick with Anne Heche sucked. Air Force One was the last good movie he's done. Seriously, check his IMDB log. More than likely, he sat back and said, "you know what? Screw it all. I'm considered one of the greatest actors of the last 30 years, I'll just sit back, wait for a script that looks like a summer blockbuster, make my $15 million every year and be happy with that." I don't blame him for that; I'd probably do the same thing if I was him.

Still, I feel like it's guys like Harrison Ford that should be doing movies that are, you know, worth plunking down $8 to go see. He's long since clinched a spot as one of the greatest actors of my lifetime; the only guys I'd definitely put in front of him are Robert DeNiro and Tom Hanks. (Arguments for Al Pacino or Morgan Freeman will be entertained, however.) Maybe it's the never-ending stream of crap that gets kicked out of Hollywood studios that's driven Ford to this point. Maybe he threw up his hands and said, "there's nothing left worth doing, so I'll just make an annual popcorn flick until I'm too old to be a leading man." Still, it seems like a sad state of affairs.

A World Cup Finals Diary

2006-07-10T07:31:00.000-04:00

I didn't keep a minute-by-minute diary of the World Cup Finals, as I often do with an important sporting event, so here's my recollection of things as they happened...

Pre-Game
* We are LIVE from Phil's Man Cave! Actually, it's not live at all, I'm typing this the next day and taking my best guess as to what happened and when.

* Zinedine Zidane. Hey, did you know he's retiring? Seriously, I had no idea!

* I'm recalling to Lan and his girlfriend a story about the last time Italy was in the World Cup Final. In 94, I watched the game at my friend Sal's house. Sal's parents came over to America in (I think) their 20s. Sal was in fact born in Italy when they were visiting family there (this led to a situation where he had both Italian and American citizenship, which was kind of funny, because when he turned 18, the Italian Army tried to draft him). Suffice to say, I wasn't pulling for Brazil that day. Italy infamously lost on penalty kicks, most notably when Roberto Baggio, their best player, sailed one over the crossbar that would have continued the contest for more PKs. Sal's dad, ordinarily a pretty soft-spoken guy, unleashed a cloud of obscenities in English, Italian, Engtalian and Italish that hangs over Rochester to this day. After about five minutes, I just whispered to Sal, "I'm going home now. Thanks for having me over" and left. So, uh, the Italians, they care about this a little bit. Let's make no mistake about that.

* Before the game, Lan and I agree that Brazil might be the only country on earth that's actually afraid of France. Say what you will about France, but they flat-out own the Brazilians.

* Is it just me, or does Brent Musberger finally look really old?

* The final tally of guests: my wife (who's not really a guest), Lan, Jamie, Joe, Nathan, Francis (our resident Italian import), Kev and his 11 month old son. Excellent strategy by Kev: bring the little man to keep the girls occupied and not asking questions like, "why does the goalie have a different colored jersey?" Actually, that is a good question. Darn it Kev, thanks for preventing my wife from asking questions that I'm too dumb to answer and too ashamed to ask.

* Right before kickoff, I distribute Peroni around the room. Forzi Italia! Kev's son gets into it by immediately trying to drink Kev's bottle. If ever there was a chip off the old block, he's it.

First Half
* Kev immediately wins a $20 bet with a co-worker that there would be a dive in the first minute. Actually, Henry looked legitimately shaken up on that collision. No matter, I think he still collects.

* Six minutes in, Malouda goes through the penalty area, and as Materazzi (you'll never believe this, but I had to look up that spelling) gets close, Malouda takes a dive. Penalty. Marcelo Balboa hails Malouda's acting abilities as Zidane (who's retiring after this match, you know) fakes Buffon out of his jockstrap and chips it down the middle. Balboa disgraces Italian-Americans everywhere by administering verbal fellatio that would even make Brett Favre blush. Okay, that's a lie...it's pretty clear that Favre's ego is so out of control that no amount of flattery will make him blush.

* After the first ten minutes, Italy starts to settle in.

* 19 minutes in, and the Italian with the top knot (why don't any of the Japanese players have those?) wins a corner. Pirlo bends it and Materazzi buries a sweet header. The Man Cave is going wild, and it's 1-1! Francis laments that it should be 1-0 right now. Let's see if the soccer gods repay the Italian side later.

* Ten minutes later, Materazzi just misses with a header, but he fouled the French defender anyway.

* Apparently, the referee tonight is the same guy that sent Wayne Rooney off against Portugal. I recall that was a pretty tardy red. Tardy as in late, not slang for retarded.

* Italy pretty much owns the rest of the first half, just missing a second goal when Toni puts one off the crossbar after a corner. Thuram had to make a great play on the ball before that just to give Italy a corner, since Barthez looked beaten. But despite several chances, Italy can't score and it's 1-1 at the half.

Second Half

* All France from here on out. I mean ALL France. A nice run by Henry right after the half, but he can't do anything with it.

* 53rd minute, Malouda goes down, for real this time, in the penalty area. Ref says "play on". Wow. THAT was a penalty, folks. I have zero doubt in my mind that was a make-up call. At the half, I would bet serious cash that someone told the ref that he rewarded Malouda for a dive in the penalty area, and he said "I'm not giving France a PK unless someone gets knifed in the penalty area". That's the difference between refs/umps in American sport and international soccer referees. American refs strive to get every single call right, and will not give a make-up call if they screw up. If they did, Dirk Nowitzki would have shot about 90 free throws in the last three games of the NBA Finals. International soccer refs seem to strive to keep their impact on the game as neutral as possible, and are entirely willing to make a bad call the other way to make up for a previous bad call.

* A few minutes later, Henry and the soon-to-be-retired Zidane play a nice two-man game that goes nowhere when Henry makes one pass too many.

* Seriously, I think someone slanted the field so it was about 20 degrees downhill toward the Italian goal. France is making everything happen, and the Italians look like they're just waiting for the hammer to fall.

* De Rossi and Iaquinta come in for Totti and Perotta. Totti was completely ineffective. De Rossi has apparently made amends for committing assault on Brian McBride.

* Offsides wipes out an Italian goal. Damn. We couldn't get too excited; it was clear offsides.

* Ribery, who looks like he was motorcycle riding with Ben Roethlisberger, sends one into the 15th row from way out there. He's been awesome in this World Cup, but kind of a non-factor today.

* 80th minute and Zidane goes down with a shoulder injury. This could be the end of a fantastic, bombastic, magnefique career! Nope, he's staying in the game, despite initially signalling for a sub.

* Vin Diesel comes in for Italy, wearing a Del Piero jersey.

* More French attacking, but they're a day late and a euro short everywhere.

Overtime
* Dull start, but both teams are pretty tired. I don't know why the Italians are tired; they didn't do a damned thing for the last 40 minutes. In one particularly bizarre instance, there's five Italian players within three yards of the Italian player with the ball...at midfield. They look like an elementary school girls team, for crying out loud!

* 99th minute, and Ribery just misses a chance to all but end it. Whew! He's subbed out right after that. Not his best game; he was all over the field against Portugal and Spain.

* Buffon punches out a cross, and when it comes back in, he makes the save of the game on a Zidane header. Wow, that thing had "game winner" written all over it. Italy's just marking time until penalties, which has "bad idea" written all over it, since Zidane and Henry are automatic on PKs.

* Joe: "These guys look like they just want to sit around and sip their vino. Enough with the Italian work ethic!"

* De Rossi goes down after getting smacked in the head. That's karma, by the way. Henry is subbed out moments later. I know he's tired, but wouldn't you rather have him out there for penalties, since it's going there?

* Zidane headbutts Materazzi in the chest! Looks like a pretty hard headbutt, too, and Materazzi, of course, plays it up as much as possible by flopping to the deck. Buffon's screaming at the fourth ref to tell the head ref what happened, and finally, the fourth ref does his job. After some delay and deliberation, Zidane's career ends with a red card. Wow! They follow the two up the field on replay, and it looks like Materazzi just said something to set him off. We're betting on the old "seen any naked pictures of your wife?" "No." "Want some?" exchange.

* Balboa: "they should not show that on the replay here at the stadium!" Absolutely, because as we all know, the fans should have no idea what's happening until they read the paper the next day. Are JP Dellacamera and John Harkes warming up in the bullpen? Can they get here in time to handle the PKs? It's amazing; in the Ecuador game, Balboa was all over David Beckham's case, calling for him to be subbed and then dropped from the team. But somehow, Zidane gets all the slack in the world from Balboa. This guy's a national disgrace as an announcer. Seriously. I'd take the drunk ghost of Harry Caray calling the 2010 Cup over this loser, and I take back anything good I've ever said about him.

* Even 11 on 10, Italy can't press the advantage. In fact, France has a great chance a few moments later that just needed a really good pass to tie it together...something that the dude who just got sent off could have provided.

* We're going to penalties. Italy has a big advantage now. They've got the better keeper, and France's best PK takers are out. They've got karma, too. The soccer gods owe them for 94.

Penalties
* Pirlo and Wiltord trade successful kicks.

* Materazzi steps up with a disconcerting "deer in the headlights" look, but buries his. Trezeguet...hits the crossbar!! Once again, the Man Cave celebrates. It should be noted that Barthez has been flopping around like a fish out of water. Italy just has to put it in the net; I don't think he could stop a balloon right now.

* De Rossi and Abidal (there's no flippin' way this guy was born in France. Algeria, maybe) hit theirs. Right before Vin Diesel steps up, I say to Francis, "he'd better make this. I heard Baggio's next." He gives the same nervous half-laugh that you'd have expected from a Red Sox fan if you told him that Buckner was coming in as a defensive replacement. Immediately, I realized that Francis might stab me with a broken Peroni bottle if Del Piero misses. Fortunately, he buries it. The ball, not the broken bottle.

* Sagnol hits for France, and Dave O'Brien finally has his moment of melodrama: "Fabio Grosso has the World Cup on his foot." Eh, it's not quite Jack Edwards, but that'll do. Grosso buries it, and Italy are the 2006 World Cup Champions!

The Post-Game
* Joe asks how much I'd give to see Zidane's face as Italy won it. Would you rather see that, or know what Materazzi said to him? I'd rather know what Materazzi said, but I'll entertain arguments the other way.

* Julie Foudy's talking, for some reason. It's not that I have anything against women working as studio announcers or sideline reporters for men's sports; Leslie Visser's good, as are Michelle Tafoya and Melissa Stark, and...uh, that's about it. Francis pleads with ABC to cut her microphone off. Actually, there was about a five second pause from her, and we thought they really did. Blah blah blah, what a shame about Zidane, blah blah blah...

* I'm expecting Wynalda to rip Zidane a new one, and sadly he follows the same "what a shame" storyline that Foudy does. What the hell? Wynalda's the same guy who went on a tirade against Bruce Arena that was so venomous that Arena won't return Wynalda's calls. For God's sake guys, call a spade a spade! It should be noted they haven't mentioned the Italians once yet.

* Musberger quickly shifts the topic of conversation to the Italian team. Joe: "that's why he's an old pro." Musberger had to drag Foudy and Wynalda off Ziadane's jock once again a few minutes later.

* Shots of the Italian guys celebrating on the field. Apparently, the dude with the top knot vowed to cut his hair if they won. Meanwhile, Gattuso, apparently taking Michael Davies' rating system a bit too much to heart, is running around without his soccer shorts on, exposing a pair of tighty-whities for all the world to see. Um, great. Lots of hugging, kissing and all those other things that European males do.

* It's the trophy presentation, and for some reason, the refs get medals, too. Even Foudy thinks this is stupid. She then pontificates on what a great feeling it is to win the World Cup. Wait, how would she know? That's like asking Swin Cash, Sheryl Swoopes or Vince Carter what it's like to be a basketball champion. And please don't bother me with that PC, "We Love Title IX!" piece of junk known as the Women's World Cup. The World Cup is a 20 pound (I think) statue of solid gold. The Women's World Cup is a wood carving wrapped in aluminum foil and held together with scratch-n-sniff stickers.

* Apparently, FIFA asked Zidane not to rejoin the team for the medal presentation. I understand why they did it, but still, he was the best player on the second best team in the World Cup. That's got to count for something. One of the French guys just sticks the silver medal in his pocket in disgust.

* The Italians get their gold medals and Cannavaro (who should be the Golden Ball winner) holds the Cup in the air as everyone goes absolutely nuts. Now THAT'S a trophy presentation.

The Aftermath

Zidane won the golden ball award, which seems ridiculous to me since he might very well have cost his team the game. No matter, it's a fitting end to the love affair the media has with him. He's a fantastic player, of course, probably the best since Maradona was at the peak of his powers, but still, the coverage was a bit much.

On the whole, I thought ABC/ESPN's coverage was mixed. Balboa was terrible, and Dave O'Brien seemed to have only an intermittent clue as to what was happening. Dellacamera and Harkes were a much better team and should have been the #1 team. And what happened to Jack Edwards? I haven't seen him in forever, so I assume he no longer works for the Worldwide Leader, but I loved his work in 2002, over the top as it was. Tommy Smyth should have been in the booth as well, but they probably figured they couldn't keep him under control so well from there. Early on, they had too many technical glitches, but that got better as the tourney moved forward.

And as for the champions, they were a deserving team. But I have to say, the Italians benefitted from their fair share of luck. They missed Argentina and Brazil, and got Germany, who they always beat and who were playing above their heads anyway, and France, who had just run a Spain-Brazil-Portugal gauntlet. Meanwhile, Italy beat Australia and Ukraine to get to the semifinals. Apart from the second overtime against Germany, when they were magnificent, I never got the feeling that Italy were genuinely the best team in the tournament. If they played Argentina 10 times, I suspect the Argentines would win 7.

But, that doesn't matter now. History will recall Italy as the best team in the world for 2006, and that's how it should be.

Forzi Italia!

2006-07-08T12:46:00.000-04:00

I really wanted to write more on this, but alas, with in-laws knocking at the door, demanding to be let in and welcomed, I've got to keep it brief, with the Final tomorrow. I'm hoping to write up a World Cup Final diary for your (and my) enjoyment.

* I would have to assume that the majority of Americans watching tomorrow are pulling for Italy. I certainly am, as are, I believe, all the folks coming over to my house. Nick, who's arguably replaced Lan as our resident turd in the punch bowl (a watershed moment, really; that's got to be a wakeup call to Lan), shot me a quick "Vive Le France!" email, but mercifully, he's out of state for the weekend. That said, I found myself chuckling at Michael Davies' line that Americans should pull for France, as the country that won us our independence. While that's true, I'd posit that our debt to France was repaid in full some 162 years later.

* My cheering against France aside, they've played with a tremendous amount of grace and class in this World Cup. Obviously, anyone that rips through Spain, Brazil and Portugal in consecutive games merits respect, but the way they've won impressed me greatly, enough that I'm actually finding myself glad they beat Portugal, though I was pulling for the Portugese in that game originally. A team like Portugal simply doesn't deserve to be in the Finals. I understand that diving and acting is a common part of international soccer, but these guys took it to a whole new level. Just a shameful display.

* However, I'm looking forward to Christiano Ronaldo's first game for Man U after the World Cup. Have fans ever rioted against one of their own players before? Might happen, even if I thought Ronaldo didn't actually do anything wrong.

* I also had reservations about cheering for Italy. I mean, there appears to be a fair amount of evidence that guys on that team were involved in the match-fixing scandal in Serie A. That makes cheering for them like cheering for Barry Bonds, but worse. Say what you will, but what Bonds did was legal in MLB at the time he did it, even if it was distasteful. I'm not sure what it says that we have to point to France as a paragon of virtue in this World Cup. Nothing good, I'm sure.

A Dim Future For The Legality of Same-Sex Marriage?

2006-07-06T10:44:00.000-04:00

I plan to give some extensive commentary about the World Cup, but before I do, a quick news snippet (you know, for those of you who, for reasons all your own, rely on my little corner of the internet for news): The New York Court of Appeals has refused to recognize same-sex marriage.

I've never really made up my mind on the whole issue of same-sex marriage. I suppose I'm more or less ambivalent to the concept itself, and don't really see how two men or two women getting married cheapens my marriage to my wife. So in a vacuum, I have no real problem with it. On the other hand, I'm not a big fan of the ever-increasing tendency of activist judges (our pet term for "liberal judges") to read laws and rights that simply aren't there. So, I suppose my stance, convoluted as it may seem, is this: if a state legislature wants to write same-sex marriage into law, fine, but if a court wants to read it into a law that clearly didn't contemplate the concept, I'm opposed.

If my stance is convoluted, I'm obviously not the only one, because it appears that's precisely what the NY Court of Appeals found. New York, some 97 years ago, defined marriage as between man and woman. The Court of Appeals, in a rare and welcome display of reading black-letter law, said, "that's the law", and denied the appeal of the same-sex couples.

This isn't a great sign for the future of same-sex marriage. One assumes that, to the extent there was a grand design by its advocates, they intended to slowly bring court cases to the forefront, counting on judges to read it into law, and perhaps ultimately bring it before the Supreme Court. It seemed like a sound strategy; it certainly worked for abortion advocates. After all, if legal costs are expensive, and appellate litigation even more so, those costs are nothing compared to a massive statewide, or nationwide lobbying campaign. It's a heck of a lot easier to convince 4 New York Judges of something than 76 New York Assemblymen, 31 Senators and a Governor. One assumes that the plan was to start in the most favorable places possible, and as the concept became more widespread and acceptable, count on other states following. After having civil unions legalized in Vermont, and marriage legalized by judicial fiat in Massachusetts, New York seemed a likely target, being a deep-blue state that borders both Vermont and Massachusetts.

Obviously, that's out the window now; if the highest court in New York, not particularly known for its conservative tendencies, isn't going to recognize same-sex marriage, it seems to have precious little future in places like Ohio or Pennsylvania. It seems that the whole "equal protection" argument is a loser. And if that argument is a loser, advocates of same-sex marriage will have to get state legislatures to pass a law allowing it. That's going to be much more difficult and much more costly, and probably dooms same-sex marriage to a few protected enclaves for the foreseeable future.

Thoughts on the NBA Draft

2006-06-30T07:19:00.000-04:00

You know how you get a song stuck in your head and it just won't go away? Well, I've got that problem today. Seriously, watch "The Great Escape" and just TRY not to whistle the theme song for hours on end.

Onto the NBA Draft. I should have written this sooner, because honestly, I'm not sure that everything hasn't already been said here and here. But, nevertheless, my own thoughts...

* I wasn't sure about Bargnani at #1, until I read John Hollinger's fantastic work on how his stats translate to the NBA. I'm still not sure he'll end up being the best player in the draft, but I'm sold on him being a strong NBA player at the least. For that matter, I have no idea who will be the best player in the draft. LaMarcus Aldridge didn't impress me in the tournament. Tyrus Thomas didn't impress me UNTIL the tournament. Brandon Roy didn't play anyone. Adam Morrison could easily end up as a whiter, taller, slightly better version of Cuttino Mobley (more on this below). People are just a LITTLE too hyped up about Randy Foye. Rudy Gay looks like a phenomenal player only in the intermittent moments where he gives a crap. So hey, why not Bargnani?

* Onto Morrison, whom I steadfastly refuse to compare with the two guys whose names have come up the most: Larry Bird and Wally Szczerbiak. I can't believe no one tried to find a way to throw John Stockton in there. Hey, he's a white guy from Gonzaga, too! Seriously, the whole "any good white, American basketball player between 6'5 and 6'10 must be compared to Larry Bird" thing bugs the hell out of me. Bird was one of the 5 best players ever to play the game. It's as ridiculous as comparing every athletic, black shooting guard to Michael Jordan, or every big point guard to Magic Johnson. Yet it's done constantly, because basketball writers and commentators either lack imagination themselves, or assume we lack imagination and can't bring ourselves to compare a white player to a black one. Morrison's not Bird. If, 10 years from now, he's got 9 or 10 all-star appearances, 3 MVP trophies, and 3 championship rings, we can talk about Larry Bird. Not until.

The Szczerbiak comparison bothers me just as much. "Hey, a white guy who loves to shoot and can't defend!" This, of course, completely overlooks the fact that Morrison is both a willing and able passer, while Szczerbiak is neither. Morrison makes his teammates better and say what you want about him, but the guy is a serious competitor. Does anyone look at Wally Szczerbiak and think he makes his teammates better? Forget it.

So for now, until I come up with something better, I'm going with a whiter, taller (and since he was taken 3rd overall, hopefully better), Cuttino Mobley. Mobley loves to shoot, does it well, but also is a quality passer who makes his teammates better. And he couldn't defend the chair I'm sitting in.

* Renaldo Balkman...I'm not sure there's anything more to be said. I've long had a soft spot for the Knicks, they even occupied the same space as my beloved Pistons for awhile, but at this point, it's like watching an ex-girlfriend with a drug problem working at a 7-11 during the day and stripping at a biker bar at night to make ends meet. I have no idea why they passed on Marcus Williams. None. I mean, I know Larry Brown was an old fuddy-duddy and all, but his thing about point guards that can actually, you know, pass the ball...it's not so unreasonable. Wouldn't it have made far more sense to take Williams, move Marbury to the two, use Francis as the third guard and play Marbury at the point when Williams needs a rest? Forget everyone else; Nate Robinson is a sideshow attraction at best.

* Got to give the Blazers credit. They turned Theo Ratliff, the #4 pick, Sebastian Telfair, Victor Khryapa, and some cash into LaMarcus Aldridge, Brandon Roy, Sergio Rodriguez, Raef LaFrentz and Dan Dickau. At first, I thought the Celtics got the better end of the Telfair deal, but it looked like Brandon Roy would be gone by then, and now, it looks strong for Portland. Once they get rid of Darius Miles and Zach Randolph, we might have to ditch the old JailBlazers moniker.

And I really love what the Blazers did when the T-Wolves tried to screw them out of their guy. According to Chad Ford, the T-Wolves took Brandon Roy with the intent of trading him to Houston for Randy Foye (who the Rockets would take at 8) and something else. So the Blazers returned the favor and took Foye instead, forcing the T-Wolves' hand. Nicely done. (Of course, there's a pretty good chance that Foye's the better player of the two anyway, but that's neither here nor there.)

* Speaking of that Telfair deal, the rumor is that Boston is trying to spin Telfair and a bunch of other stuff into a deal for Allen Iverson. That would be, if nothing else, very interesting. Certainly, an Iverson-Pierce combo would be one of the top two or three combos in the league. But could they work together? You can't have two guys trying to be the alpha dog, particularly when their role is to score first, pass later. Iverson has shown a consistent inability to work with a prominent #2 (Chris Webber is just the latest example of failure) and no signs at all that he's willing to play second fiddle to someone else. To be fair, Iverson's never had a teammate as good as Pierce, but something tells me that he's not going to just say "it's Paul's team, and I'm here to help." We'll see. Iverson's almost certain to get traded this summer, so maybe that will get the concept of "teamwork" through his head.

* Memphis swapped Shane Battier for Rudy Gay and Stromile Swift. Wow. I hated that deal at first for Houston, but I'm warming to it. With Yao and McGrady, it's not like Houston's third wheel is going to get a ton of shots anyway. Battier can make the open three and does all the little things that Houston didn't do last year. He can defend the other team's best swingman, freeing McGrady to expend less energy on defense. He's on par with Josh Howard in the "glue guy" department. So it's a good deal for Houston, though I think they could have gotten more.

Obviously, it's not hard to like that deal for Memphis...even if they did drop Swift in free agency last summer.

* Hilton Armstrong went 12th overall to New Orleans. See, this is why I should be a commentator: NONE of the ESPN guys came out and said, "wait a minute, what the hell did this guy do to merit a lottery pick?" I watched Connecticut a LOT this past year. Let's just say I never looked at Armstrong and thought, "that kid could be a really top-notch pro." On those fleeting occasions where Josh Boone gave a crap, Armstrong was the second best big man and by a good margin.

* Loved the Patrick O'Bryant pick for the same reason that Lan's Italian-American girlfriend loved the Andrea Bargnani pick. Incidentally, the Warriors will field a team next year containing Patrick O'Bryant, Troy Murphy and Mike Dunleavy. That said, I can't believe they passed on Gerry McNamara in round 2.

* We all picked up on the Ronnie Brewer "oh f**k, I'm going to Utah" face at the same time Bill Simmons did. It wasn't a full blown Steve Francis to Vancouver moment, but it was still fantastic.

* I like the JJ Redick pick; that was exactly what Orlando needed. If they're smart, they bring him off the bench as a 6th or 7th man, like Dale Ellis or Dell Curry used to be: he comes in for 15-20 minutes or so, buries some long threes, stretches the defense and takes heat off Dwight Howard and Darko Milicic. If they're dumb, they try to stick him in the starting backcourt with Jameer Nelson and the Magic set a record for points allowed in a season.

* I liked what the Pistons did, incidentally. I think Carlos Delfino would be a very good player, given enough minutes, and hopefully they freed up those minutes by trading Maurice Evans to the Lakers. In return, they got some foreign kid that Chad Ford is HUGE on (what a shock). I liked the pick of Will Blalock; he could be the backup point guard they need.

And with that, I'm off. Have a great July 4th weekend!

Thoughts on "Instant History" and Outlet Malls

2006-06-29T09:33:00.000-04:00

My job has some advantages and some disadvantages. One of the nice things is that I get to travel. The problem is that I get to travel to locales that fall just a tad bit short of "exotic". I've been traveling a lot the last couple weeks, so if you were wondering where I've been (perhaps you've emailed me, or wondered why I haven't posted much, or seen my face on a milk carton), that's where.

Anyway, one of these less-than-scenic locales has an outlet mall about 15 minutes away. With 2 1/2 hours between hearings, it seemed like a nice way to kill time. Understand, for the most part, I LOATHE shopping. I don't like spending money, and I definitely don't like having people around me telling me what I should and shouldn't wear. I've got two relatively (for me) expensive suits that are collecting dust in my closet because my wife and mother-in-law browbeat me into buying them. If my family and friends got together and had me on one of those TV shows where they surprise you with a makeover and new wardrobe and all that crap, I'd probably embark on a three-state killing spree. Nevertheless, I needed a new dress belt and wanted to purchase a couple books for my long weekend trip, and in any event, moseying around the outlet mall seemed preferable to sitting around a state office building.

Because I loathe most forms of shopping, particularly clothes shopping, I accomplish my task as fast as humanly possible. I once completed my Christmas shopping in 9 minutes and, while in high school, my back-to-school shopping in about 12. Indeed, I bought 2 new dress belts, a couple pairs of shorts, a new dress shirt and a new casual shirt in the span of about 15 minutes, and saved something like 65% off the regular price. The first store I went to offered $5 off coupons for the next two that were good for that day only. Apparently there was a major clearance sale. Score! I then moved on to the Borders Books Outlet.

Remember how I said I loathe most forms of shopping? Books are an exception. Given that most of them now sell beverages and pastries, I could stay in a Barnes & Noble indefinitely. However, this Borders Books wasn't quite up to snuff. You know how when you go to an outlet store, the merchandise there is usually low priced because they either had WAY too much of it, or it just wasn't all that great? This store was the latter. Not much book selection, nor was there much quality current stuff. One thing I couldn't help but notice was the tremendous compilation of what I call "instant history" books.

I have something of a problem with "instant history". By way of background, this is what I (and maybe many others, I don't know) call that body of literature that focuses on a recent event or history-maker, presents it with an alarmist or ultra-partisan viewpoint, and markets it to people with that exact same viewpoint, with the intent of making cash first, reinforcing an extreme viewpoint second, and writing a quality, informative piece of literature a distant third. Seriously, who's going to read a book called How George Bush Ruined America other than someone who believes that George Bush ruined America? Who's going to lead Ann Coulter's latest rant apart from someone who believes Hillary Clinton is the anti-Christ? Who's going to read Michael Moore's latest bit of drivel apart from someone who smokes acres of dope, dodges taxes, protests the Iraq war in faded, ripped bellbottom jeans, calls police officers "Nazi pigf**kers", lives in a multi-colored VW Microbus and writes in "Jacques Chirac" in every presidential election?

Okay, that last one was a gratuitious potshot, but you get my point.

Obviously, I don't have a problem with people making money in an honest or even semi-honest fashion, such as writing a book that took 5 minutes to research and 10 minutes to draft an outline for an otherwise-unemployed English major to follow and write. Not even Michael Moore. But it does bother me that these books are alloted as much shelf space as they are. I can find dozens of books on who's to blame for 9/11, blaming anyone from Bush to Clinton to the NYC police to the CIA to the FBI to the average Manhattanite. I found a book dissecting a hypothetical presidential race between Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton. Wen Ho Lee (remember him?) actually wrote a book about his experiences getting accused of spying for the Chinese. Some yutz wrote a book called The Cheney Code, no doubt thinking, "hey, people loved The DaVinci Code and they love making fun of Dick Cheney...why not throw those two together?" But finding a quality book about George Washington or Ulysses Grant is a serious pain in the ass. Believe me, I've looked. In a hundred years, who's going to care how much of a churlish prick Dick Cheney might have been? But we'll certainly remember who George Washington and Ulysses Grant were.

I suppose it's an offshoot of the increasing culture of wanting everything immediately. And over time, the important stuff gets remembered and memorialized and (we hope) written about by actual competent historians, and the rest gets dumped in the dustbin of history. So, people churn out half-baked books advancing a slanted point of view, make big sums of cash, and are then content to let their work end up in the bargain bin of a second-rate bookstore of an outlet mall, and that's that.

Maybe the bigger question is why I haven't horned in on this racket yet.

What's Wrong With US Soccer

2006-06-22T09:00:00.000-04:00

So, this was originally going to be a post on how I enjoy the World Cup. Well, I still do, but after yesterday's result, my tone has changed somewhat. So, here are five problems with US Soccer...

1. Arena must go.
Remember when the Pistons fired Rick Carlisle, despite a trip to the Conference Finals and a pair of consecutive division championships? At the time, Joe Dumars said that the Pistons had gone as far as they could go under Carlisle. Well, the same thing's true here. Arena's built a fine foundation, he did very well in getting the US to two straight World Cups and attaining our highest FIFA ranking ever. Now it's time to hit the bricks. This team's gone as far as they're going to go under Arena. There will be better coaches available after the World Cup; there ALWAYS are. Hell, Scolari was available after the 2002 World Cup and he only brought home the big gold trophy for Brazil. Guus Hiddink will probably be available, go get him.

Fact is, it's rare for a team to bring a coach to two straight World Cups, and three is all but unheard of. That's because it's just like any other sport; with few exceptions, it's hard to hear the same voice for that long unless you're having tremendous success.

2. F**kin' Refs.
I'm not a big believer in grand refereeing conspiracies. I believe that some officials are better than others, but that they all do the best they can to call the game as fairly as possible. Well, unless they're employed by Vince McMahon. Or the Italian Serie A. The refereeing in US matches in the World Cup was so one-sided that I thought Dwyane Wade was a striker on the other side. The officiating in the Italy match was horrible, and the awful PK call in the Ghana game all but knocked the US out of the tournament. Once Ghana went up 2-1, they went into a shell, counterattacking only when the time was right. It wasn't the only thing to cost the US a match, but it was the biggest.

3. F**kin' FIFA.
I will never understand this as long as I live: the US qualified first in CONCACAF. They beat Mexico head-to-head. They were ranked higher in the world rankings. They finished better at the 2002 World Cup, including another head-to-head win. So of course, it makes perfect sense that Mexico was given one of the 8 #1 seeds, instead of the US. As a result, Mexico was in a group with a second-tier European power (who, incidentally, embarassed them), and a pair of pushovers. The US gets stuck with two of the four best teams in Europe and a severely underrated African side. Mexico's on to round 2, despite the fact that they're probably a worse team than the US, and probably played worse at the World Cup. Amazing. Let's just say I won't be rushing out to the local flag store to purchase El Tricolor.

I didn't believe that FIFA had a bias against American soccer, but after the seeding and the officiating, I'm willing to reconsider.

4. Landon Donovan.
Easily the most disappointing US player at the World Cup. My buddy Landon has gone so far as to call him L.Donovan, arguing that he doesn't deserve the first name. I don't know what Donovan's problem was, but the fact is, he played like...um, something Ozzie Guillen would call Jay Mariotti. One has to wonder about Donovan's testicular fortitude. His refusal to transfer to the Premier League, and stay in MLS was first viewed as an admirable move for the good of the league, but at this point, I wonder if he just feels like he doesn't want to play against top talent.

5. Striker, anyone?
The US desperately needs a guy up front that can finish. McBride's good on headers, but that's all. And in any event, he'll probably be too old to be a regular on the next World Cup team. A midfielder who can put a shot on from 25+ yards out would be nice too; there was way too much sagging back by opposing defenses, as they knew the US would try to pass and dribble their way in for a clean shot. Maybe Clint Dempsey will be that world-class striker; he's still quite young, but was perhaps the best US player at this World Cup. Either that or try and sell Thierry Henry on the many benefits of American citizenship.

---

One last thing, ever wonder about those one-name Brazil guys? Well, now you can be a one-name Brazil guy. Philaldo says, bang it here.

Who Knew Free Booze Was So Hard To Give Away?

2006-06-16T08:41:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I know, it's been forever since I posted. Hey, like I always say: it's free entertainment, and sometimes you get what you pay for.

---

Every so often, I get reminded that I'm older than I sometimes think. This week, I had just such an example. Every so often, a couple of our local police forces get together to do sobriety field test training for the new recruits. They get a few human guinea pigs together, serve them booze until the place looks like an Irish Pub during the World Cup, and then have the recruits do field sobriety tests. (Obviously, before starting, they make sure you have a ride home.)

My wife and I volunteered for this, and I was told I could bring a friend, as well. I called six different guys...and everyone had a reason not to go.
"I gotta work late."
"I have a meeting with folks from out of town that I can't miss."
"I promised my grandmother I'd have dinner with her." (Couldn't blame him for this one. Never, EVER break a promise to Grandma.)
"I have an outstanding ticket and don't want to get a hard time from the cops."

It was at this point that I first realized that I'm obviously getting old. If I was 22 (and therefore, most of my friends were around that age), and I said "hey, you want free booze, pizza and an opportunity to know how field sobriety tests work?", guys would have been fighting each other on the front lawn to come along.

Also, I realized that I miss my buddy Pete. Pete, a dentist, could have had an emergency procedure scheduled for 4 pm, and if I'd called him at 3:45 with this offer, he'd have found someone to fill in, lined up a ride and been there at 3:47. Of course, Pete's also 32 going on 23. Here's hoping he sets up his practice in Rochester. And yet I digress.

I'm fairly certain I failed the field sobriety tests, as I overheard comments like, "yup, that's all we need", and "I got between .08 and .10, how about you?" and "sir, please turn around and face the tree, you're under arrest for driving under the influence." Afterwards, one of the officers in charge thanked me for helping out, saying, "you were the most consistent person there; everyone got the same results in each test. Some people were all over the place, so you were a lot of help." I can only assume that I therefore failed each of the seven (I think it was seven, I won't kid you: I lost count) sobriety tests I underwent.

The breathalyzer test I took when I came back confirmed this. I was apparently at .121 when I went outside, and .088 when I came back in.

The second clue that I was getting old was the dull, but noticeable headache I had for most of the next day. But for once, when asked, I could say, "it was for a good cause."

---

So hey, how 'bout them Mets?

I've posted several times about them, and I'm sure you're tired of reading about them, so let me just say this: I don't give a shit. There. Glad we settled that.

It's premature to say they've clinched the NL East, not when the Atlanta Rasputins are still in the division, but it looks pretty darn good right now, especially when the Phillies look like they might have packed it in for the season. The Mets just returned from a 10 game road trip that saw them go 9-1. A 9-1 road trip is always impressive. A 9-1 road trip against three teams that, at the start of the trip, were a combined 95-74, well, that's just about unheard of.

The Mets have the best record in baseball, and there's really not a lot of reason to expect another team in the division to play significantly better, nor for that matter, for the Mets to play much worse. Their two biggest weaknesses, the back of the starting rotation and second base, look to have been stabilized with the callup of Alay Soler, the trade for Orlando Hernandez and the move of Jose Valentin to second. Paul LoDuca will probably play worse in the second half (he's being overused), but Cliff Floyd should continue to improve and counteract that. There's not a better 3-4-5 lineup in the NL, and probably in all of baseball, than Beltran-Delgado-Wright. (Who else boasts TWO legitimate MVP candidates in the power spots?) The rest of the lineup just needs to be decent, and they should be even better than that.

One other note: the last two times the Mets got off to starts this good, they went to the World Series. Good sign.

---

Finally, it's time for Stupid Phil Tricks.

I've gotten into the habit of playing some football on weekends. Man football, with tackles and stiff arms and loud grunting, not namby-pamby "touch football" or "fag football" (the L is omitted to underscore my utmost contempt for this bastardization of America's Game). All in all, it's a good time. Except, it leaves one with some nagging ailments.

Last week, I had a bit of a groin strain. The day before we played football, I ran for awhile to try and work it out. This succeeded only in making it worse. I played hurt, since speed really wasn't my game anyway. Of course, as it turned out, going from "slow" to "ultra slow" was more harmful than I suspected. As an added bonus, my body called my groin pain and raised me a left quadriceps.

I got home, and thought, "you know what works on those ads? Icy Hot." You'd think a smarter man would have learned from a friend's mistake, but not me. Had I stuck to applying it to my quad, I'd likely have been fine. Instead, the "liberal application" called for on the label went just a bit too far north. This was a case where the cure was far worse than the disease. After nearly passing out from the pain (there's that "liberal application" again), and taking a 20 minute ice cold shower, I had returned to normal, which is to say, with a dull pain in my groin and quad. Of course, this was vastly preferable to the searing pain of the liberally applied Icy Hot. Oh yeah, and as an added bonus, my wife complained the rest of the day about how the Icy Hot stinks up the bathroom.

I guess if there's a lesson here, it's this: nothing good comes from the word "liberal". EVER.

Black Clouds and Silver Linings for The Kings of Queens

2006-06-01T09:26:00.000-04:00

No, not that sitcom with Kevin James that's had an inexplicably long run. We're talkin' 'bout the M-E-T-S, METS, METS, METS!

But as an aside, Kevin James has got to be one of the ten luckiest guys in show business (the others are Simon Cowell and 8 porn stars). James seems like a nice enough guy, like the kind of guy with whom you'd sit down and have a beer or six. Seems like he'd blend in with most groups of guys, laughing at the good jokes, making a couple on his own, but 8 (I think) years as the star of a well-known sitcom on a major network? This would be like my buddy Lan getting a sitcom. Sure, he's a fun guy to hang out with and has his moments, but come on.

And speaking of inexplicably long runs, we have this post.

The Mets are, after last night's thrilling 13 inning win, 32-20, atop the NL East by 4.5 games, have the 2nd best record in the NL and the 3rd best in baseball. They have outscored their opponents 257-225, which is the 4th best run differential in the NL. Before last night's win, their pythagorean record indicated they'd be expected to have won 29 games by now, meaning they were just two games ahead of the pace we'd expect with their run differential. So it's not like they're doing it with mirrors.

But there are storm clouds on the horizon. Here are some things that concern me going forward, followed by reasons that those storm clouds might not be so threatening:

1. The Bullpen.
The black cloud: It's good. Really good. It's also really overworked. The brilliant Buster Olney (perhaps the best baseball writer not named Ben Jacobs) reported on the Mets' bullpen workload thus far:

Duaner Sanchez: 25 games, 31.1 innings
On pace for: 79 games, 100 innings
(To be fair, this is probably a touch skewed, since Sanchez worked 3 very efficient innings last night, thus artificially ratcheting up that innings per game ratio.)

Aaron Heilman: 23 games, 29.2 innings
On pace for: 73 games, 94 innings

Darren Oliver: 15 games, 27.2 innings
On pace for: 48 games, 86 innings

Billy Wagner: 23 games, 24 innings
On pace for: 73 games, 76 innings

Wagner's workload probably isn't a big issue; that's in line with what he did in 2002, 2004 and 2005. But Sanchez is on pace to shatter his career high for innings and games, and while Heilman pitched 108 innings last year, it must be noted that he started 7 games, so 94 innings in relief would obviously be a career high in relief innings.

Oliver represents a different problem. In his 28.2 innings, he's posted a 2.60 ERA and a 0.98 WHIP. His peripherals are impressive too; he's averaging 8.13 K/9 IP and 3.57 K/BB. Here's the thing, though: Oliver's not that good a pitcher, not even close. For his career, he's the proud owner of a 5.03 ERA and a 1.53 WHIP. At age 35, it seems highly unlikely that he's suddenly learned to pitch.

The silver lining: Well, of course, as a winning team, one would expect the Mets to pitch more innings. A winning team takes more leads into the 9th inning, and therefore is more likely to pitch in the 9th inning. But more importantly, the Mets have played 9 extra innings games so far. That's a huge number, and it's unlikely that they'll continue having to play games beyond 9 innings at this rate. They've pitched 484.1 innings as a team in 52 games, an average of 9.3 innings per game, by far the highest in the NL. In an extra-inning game, a manager must, by nature, use his best relief pitchers. Rare is the situation where a team will score so many runs in, say, the 11th inning to justify sending a second or third stringer to the hill. One assumes the Mets will play fewer extra inning games as the year goes on, and that as a result, they'll be able to reduce their workload somewhat.

As for Oliver, the hope is that Heath Bell will be able to pick up more and more of the slack if and when Oliver regresses to the mean. Anyone who registered 33 strikeouts against 3 walks in AAA can't be too bad. Bell's given up 12 hits in 7.1 innings so far, but his stuff is good enough (8.59 K/9 IP) that his numbers should end up pretty good.

But any way you slice it, the bullpen cannot continue relying so heavily on Sanchez and Heilman and be effective through October. One hopes Willie Randolph learned a lesson from watching the years when the Yankees worked Rivera, Gordon, and Quantrill to death and ran out of gas in the playoffs.

2. The Back of the Rotation.
The black cloud: Starters not named Pedro Martinez, Tom Glavine or Brian Bannister (more on him in a moment) have combined for the following stats: 25 starts, 125.2 IP, 6.37 ERA, 1.66 WHIP. When you consider the Mets have played 52 games, and gotten THAT kind of starting pitching in nearly half of them, it's a miracle their record is this good. Unless you've got a lineup like the '27 Yankees, you can't win getting starts like that half the time.

Moreover, the injured Bannister's overachieved tremendously. He has a 2.89 ERA and 1.39 WHIP despite absolutely dreadful peripherals. He has just 4.50 K/9 IP and has walked more hitters than he's struck out. Stats don't tell the whole story, of course, but they're darn close. When you walk more hitters than you strike out, that's almost always going to catch up to you at some point. (Unless you're Kirk Reuter, who always had lousy peripherals and yet was a decent starting pitcher for about a decade. Few pitchers have defied the laws of statistics so long and so well. As a fellow Dr. Stats writer so aptly put it, "I will never understand how this guy wins.") If Bannister continues pitching like this when he returns from injury, he's going to get shelled.

The silver lining: Of the Mets' problems, the back of the rotation has received the most publicity, but might actually be the least troubling. For one, Steve Trachsel's a better pitcher than this. His walks aren't a lot higher than usual, and his strikeouts are roughly the same. He's just getting hit a lot more. Fortunately, batting averages fluctuate a lot over the short term, but usually even out. Opposing hitters are batting 60 points over their career average against Trachsel this year. Without any other disturbing trends, that should come down.

The addition of the ageless (literally; no one but Hernandez knows exactly how old he really is) Orlando Hernandez will help too. Ignore his lousy ERA thus far. Hernandez has been blowing hitters away; his K/9 IP this year is 10.48 with an impressive 2.57 K/BB ratio. He was also burned by being a fly-ball pitcher in a park very favorable to fly-ball hitters (The BOB).

Finally, we can probably expect Bannister to pitch better, even though it's hard to see him improving on his ERA and WHIP. He struck out many more hitters in the minors, without walking anyone. It's hard to imagine he's suddenly forgotten how to do that. Of course, he's got to get healthy first.

A rotation of Martinez, Glavine, Trachsel, Hernandez and a healthy Bannister should be just fine.

3. Jose Reyes.
The black cloud: He's got an on base percentage of .312, for crying out loud. How much longer can the Mets stick him in the leadoff spot?!? With a career on base percentage of .305, it MIGHT be time to consider that his inability to get on base isn't a fluke.

The silver lining: He's walked 21 times in 253 plate appearances. That puts him on pace for a respectable 60 walks. That would, of course, exceed his career total entering this year by a fair margin. But Reyes walked a lot in the minors, so it could easily be the case that he's finally seeing big league pitching a little better and a little more patiently. His .250 batting average is lower than we'd expect, too. His career average entering the year was .277 and at the age of 22, we'd expect improvement, not regression at this age. If Reyes improves his average to .280, which doesn't seem unreasonable, his on base percentage becomes a much more respectable .340.

Because of Reyes' speed and the strong hitters behind him, he's scoring almost half the time he's on base (by my count, he's been on base 79 times, and has scored 39 runs). Over a full season, at that pace, that translates to about 10 extra runs if he gets his OBP up to .340. That's an extra win or two...maybe more, given the Mets' penchant for playing 1-run games.

Until Lastings Milledge is ready to play everyday, the only other realistic options for the leadoff spot would be Carlos Beltran and David Wright, and too much of their power would be wasted in that position. In effect, Reyes must get on base more for the Mets' offense to reach its full potential. Otherwise, they're missing a lot of opportunities.

In Case of Emergency...Call Someone Else

2006-05-31T10:06:00.000-04:00

As you might have divined by now, I am more of a practical person than a touchy-feely one. That's why some stupid little things in life bother me. Example: I signed up for the Chase Corporate Challenge this year, which is a 3.5 mile trek for some damn charity or other. When you sign up, they give you this paper number that you're supposed to pin to your shirt. I always figured this was so that, if you died on the course, they could spot the number from a helicopter overhead, cross-reference it and let your boss know you won't be coming into work anymore. On the back of the paper number is stuff like "name", "team captain" and "emergency contact".

Okay.

I've got a big problem with this "emergency contact" thing. If I collapse because of a heart attack, collapsed lung or exploding spleen, I've got one number I want you to call: 911. That's it. We'll sort the rest out later. Don't take the time to call my mother while I'm lying there bleeding from every orifice. This is the kind of touchy-feely crap that bothers me. What, apart from asking if I'm wearing clean underwear, is my mother going to accomplish under the circumstances? If I live, well, I'll call her myself and tell her what happened.

I don't like to answer the phone in the middle of the night if I can avoid it. Not that it rings often, but still, when it does, I like to ignore it. My wife will say, "what if it's an emergency?" To that I respond, "then they should be calling 911." I figure I'm doing the caller a favor by not picking up and taking up precious seconds with idle conversation...

"Hello?"
"Hi Phil."
"Hey. How are you?"
"Not so good. Someone broke into the house, shot me, and now I've got a hole the size of a chicken pot pie in my stomach."
"Bummer."
"Yeah. They took the plasma TV too."
"Damn! I was looking forward to coming over and watching the game tomorrow night!"

It's not important that my mother or my wife or my sister or anyone else knows that I'm dying. It's important that the nearest ambulance driver knows. (In fact, a friend of mine works on an ambulance crew. Maybe I should list her as my emergency contact.) If I die, I'm sure word will travel fast and my loved ones will find out soon enough to easily beat the deadline for filing a wrongful death suit. (Maybe I should list a good personal injury lawyer as my emergency contact.)

The joke's on them, though. When I exercise, I sweat profusely, and that will surely render the ink in which I wrote the identity of my emergency contact illegible.

Post Memorial Day Thoughts on Food, Hoops and TV

2006-05-30T07:43:00.000-04:00

Mmm...Memorial Day barbequing. It doesn't get any better than that. Well, maybe Fourth of July barbequing. On Sunday night, we managed to cook an impressive meat trio of ribs, bratwurst and steak. I will, however, offer a tip for the barbequers (is that even a word?) at home: don't screw around with the brats. My local grocery store has everything under the sun, except, it seems, Johnsonville brats. You can buy, like, 20 different varieties of kosher meat, and about 50 different varieties of goyim meat (I'm sure that's not a correct term; don't bother to correct me, I don't care), but you can't get Johnsonville F'ing Brats. I opted for fresh brats from the deli. Big mistake. Not good. Fortunately, we were all too full from everything else to notice.

Then the guys played the gals at bocce. Joe knocking my wife's ball out of the way was one of the highlights of the weekend. Not because it was a particularly great shot (it was well-executed, to be sure), but because of the shrieks of indignity. "THAT'S CHEATING!!!!", we heard several times over and over, as I literally fell down to the ground laughing. Another classic difference between men and women. If Joe had done that to another guy, the guy would probably say, "damn, nice shot", and make a lame pun about getting his balls knocked out. But when it happens to a woman, that sort of thing is apparently high treason.

---

Speaking of high treason, I feel like what I'm going to suggest amounts to that, but it must be said. The Pistons need to strongly consider moving on without Ben Wallace. This year's playoffs have exposed Wallace's shortcomings like never before. He's a great defender, to be sure, and deserved his Defensive Player of the Year Award. But the NBA is moving to a faster-paced, more offensively-oriented game. The league is moving in a direction where you can't afford to be playing 4 on 5 on offense. Wallace, never a good or even average offensive player, has been almost startlingly inept in the postseason. He's averaging 4.3 points per game and is shooting 22% from the line. I don't care if you're Bill Russell; no defense is good enough to make up for that kind of futility.

I feel terrible for saying that, because Wallace has been the heart and soul of Detroit's recent run. But it looks like, barring a miracle, that run is over. Miami is a better team this year, and before long, Cleveland will wise up and put some talent around LeBron James and become the East's powerhouse. Joe Dumars has NEVER been afraid to make a controversial move for the long-term health of the team. Stackhouse for Hamilton worked. Firing Rick Carlisle worked. The Rasheed Wallace trade worked. (Drafting Darko Milicic...didn't work, but hey, nobody's perfect.) It may be time for one now. To paraphrase Branch Rickey, it's better to trade a player a year too early than a year too late.

Here's what I'm thinking: work out a sign and trade with Wallace, and send him to Minnesota in a deal for Kevin Garnett. Say, Wallace, Rip Hamilton, Dale Davis (not that he has value, but for salary ballast), Orlando's first round pick and one of Detroit's prospects (probably Amir Johnson) for Garnett and Ricky Davis. Garnett wants out of Minnesota, and the T-Wolves would get a pair of all-stars in return, plus move Davis, who they're not exactly enamored of.

Detroit could go with a lineup of Garnett and Rasheed Wallace at the power spots, Prince at the 3, Delfino starting at the 2 and Billups at the point. Delfino's offense hasn't been great, but he should improve with more time, and could develop into a first-rate "glue guy" like Josh Howard. McDyess and Davis would come off the bench and give the second unit some scoring punch. That would address another serious problem the Pistons had this year; only McDyess could be relied upon to come in and score points off the bench. For his many flaws, Davis can certainly fill it up.

Barring a miracle, the Pistons will be finished very soon. (Incidentally, to the Miami Heat fans that might be jumping over from Finheaven and reading this, congrats to your team, and good luck in the finals. I'll say it now since I haven't had much time to update lately. And let me stress that in absolutely no way am I trying to apply a reverse jinx here.) The Heat are simply a better team right now, and it looks more and more to me like Detroit's window, with the team as presently constituted, has closed. Hey, they capitalized on it; one championship and two Finals appearances are nothing to sneeze at. But if they want to do more, it looks like it's time for another bold move.

---

At least the Mets are good. That counts for a lot. First place, 4.5 games up on Atlanta. This just looks like it's going to be one of "those seasons"; the ones I'll be talking about 15 years from now, and boring the shit out of my kids as they wonder what's so great about David Wright (who will then be, like, 37 years old and probbaly winding down a Hall of Fame career), and who the hell guys like Duaner Sanchez and Pedro Martinez were.

---

Further proof that NO ONE knows their audience like The King. If there's a more enjoyable ad on TV than that ad for the Texas Double Whopper, I'm not sure what it is. I enjoy it so much that I've got that song stuck in my head. "I am man, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore...and I'm way too hungry to settle for chick fooooood."

---

I was going to write a season recap of my favorite shows, but this post has gone on long enough. So, that'll be next time.

The Miracle on Asphalt

2006-05-19T11:04:00.000-04:00

Two posts in one day! You lucky dogs, you.

I love to play pickup basketball. Understand that I'm neither black nor athletic nor talented. I am tall, and often, that's all you need to be at least respectable at pickup hoops. Being tall means you usually luck into rebounds, and also means you have long arms, which helps make your shot less blockable (not true in my case; I have a combination of a low release point and a lack of hops), and make you more of a nuisance on defense (which is true). I have precisely two low-post moves: spin left and spin right. I couldn't drive to the hoop if I had a chauffeur.

On defense, I'm almost painfully slow, and can be beaten by a quick step, and thus have to give up a fair number of jumpers because I have to overplay the drive. However, I am both ready and willing to give a hard foul, and try to at least make the other guys pay for a low-post bucket. (I make up for this by seldom calling anything but the most egregious fouls when on offense. I may not play by the rules, but I do play fair.)

We've set up a regular Tuesday night game at a local park. Here's our usual lineup:
Nick - quick, athletic, quality handle, but small and scrawny and can be backed down into the low post at will.
Joe - small but bulky, no handle, not terribly athletic, but a hard-working defender.
Lan - medium height, strong and physical defender, good knowledge of hoops, but not athletic and a streaky, to say the least, shooter.

Our buddy Kev used to join us, but that was before he had a kid, so we don't expect to see him much. Too bad; Kev was probably the best passer among the group.

Last week, I made a tactical error. I invited our friend Ben to join the weekly game. Ben has the fortune of being tall, athletic, has a handle (to be distinguished from "love handles", which I have), and can pass. Basically, he combines the best traits of Nick and myself with none of the weaknesses. As Joe so charitably said after I asked Ben to join us, "you're an idiot, Phil."

We played a 2 on 3 game: Joe and Ben vs. the rest. Since Ben is the best player and Joe the worst, this seemed to be the fairest grouping. Now understand that in 3 on 2, the 3 should win about 99% of the time, because someone will always be open and on defense, someone can always be double-teamed, presumably the better player. If the better player can be double teamed, you should be able to deny him the ball most of the time, particularly here, where a quick defender (Nick) is teamed with a big defender (me).

We lost 8-6. The Miracle on Asphalt was born.

Partly my fault: Nick and Lan had Joe boxed in and about to lose the ball. For reasons yet to be explained, I left Ben to come over and complete the box. Bad move: Joe tossed the ball blindly to an open Ben who laid it in for the W.

I say it was partly my fault, because with a chance to win, Lan decided that was the ideal time to launch one of his trademark 20 foot jumpers. They're trademarked because, with a chance to win, Lan will utter the words "good game" before he shoots, and will miss far more often than not. He tried this on a windy day, with a court on an open plain, and no one having hit a shot outside about 10 feet all day due to rust, lack of talent and the wind. He missed the hoop by a good 12 inches to the left.

(Incidentally, I'd have let all this go if Lan hadn't given me a ration of shit for my boneheaded defense after the game. And you thought I was above using my blog to settle personal scores. Actually...no, you probably didn't. I'm almost shockingly immature at times.)

We made a decision this week to upgrade the talent level of the weekly game. Our buddy Alex will be joining us next time. He played Division III basketball. If nothing else, we've got an even number of regulars now, and two guys with actual talent. Maybe we'll even start keeping stats, like my boy Jason does for his softball league.

Phunwin - 7 reb, 2 ast, 3 stl...8 pts on 4-17 fg.

Or, maybe not.

Take the Mets, Pistons, Mavs...and leave the NHL

2006-05-19T09:24:00.000-04:00

Big, big, biggety-big sports night, and weekend, for the ol' Canadian Badass. (For the few people wondering what the oft-used "CB" moniker stood for, there you go. For the origin of the nickname, you'll have to wait another time...or ask. It's really no big secret, and if you're dying to know, I'll tell you.)

The Subway Series begins tonight. Yes, it's usually overhyped, and yes, I still have my reservations about interleague play, but there's little denying that Mets-Yankees has created a lot of interest in baseball, much like Sox-Cubs (the team from Chicago now gets the "Sox" moniker, where the team from Boston is the "Red Sox"; that's what being defending World Champs does for you) and Angels-Dodgers, and A's-Giants, for empty-headed Left Coasters. (If you're from west of the Nevada state line, you're empty-headed. No offense.)

I will say that I've always had a problem with people from New York who say, "well, I hope they both do well." Or, I suppose more accurately, "Yo Vinny, I really hope the f**kin' Mets and the f**kin' Yanks kick ass, ya know? Let's go grab some f**kin' pizza." For crying out loud, pick a side! Fortunately, most people do pick a side for the Subway Series, only to later return to default status.

Incidentally, I think the Yanks win tonight, and then the Mets take the next two.

---

Meanwhile, the Pistons, inexplicably, are fighting for their playoff lives tonight. The last three games, you could cut the lack of effort with a knife. They are playing without...oh God, here it comes...a sense of urgency. (Yes, go ahead, kill me now. Just jam a steak knife between my ribs and through my heart. I deserve it.) Personally, I think they come out and obliterate the Cavs tonight, but then, I thought they'd do it the last two games, too. And now, they've given the rightful league co-MVP a taste of success, and I'm not sure he's going to roll over. When the other team has the best player in a series, you cannot let them hang around. I mean, letting an inferior team hang around is a bad idea to begin with, but when they've got the best player, it's ultra-dangerous. The team with the best player in a given series can usually win at least one game on that alone. Well now, they've given the team with the best player TWO shots to close them out. That's a great way to end a very promising season far too soon.

And yes, I called LeBron James the rightful co-MVP. I would have voted for Kobe Bryant, but the argument for James was plenty compelling. I'm not going to split hairs between the two. If you favored James for MVP, that's fine. If you favored Steve Nash, well, we've got issues. Actually, YOU'VE got issues. I'm fine.

Meanwhile, the Mavericks, my pick to win the West, have two shots to close out the Spurs, starting tonight. Yes, I picked the Mavs to make the Finals before the playoffs started. I'll even find where I said it if you doubt me. Just seemed like their year. Right now, it sure looks it. Still, you can never, ever, EVER count out the defending champs. I believe very strongly in this principle. And the "best player" theorem, described above, still holds. I don't care if Tim Duncan is playing on one leg right now. If your life was riding on the outcome of a game, and you had to pick between Tim Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki, who would you take? I'd take Duncan, even at 80%. And I bet you would, too. Personally, I think the Mavs have to close it out tonight. If it goes back to the Alamo City for game 7, they're going down. You're not beating Tim Duncan in a game 7 at home. It's not happening. I don't care if someone saws his leg off before the game without anesthetic. He's the successor to Shaq, who was the successor to MJ, who was the successor to Magic and Bird, who were the co-successors to Wilt; the guy who cannot, under any circumstances short of death, be counted out.

So why am I picking the Mavs to win tonight? Like I said, it just feels like their year.

---

Funny thing's been happening at a time when we're having one of the most entertaining baseball seasons in awhile and one of the best NBA playoffs in years; I've had a LOT of people ask me about the NHL playoffs. My stepdad said the other night, "hey, how about the Sabres?"

"What about them?", I responded.

This conversation's sum and substance has been repeated with at least half a dozen different people over the last week and a half.

I've tried to convey this to as many people as possible. (Heck, my wife has even helped.) I've given up on the NHL. I don't care anymore. I couldn't possibly have told you who was in the Western Conference Finals if I hadn't just looked it up. (It's the Oilers and Ducks, if you care.) I mean, I hate to be a poor sport about it, because I guess the Sabres are doing very well and that makes a lot of people happy around here, but I just don't care.

The weird part, though, is this: I hated the Sabres growing up. I was a Bruins fan. Now, I just don't feel anything about the Sabres. I'm completely neutral. If it makes some people I know happy that they're doing well, well, that's nice. I suppose that's proof positive that I've left the NHL behind for good.

---

Last thing to note: blog posting's going to be less frequent in the next few weeks. I'm writing my fantasy football player previews for drstats.com. That takes a fair amount of time, and since I only have so much time to kill tooling around on the internet, the blog loses out for awhile. Sorry. I hope to write up a post-mortem of Season One of Prison Break soon. Maybe I'll get a chance this weekend.

Which Poseidon Character Am I?

2006-05-12T09:41:00.000-04:00

Take the "Which Poseidon character are you?" test at Hell in a Handbag Productions

No wonder the Poseidon capsized, Lt. Frank Drebin was at the helm! Geez, I hope they don't make the same mistake this summer.

(Thanks to Dr. Zoom for another time-killing test.)

Eddie F**kin' Moore

2006-05-11T08:21:00.000-04:00

If you asked my buddy Kev what his favorite NFL draft memory was, I'm fairly certain he'd recount this story:

We were watching the 2003 draft at my apartment. I, shockingly, was drunk as a skunk. The Dolphins, in an equally shocking development, did not have a first round pick. These were the dark days, when Dave Wannstedt and his five brain cells ran the show. The Phins had a few needs, most of them on the offensive side of the ball. The offensive line had been crumbling for a few years at that point, and I was hoping for one of the highly rated tackles or guards available at the #49 spot, their first pick. A wide receiver would have also been fine, since that was probably the biggest weakness of all, as Miami had Chris Chambers and a bunch of guys who were CFL material.

I waited by the TV, drinking beer after beer, for about 7 hours until the Phins were on the clock. Then, the bar along the bottom of the screen flashed "Current Selection".

I moved to the edge of my seat.

"Miami Dolphins - LB Eddie Moore".

I would have been less angry if Kev had dropped trou and taken a dump on my kitchen table. For the next five minutes, a steady stream of expletives polluted the air, broken up occasionally by the words "Eddie" and "Moore", and occasionally "who?".

There were two reactions to this: my cat ran under the bed and Kev laughed hysterically. Had my wife been present, she surely would have provided a third.

See, here's the thing: I'm an avid college football fan and a fairly attentive draftnik. I don't claim to be a draft guru like Mel Kiper, Mike Mayock or the great Keith Box, but I have a general rule that's nearly always worked out well: if a guy is drafted on the first day, and I've never heard of him either from watching college football or in my draft prep, he's a lousy pick.

I didn't know Moore from Adam.

In any event, ever since that moment, this young man, whose only particular sin was managing to catch the attention of a poor head coach and worse talent evaluator, became known as "Eddie F**kin' Moore". I don't believe I've ever actually said the words "Eddie Moore" without the F-verb in the middle. Well, before that last sentence, anyway.

Moore's career in Miami was, to say the least, undistinguished. He ended the season on injured reserve for three straight years in Miami, an impressive feat that not even famed glass men Yatil Green and Brent Smith were able to manage. In 2004, he posted his best season, starting four games, playing 13 in all, and tallying 34 tackles, a forced fumble, and four passes defensed. He also played pretty well on special teams. And of course, ended the season on IR.

He was also, somewhat infamously, 0-1 in bar fights, suffering a first round KO for staring at another guy's lady just a bit too long. Moore claims he was sucker-punched. Others claim he's just a sucker.

Nick Saban, it seems, prefers guys who actually win their bar fights, or at least go out with a blaze of glory; recent draftees Matt Roth and Joe Toledo each required several bouncers, a SWAT team, three pro wrestlers and some off-duty members of the 82nd Airborne to be escorted out of their watering holes. And thus Moore was traded to the New Orleans Saints yesterday, in an impressive demonstration of making a silk's purse from a sow's ear.

Moore was far from a lock to make the roster. The Dolphins are likely to keep 7 linebackers on the roster and Zach Thomas, Channing Crowder, Donnie Spragan, Sedrick Hodge and Derrick Pope were pretty well locked into five spots. There are still some fairly talented linebackers on the free agent market who could be had for a bargain price, and several guys in minicamp that merit a look. All told, Moore's chances of making the team were probably south of 50%.

In return, the Dolphins received LB Courtney Watson. Now, Watson's far from the second coming of Mike Singletary, but he is a competent inside linebacker who gives the Dolphins another option when they want to go 3-4. Considering that Crowder's had injury problems, and Thomas is a bit long in the tooth, depth is crucial there. Watson's a third year pro who has also had injury problems, but has managed to stay on the field long enough to accumulate 92 tackles, three sacks and four passes defensed.

One could take the opportunity to bash Dave Wannstedt, yet again, for overruling Rick Spielman. Spielman, though no great shakes as a GM, at least had the sense to push for WR Anquan Boldin. Although hindsight is 20-20, one wonders exactly how Wannstedt believed Moore over Boldin made any sense. Boldin was higher on Miami's draft board, but Wannstedt felt that outside linebacker was a greater need. In the 2002 season, Dolphin wide receivers that weren't named "Chris Chambers" caught a total of 73 passes for a total of 1011 yards and three touchdowns. James McKnight led that group with 29 catches for 528 yards and two touchdowns. It is hard, if not impossible, to imagine how anything could have exceeded Miami's need for a wide receiver. Well, except maybe a new quarterback, but that particular horse has been beaten, ground up and sent to the glue factory.

As an aside, I firmly believe that after the Moore over Boldin move, Spielman simply threw up his hands and said, "have it your way, Wanny". Perhaps he went out drinking after that, and put on some glasses and a suit with shoulderpads to pass himself off as Howie Long, in an effort to get some chicks. The 2003 draft was probably Miami's worst since the disastrous 1987 draft, where three picks in the first two rounds led to John Bosa, Rick Graf and Scott Schwedes. But that's a discussion for another time.

And so ends the saga of Eddie F**kin' Moore. 34 tackles, 3 trips to IR, 0-1 in bar fights, and several thousand draft day expletives.

Lady Luck, Grilling and Trash-Talk

2006-05-06T00:07:00.000-04:00

So I was watching the Mets game tonight, and Atlanta went up 6-2 in the 7th with one out. I thought to myself, "the hell with it, this game's turning into a rout." I went downstairs to watch Wednesday's episode of "House" (which was TOTALLY awesome, I might add. Any show that incorporates the line "ooh, level 3...should I call Jack Bauer?" gets a double thumbs up from me. And yet, I digress.), then Monday's "Prison Break". Suffice to say, I'm a tad behind on my TV watching.

I watched some more hoops (more on this below) and then went off to bed. Almost as an afterthought, I checked the box scores. "Let's see how bad the Mets lost", I wondered. I moused over to theworldleaderinselfaggrandizement.com...er, ESPN, and saw the following boxscore:

Mets 8
Braves 7
Final - 14 innings

A four-run seventh (immediately after I visited Dr. House), then an exchange of home runs in the 11th, and then, in the 14th inning, a walk, an advance on a passed ball, and a game-winning single.

I'm leaving aside, for the moment, the whole "that's what you get for not watching through the end." Hey, I'd rather not watch and miss a great win than watch and catch a lousy loss. Here's the larger point: pennant-winning teams win those kind of games. 3rd and 4th place teams don't.

Most statheads will tell you that a team's record in 1-run games is really just a reflection of luck. And I happen to agree with that; the average baseball game contains any number of bounces and breaks that could go either way and affect the outcome. One run one way or the other, in the big scheme of things, means little. The Mets are now 7-2 in one-run games. If you're going to win the pennant, you need more than just a good pitching staff and quality lineup. You need a fair amount of luck on your side, and you need a fair number of breaks to go your way.

I don't know if there's some mythical quality that allows some teams to play really well in close games, or if there's some grand karmic force that's actively evening things out (last year, the Mets, in terms of run differential, were every bit as good as the Astros and Phillies, yet were well out of the playoffs), or what. But right now, whatever it is, it's on the Mets' side. They're winning games that you just don't win unless you're a pennant contender.

---

I believe that, last night, I qualified for some higher plane of manhood. I used an open flame to cook a whole meal. Usually, when one cooks on the grill, meat goes on the grill, with the starch and vegetable being cooked on the oven. Not for me. Steak, seasoned potatoes and corn on the cob, all grilled to perfection. If I could figure out a dessert to cook on the grill, I might never use the oven again.

---

I caught the end of the Cavs-Wizards game last night. Gilbert Arenas (an 82% free throw shooter) went to the line and clanked the first of two free throws. Then, LeBron James touched him on the arm and said something to him as he walked by. I'm not a lip-reader, and I don't know what LeBron said, but if he pulled a Scottie Pippen to Arenas' Karl Malone, I mean, that's GOT to forgive a lot of wrongs, doesn't it? How awesome would that be if James, like Pippen, talked smack to Arenas, got him off his game and caused him to clank that second free throw?

Arenas, of course, like Malone in Game 1 of the 1997 Finals, bricked both free throws, giving the Cavs the chance for the win, and they cashed in.

Draft Day Diary 2006

2006-04-30T16:32:00.000-04:00

Here it is, the post you've all been waiting for. Well, not all, but some. Or a few. Okay, Kev, Nick and Lan.

The NBA MVP Vote, Phil's Big Weekend, and Prison Break

2006-04-28T09:36:00.000-04:00

I'm a bit bothered about this year's MVP vote. Bill Simmons makes this argument a lot, and I think it's a very important one: in voting for NBA MVP, one criteria should be "if you were choosing sides for a pick-up game, and your life was on the line, who would you pick?"

Last year, if you had to choose sides for a pick-up game, would you take Nash or Shaq? If you're taking Nash, well, I'm betting my hous and my car on my team. This year, the same thing applies. If you're taking Nash over Kobe or LBJ, you've obviously lost it. I could live with LeBron over Kobe for MVP. I'd vote for Kobe, if I had a vote, but I can at least see the logic with LeBron. But Nash? There's a good argument that he wasn't even the best POINT GUARD in the NBA this year, let alone most valuable player. Chauncey Billups outplayed him every time they got together.

The argument you always hear from Suns fans is this: "well, if Kobe was on the Suns, they wouldn't win as many games". Absolutely true, they wouldn't. But then, the Lakers also wouldn't win as many games if you swapped Kobe with Nash. Each team is built a certain way. The Lakers have a front office that hasn't drafted a decent player since they took Kobe Bryant with the 13th pick of the draft and hasn't made a positive trade since he traded Vlade Divac for that same pick. The Lakers have exactly two players on their team that would be considered above average: Bryant and Lamar Odom. No one else on their team would even make the 8 or 9 man rotation for most other playoff teams, apart from maybe Kwame Brown, whose defense has come a long way. Little surprise then that Kobe Bryant shoots the ball 30+ times a game and scores a ton. He HAS to. Take away Bryant, and the Lakers are at best a 20 win team. With him, they're tied 1-1 in the playoffs with one of the best teams in the NBA.

The Suns opted to set up a fast-breaking team full of guys who: a. hadn't reached their full potential with other teams, and b. who could play, but had a hard time creating their own shot. Those two things would seem to go together, actually. If anything, this is testament more to Bryan Colangelo's powers than Steve Nash's. Colangelo successfully bought low with a lot of valuable guys, knowing that all they needed was a guy like Nash to create shots for them.

Are we REALLY supposed to believe that Boris Diaw was a train wreck of a basketball player and that Steve Nash's mere presence turned him into one of the 30 best players in the league? (As an aside, as crazy as that sounds, I believe it's true. I don't believe I could find 30 players I'd take over Diaw right now.) Or does it make more sense to believe that Diaw was a good player who had a hard time getting PT because he couldn't create his own shot, and was stuck in Atlanta, a team that had a whole bunch of guys who did pretty much the same thing (which did not include passing the damn ball), and so Diaw struggled in that environment?

Same thing with James Jones, Raja Bell and Tim Thomas. All those guys had talent, all of them run the floor well, and none of them is a particularly aggressive offensive player who can make a move and hurt a defense on their own. They need a guy like Steve Nash. And lo and behold, their games were perfectly suited to this team. This was not an accident; this was the design of Bryan Colangelo!

Steve Nash didn't take a team of nobodies and turn them into top-notch role players. Bryan Colangelo put together a team of guys that were missing only a big-time, ball-distributing point guard to be successful. And Nash is getting all the credit.

Voters don't like to give it to the easy choice. If they did, Michael Jordan would have about a dozen MVPs, and Shaquille O'Neal would have at least six. Look at the year Karl Malone won it over MJ. If you had to pick sides for a pick-up game with your life on the line, who would you pick: Malone or MJ? 9 out of 10 people would take MJ, and the 10th obviously suffers from brain damage. But they gave it to Malone because he was a trendy pick and they got tired of giving it to Jordan. Incidentally, that was the worst thing that could have happened to StocktontoMalone. Jordan was one of the most competitive and spiteful athletes ever, and his thirst for vengeance was palpable. He got it in the Finals, as you probably know.

The same thing could be happening this year. Bryant desperately wants to Be Like Mike, and has already taken over one game in the Suns-Lakers series, with the teams going back to Los Angeles for the next two. All I can say to Suns fans and Nash sympathizers is this: be careful what you wish for.

---

Big weekend for Phil. My buddy Pete, fellow arch-conservative, lover of beer and Hellraiser in Chief, is coming to visit and I've obtained a weekend pass from the warden. Moreover, the NFL draft begins on Saturday (only one of the five best sports days of the year, and yes, that's a future post), the NASCAR race at Talladega (one of my favorite tracks) is Sunday, and the Mets are playing the hated Braves this weekend. My wife's only words to me on the subject? "If you drink too much, please call a cab." That's reason # 531 I love that woman.

---

I was afraid this would happen, and here we are. Prison Break has slowly but surely degenerated into yet another FOX show about the evil shadow government. The premise of the show, the part that (I believe) sucked everyone in, was the idea about Michael Schofield knowing exactly how to break out of the prison, using all sorts of clever things at his disposal and doing all this to save his brother's life. Well, now we've got The Company, which apparently runs everything in the U.S., pulling the strings, and choosing a new president and what not. For crying out loud, folks, if you want to do it right, call up David Duchovny and my girl Gillian Anderson. Believe me, they're available.

That's not the only way the show's going downhill. We've got a conspiracy to break out so huge that it's amazing that only NOW have the guards found out about it. In a totally unrelated note, we've got main characters that are so dumb as to defy description; Schofield telling the prison snitch about the escape was merely the icing on the cake. Don't get me started about the lady doctor with a heart of gold and a brain of oatmeal, the chief of the guards with the investigative prowess of a beer-stained cocktail napkin, or the black dude (I can't remember his name) who's somehow managed to convince his wife that he's a soldier in Iraq. We've got plot holes so gaping that you could drive a batallion of M1A1 Abrams tanks through them. And oh yeah, the acting is abysmal. The writing is clever in parts (I love the rejoinder from the poker game last week when the black guy raised and the Mexican guy got pissed: "you want welfare? Vote Democrat."), but this show is absolutely limping to the season finale.

I'm still watching, of course. There's enough about the show that's redeemable. The premise is still fun, Schofield and the lady doctor are impossible not to like, and some of the acting is good. The guy who plays T-Bag is excellent, though they've toned down his sinister side, which is a shame. Stacy Keach is a pro, and Wade Williams (the head guard) is good, too. And Schofield's "wife" is insanely hot, though it appears she's no longer going to be making appearances on the show.

Part of the mistake was they started too early. The season premiere was, I believe, back in August. Maybe they had only written half the story arc by that point and needed the time to write and film the rest. It wouldn't surprise me in the least; it's almost like an entirely different show at this point. I can't see how they turn this into a second season, but FOX has so many crappy shows out right now that they'll probably try. They'll sell it as "a night of action, on FOX!" And then, once ratings for 24 begin to suffer, because the lead-in drags so badly, they'll pull the plug.

With that, I wish you an absolutely phenomenal weekend.

The Lunchtime Dragon

2006-04-24T18:04:00.000-04:00

I like to think of myself as a smart person. By "smart", I don't mean smart as in "smart-assed" (though that's often true), or smart in the way that high school teachers say that "every student is smart in their own way" when they're on a "build self-esteem" kick, as opposed to, say, a "teach math" kick. No, I consider myself to be possessed of above-average intelligence and possessed of a capacity to learn things quickly. (Not to mention outrageously handsome, eminently likeable and humble, too.)

Yet, I make some of the same mistakes over and over. For instance, I enjoy Chinese food. I eat it, enjoy it, but then, 2 hours later, wonder, "why on earth did I eat that?" Second only to McDonald's (which I've successfully eliminated from my diet), Chinese leaves both the worst and longest-lasting aftertaste of any food. Grease, MSG, garlic, and God-only-knows what other spices linger on your tongue, between your teeth, in your throat and gurgle up from your belly for several hours. I call this the "Lunchtime Dragon".

The Lunchtime Dragon is impervious to gum, cough drops and breath mints, and most of us don't carry (at lunchtime, anyway) the necessary combination of floss, toothpaste, toothbrush and listerine to play St. George to this foul beast. (That's why it's the Lunchtime Dragon; if you eat it for dinner, you're going to bed soon anyway, and presumably using all those implements. Unless you're British.)

Furthermore, the Lunchtime Dragon is a double-entendre. Chinese food leads to an incurable case of "Dragon Ass" in the afternoon; tiredness sets in around 2 to 3 hours after consumption.

The residual guilt from eating roughly 40 grams of fat takes much less time. In my case, it normally sets in right after I drive past a Subway on my way back to work. "Why the hell didn't I eat there? It's healthier, won't make me tired, and won't lead to an awful aftertaste!"

So why do I eat the stuff for lunch on a semi-regular basis? I honestly have no idea. Worst of all, I'll probably do it again soon.

Screwed by the Trivia Nazis

2006-04-23T10:10:00.000-04:00

Twice in the last couple days I've been burned, unjustly, by a trivia question.

I usually eat oatmeal for breakfast. On the front of the packet is a trivia question, with the answer on the back. The trivia question was "what is the largest city in the largest state in the U.S.?"

I thought about it and said, "Los Angeles, California". "Largest city" always means largest by population, and largest state often means the same.

I flipped the packet over and it said, "Anchorage, Alaska".

"Bullshit!" I exclaimed, to no one in particular. My answer was right on not just one, but two levels. First, Los Angeles is obviously the largest city in California by population, and it is also, I believe, the largest in terms of square area (according to my limited research; I was unable to find a list that conclusively confirmed this). Thus, it appears that by any measure, Los Angeles is the largest city in California.

However, to arrive at the answer "Anchorage, Alaska", one has to assume that "largest state" means largest by size, while "largest city" means largest by population. That seems, to me, logically inconsistent. Indeed, Anchorage is not the largest city in Alaska by area, that distinction goes to Sitka. If the answer had been "Sitka, Alaska", I could have lived with that; at least the term "largest" would have been consistent. But it seems to me that you can't give the term one meaning, then (without explanation) give it a completely different one just a few words later.

The second one that burned me was on last night's Mets-Padres game on SNY. The question was "what was the last 14+ inning game the Mets won on the road?" The announcer noted that the Mets had lost an incredible 14 straight 14+ inning road games (the most recent coming the night before). I said, "1986 NLCS, Game 6."

The answer was "Mets vs. Reds, July 22, 1986."

Now, the NLCS is traditionally played in October. The last time I checked, October came AFTER July. Thus, the Mets won game 6 of the NLCS that year AFTER July 22.

Fortunately, the announcer was good enough to say, somewhat apologetically (since I'm guessing about 90% of the people who answered guessed precisely as I did), "we should note that the Mets won game 6 of the NLCS that year on the road in 16 innings." I can accept this a little easier since, 1. he acknowledged that I was right, in a way, and 2. postseason games are usually not counted for the purposes of record keeping; rather, postseason games are considered to set postseason records.

I have yet to write a letter to the company that produces my oatmeal, but I just might do that.

We Have a Rodent Problem

2006-04-14T09:06:00.000-04:00

We have a rodent problem, it seems.

It started innocently enough, when my wife noted that the squirrels around our house seemed to be a bit more aggressive than the average bushy-tailed, bug-eyed, nut-hoarding rats that you usually see. I came home the other day and saw a hole in the top of my garbage can. I thought, "that looks an awful lot like a squirrel chewed through it." It seemed improbable, however, that a squirrel would chew through plastic roughly 1/4" thick.

Well, this morning, I went out to my car. I heard rustling in the garbage can and saw some paper towels strewn on the ground. I opened the garbage can, and there I saw the offender: a squirrel, looking pretty much like every other squirrel on the planet, perched upon a now shredded trash bag, staring up at me as if to say, "do you mind? I'm trying to rummage through your trash."

We've historically had a problem with squirrels in my family. When I was a little kid, growing up in the wilderness of Upstate New York, we had red squirrels. Red squirrels are much more aggressive and ill-tempered than your average gray squirrel, and generally make life miserable for other local animals. Thus, my father gave me a BB gun and a green light to fire at will. He instructed me to set up in a sniper position on the porch to take care of the problem, which I did, with what was surely an impressive display of marksmanship for an 8 year old.

Some years before that, a squirrel managed to get into our house early in the morning. The dog was going crazy, chasing after it and breaking things. My mother, of course, was in a state of panic. My father grabbed a trash can and trapped the squirrel inside. He then grabbed a pistol and threw on a pair of boots to take the rodent outside to meet its maker.

Now picture, if you will, this spectacle: a grown man, outside, in his skivvies, with a pair of boots, a pistol, and a squirrel trapped in a trash can, with a German shepherd snarling and barking inside, straining to get out. My dad opened the trash can, aimed the pistol, and then a neighbor drove by and beeped (the standard redneck way of saying "Hi!"), apparently unfazed. Obviously, he knew my dad well enough. My dad turned and waved, putting common courtesy ahead of his dislike for this troublesome squirrel, and the squirrel seized the opportunity. It jumped out of the trash can and ran for its life. My dad fired off a full magazine, never hitting the rodent. Of course, we're pretty sure it never came back.

Back to the present time, I looked at this squirrel who was impatient at my presence and apparently desirious of further tearing through my trash. I do not own a pistol (thanks, wife), and even if I did, it's illegal to discharge firearms in our town (thanks, pinko liberals). Since I am untrained in any other way of getting rid of a squirrel, I closed the lid and resolved to get a new trash can, and possibly some rat poison. A moment later he climbed out and scurried off, having had his fill of my garbage for the time being. The sins of the father, it seems, shall be visited upon the son.

---

Some guy, and this guy is my new hero, took the time to reenact the bottom of the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series on Nintendo's RBI Baseball. If you haven't seen it yet, it's well worth your time. Here's the link.

Talkin' Baseball...

2006-04-13T10:41:00.000-04:00

...specifically Mets baseball.

Before getting too far into that, and thus losing the attention of the 3 or 4 people who visit here, I should note that Chuck Klosterman has a phenomenal article on Barry Bonds. Even if you're not a big baseball fan, it's worth 5 minutes of your time to read it. Great stuff.

(Of course, the biggest drawback to Klosterman is that ESPN essentially views him as an alternative to Bill Simmons, so they have Klosterman pen a couple articles every time The Sports Guy decides to take a week off...which is often. Then again, if I had a mostly stay-at-home job and a newborn baby, I suppose my work schedule would be sporadic too, so who am I to criticize someone who's provided me hundreds of hours of free entertainment? Maybe I should just get off my high horse and get on with the post.)

Onto the Mets. I'm very excited about Flushing's Finest this season. The Mets are 6-1 and are atop the NL East by 3 games and have the best record in the majors. The 6-1 start is also their best since 1985, my first year as a Mets fan. Unlike in many previous seasons, where the Mets would make a couple splashy acquisitions and expect to contend, they're finally building a real baseball team. The Mets had three huge holes last season, and two lesser areas of concern. We'll get to those in a moment.

The Mets won 83 games last year, and in terms of run differential, were nearly a identical team to the NL champion Astros and the 88 win Phillies. The run differentials went like this: Mets +74, Phillies +81, Astros +84. Those 10 runs would, translate to a difference of 1 win over a 162 game season. In terms of run differential, the Mets were good enough to win 90 games. Instead, they won 83. This may suggest any number of things: bad luck, or an inability to win close games, or perhaps an inconsistent offense that explodes at times and sputters others.

Luck, of course, is not something that can be changed. However, GM Omar Minaya saw some things that could be addressed. The Mets had the worst production from their first basemen in the NL last year. It's never good to be the worst at anything, but when first base, a position traditionally relied upon for a lot of runs, is a hole, you're going to have problems. In fact, you might well see exactly the sort of inconsistent offense we saw from the Mets last year. So, they went out and got Carlos Delgado, one of the two or three best first base sluggers in the NL. With Delgado around, and the expected turnaround from Carlos Beltran and the expected improvement of David Wright, one would expect the Mets' offense to be significantly more potent this year. And indeed, it has been.

The other big weakness that was addressed was closer. Braden Looper blew a lot of games last season; another factor in the team underperforming vis-a-vis its run differential. So they signed Billy Wagner, one of the two or three best closers in the NL. Wagner has pitched well so far, and hasn't really hit his stride yet, as his velocity is recovering from a finger injury.

Second base was a big weakness as well. The Mets have Anderson Hernandez playing there now. Hernandez isn't much with the bat, but he's not significantly worse than incumbent Kaz Matsui, and he's been excellent with the glove, which Matsui certainly was not. It's better to have a good-field, no-hit second baseman than a no-field, no-hit second baseman.

Basically, the Mets had what should have been a 90 win team, and made huge upgrades at two spots, and a small upgrade at a third. In a vacuum, that could easily be a 100 win team.

The only concern I have right now is starting pitching. The Mets got a virtuoso performance from Pedro Martinez last year (who won 15 games and could have easily won 20), and got the old Tom Glavine in the second half. Can those guys be counted on to do it again, despite their age? What about the completely unpredictable Victor Zambrano? Or the similarly ancient Steve Trachsel? The fifth spot in the rotation is being held by a rookie who's pitching lights-out thus far.

The rest of the National League is not strong; the Braves have been falling apart, ditto the Dodgers. The Cubs can't stay healthy either. Right now, the Mets and Cardinals look like the class of the NL. If the Mets can either hold together the existing rotation, or acquire another starter, there's no reason this team can't win the National League.

The Complete Military History of France

2006-04-10T12:47:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Stacy for sending this along and to albinoblacksheep.com for this marvelous work in progress. Come on, we know France has at least a few catastrophic defeats before the entire country collapses under the weight of its own entitlement system.

Gallic Wars- Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2000 years of French history, France is conquered by of all things, an Italian. [Or at ths time in history, a Roman -ed.]

Moors in Spain- Lost.
Even with Charlemagne leading them against an enemy living in a hostile land, French are unable to make much progress. Hide behind Pyrennes until the modern day.

Norse invasions- Lost.
After having their way with the French for 70 years, the Norse are bribed by a French King named Charles the Simple (really!) who gave them Normandy in return for peace. Normans proceed to become just about the only positive military bonus in France's [favour] for next 500 years.

Albigenses Crusade- French massacared by French.
When asked how to differentiate a heretic from the faithful, response was "Kill them all. God will know His own." Lesson: French are badasses when fighting unarmed men, women and children.

Hundred Years War-Mostly lost, saved at last by female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare; "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman." Sainted.

Italian Wars- Lost. France becomes the first and only country to ever lose two wars when fighting Italians.

Wars of Religion- France goes 0-5-4 against the Huguenots

India- British were far more charming then French, ended up victors. Therefore the British are well known for their tea, and the French for their whine (er, wine...). Ensures 200 years of bad teeth in England.

Thirty Years War- France is technically not a participant, but manages to get invaded anyway. Claims a tie on the basis that eventually the other participants started ignoring her.

War of Revolution- Tied. Frenchmen take to wearing red flowerpots as chapeaux.

The Dutch War- Tied

War of the Augsburg League/King William's War/French and Indian War- Lost, but claimed as a tie. Three ties in a row induces deluded Frogophiles the world over to label the period as the height of French military power.

Seven year War- Lost. After getting hammered by Frederick the Great of Prussia (yep, the Germans again) at Rossbach, the French were held off for the remainder of the War by Frederick of Brunswick and a hodge-podge army including some Brits. War also saw France kicked out of Canada (Wolfe at Quebec) and India (Clive at Plassey).

War of the Spanish Succession- Lost. The War also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved every since.

American Revolution- In a move that will become quite familiar to future Americans, France claims a win even though the English colonists saw far more action. This is later known as "de Gaulle Syndrome", and leads to the Second Rule of French Warfare; "France only wins when America does most of the fighting."

Haiti- Lost. French defeated by rebellion after sacrificing 4,000 Poles to yellow fever. Shows another rule of French warfare; when in doubt, send an ally.

French Revolution- Won, primarily due the fact that the opponent was also French.

Quasi-War with U.S.- Lost. French privateers (semi-legal pirates) attack U.S. shipping. U.S. fights France at sea for 3 years; French eventually cave; sets precedent for next 200 years of Franco-American relations.

The Napoleonic Wars- Lost. Temporary victories (remember the First Rule!) due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for a British footwear designer. Should be noted that the Grand Armee was largely (~%50) composed of non-Frenchmen after 1804 or so. Mainly disgruntled minorities and anti-monarchists. Not surprisingly, these performed better than the French on many occasions.

Barbary Wars- Lost. Pirates in North Africa continually harass European shipping in Meditteranean. France's solution: pay them to leave us alone. America's solution: kick their asses ("the Shores of Tripoli"). [America's] first overseas victories, won 1801-1815.

Mexico- Lost. France attempts to take advantage of Mexico's weakness following its thorough thrashing by the U.S. 20 years earlier ("Halls of Montezuma"). Not surprisingly, the only unit to distinguish itself is the French Foreign Legion (consisting of, by definition, non-Frenchmen). Booted out of the country a little over a year after arrival.

The Franco-Prussian War- Lost. Germany first plays the role of drunk Frat boy to France's ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.

Panama jungles- Lost. No one but nature to fight, France still loses; canal is eventually built by the U.S. 1904-1914.

World War I- Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States [Entering the war late -ed.]. Thousands of French women find out what it's like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn't call her "Fraulein." Sadly, widespread use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French bloodline.

World War II- Lost. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain just as they finish learning the Horst Wessel Song. Also should be noted that France attempted to hide behind the Maginot line, sticking their head in the sand and pretending that the Germans would enter France that way. By doing so, the Germans would have been breaking with their traditional route of invading France, entering through Belgium (Napoleonic Wars, Franco-Prussian War, World War I, etc.). French ignored this though, and put all their effort into these defenses.

War in Indochina- Lost. French forces plead sickness; take to bed with the Dien Bien Flu

Algerian Rebellion- Lost. Loss marks the first defeat of a western army by a Non-Turkic Muslim force since the Crusades, and produces the First Rule of Muslim Warfare; "We can always beat the French." This rule is identical to the First Rules of the Italians, Russians, Germans, English, Dutch, Spanish, Vietnamese and Esquimaux. According to Richard Mann, the French consider the departure of the French from Algeria in 1962-63, after 130 years on colonialism, as a French victory and especially consider C. de Gaulle as a hero for 'leading' said victory over the unwilling French public who were very much against the departure. This ended their colonialism. About 2 million ungrateful Algerians lost their lives in this shoddy affair.

War on Terrorism- France, keeping in mind its recent history, surrenders to Germans and Muslims just to be safe. Attempts to surrender to Vietnamese ambassador fail after he takes refuge in a McDonald's.

The question for any country silly enough to count on the French should not be "Can we count on the French?", but rather "How long until France collapses?"

"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. All you do is leave behind a lot of noisy baggage."

Or, better still, the quote from the Wall Street Journal: "They're there when they need you."

Why I Love My Wife, Reason #283

2006-04-07T22:14:00.000-04:00

Every so often, I'm reminded that I hit the jackpot when choosing a spouse.

My wife and I were discussing plans for our anniversary, which is in August. In an offhand, unrelated sort of way (seriously), I mentioned the fact that I'd like to go to Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Cincinnati during a week during a summer. As you may or may not know, I have a lifetime goal of visiting every MLB franchise's ballpark at some point. The Pirates, Indians and Reds are all still on the list.

My wife said, "well, why don't we do that this summer?"

Flabbergasted, I responded, "well, I didn't necessarily mean this summer. I know you want to do something nice for our anniversary."

She responded, "that can be our anniversary trip. I'd like to go on a roadtrip with you, I think it would be lots of fun."

I'd write more, but I'm presently in the ICU after what the doctors called a "minor myocardial infarction".

NFL Teams Moving, and My New Pet Peeve

2006-04-07T09:54:00.000-04:00

More on the possibility of moving am NFL team to Los Angeles, and my odds on the possible scenarios...

Buffalo Bills - 3:2
The odds would be even lower than that, but there's recent talk that Rochester billionaire Tom Golisano will buy the team. I hope he does; Buffalo shouldn't lose its team. Otherwise, this is easily the odds on favorite. Really old owner without significant community ties, depressed economy, low revenue stream, stadium lease that can be broken without significant cost.

New Orleans Saints - 4:1
This SHOULD be the team to move. The city was barely viable to begin with. Hopefully the political pressure to keep the team in New Orleans will die down before too long. Exactly why there's so much pressure to keep a team in one city, that cannot support their team, because of a natural disaster, and why there's virtually no pressure to keep a team in another city, that can support it, that's had an absolutely miserable last 100 years is beyond me. Ah, hypocrisy.

No Team in LA - 6:1
The NFL seems intent on putting a team in Los Angeles, but we've heard that before. The people there who have been pushing for a team have repeatedly failed to get their act together...why expect them to now?

Jacksonville Jaguars - 7:1
The Jags are good, yet never fill the stadium, and don't have a particularly large and/or wealthy community to draw upon. There's also no history to keep the team there, for that matter.

San Diego Chargers - 12:1
They were in LA once before, and they almost moved there not too long ago, why not a return trip? Still, it seems they're pretty happy in San Diego, and will be more so once a new stadium gets built, which it will, I think.

Minnesota Vikings - 20:1
They hate the Metrodome, but I think they're seriously planning a new, outdoor stadium for the Vikes. New stadiums = happy owners.

The Field - 15:1
No one else stands out as a possible candidate, now that the Chiefs and Cardinals have stadium modifications in the works. The Seahawks would have been (they actually DID move to LA for a few days several years ago), but they also got a new stadium. But, things can change. Who knows, maybe Al Davis could drag the Raiders back there...again.

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I hate Daylight Savings Time. What kind of idiots decided upon this, anyway? The whole concept never made a lick of sense to me. Why set our clocks back an hour in October, and then ahead an hour in April? It's utterly pointless.

As you can tell, this whole thing completely discombobulates me.

I'm an early riser. Always have been. Yet every year, for a couple weeks after we set the clocks ahead, my internal clock is shot. Usually, when the alarm goes off at 6:30, I'm out of bed, and in the shower right away. But after the clocks get set ahead, I'm still tired, so I hit the snooze button a couple times. This leads to me being grumpy because now I'm behind schedule. That, in turn, leads to me driving faster and more aggressively to work, because I don't like to be late (though it should be noted that "late" is a relative term here, since I'm usually there by 7:30). That, in turn, leads to more grumpiness.

So we can add another list of things to do to my "When I'm Czar Of The World" List: abolish the whole idiotic idea of Daylight Savings Time.

Save The Bills...Seriously

2006-04-05T13:42:00.000-04:00

Your humble scribe has no love for the Buffalo Bills. None. Zilch. If the Bills didn't win another game for the next decade, I'd be a happy guy. Jimmy Johnson's first season as Miami's head coach was, in my estimation at the time, a success, despite the unspectacular 8-8 record, since he managed two wins over Buffalo.

To paraphrase the (in)famous words of our 37th president, "you won't have the Buffalo Bills to kick around anymore." At least it looks like we won't.

And I don't like it one bit.

I may hate the Bills, but I also respect their history, and more importantly, I realize how much they mean to the people of Western New York, and Buffalo in particular. Erie County has been wrestling with a budget deficit that makes the federal government look fiscally responsible by comparison. This all comes on the heels of a 20th century that could have arguably been considered the worst of any major American city. There is not a whole lot that people in Buffalo have to rally around; the Bills are one of the few things in which the locals can take honest-to-goodness civic pride. They are, for better or worse, a rallying point for a depressed community.

Last week, profootballtalk.com, a site with tons of quality (and usually credible) gossip about the NFL fingered the Bills as the franchise perhaps most likely to move to Los Angeles, given the NFL's mania for placing a team in the Republic's second-largest city. The site quoted an NFL insider who noted a few very salient points:
1. Ralph Wilson is ancient.
2. The team will almost certainly be sold when Wilson dies.
3. The Bills have one of the smallest revenue streams in the NFL, and possibly the lowest capacity for making money outside ticket sales.
4. The economy in Erie County is in the tank, which probably ties in with #3.
5. The team's stadium lease is not especially prohibitive of departure.

ESPN has now picked up the story, noting that Wilson met with Gov. Pataki and expressed concerns about the team's long-term outlook. Loosely translated, that means "we need public money, or we're outta here." Pataki has no particular incentive to help; first, he's not running for re-election, and second, even if he was, Erie County is blue and turning dark blue given the total ineptitude of Republican County Exec Joel "Emperor Nero" Giambra. Erie County voted against Pataki all three times he ran for governor. (If the team were in Rochester or Syracuse, maybe they'd have a shot at state support...but I digress.)

PFT also mentioned a few other candidates to move to Los Angeles: Kansas City, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Minnesota and San Diego. The Chiefs can now be crossed off the list, as they've managed to get a ton of money from Jackson County, MO for stadium renovations. I believe Minnesota will cease to be a candidate sooner than later, as there have been rumblings about a new stadium for the Vikings. Those will probably pick up with the hated Red McCombs gone from the owners' box. That leaves San Diego, Jacksonville, New Orleans, and Buffalo as likely candidates for a move to LA.

Understand, the NFL has wanted to move back to LA for some time. They desperately wanted to give the league's 32nd team to the City of Angels, but the various competing ownership groups couldn't get their acts together, and so Houston, with the well-organized Bob McNair in charge, won out. From a fiscal point of view, it makes sense. There's too much money to be made in LA for it to be ignored as a venue. It's the nation's second-largest TV market. Los Angeles has more people (and therefore more potential fans with open wallets) than Buffalo, New Orleans, San Diego and Jacksonville combined.

On a "fan loyalty" scale, Buffalo would surely come in well ahead of Los Angeles (or, for that matter, the other three cities that might lose their team), but on an "available cash" scale, it's not even close. Wilson knows that too, and surely knows that he could sell the team for nearly a billion dollars, given the current price for an NFL franchise. He reportedly threatened to move the team to Toronto a few years ago before he got Erie County to cut him a sweetheart lease, and his attachment to Buffalo has long been considered tenuous at best by many locals. Wilson, it should be noted, is from Detroit, which I don't hold against him, but Buffalonians are among the most bizarrely provincial city dwellers in the country.

The real target for a move should be New Orleans, a city that was barely economically viable for the NFL even before it was hit by Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, NFL owners are just politically sensitive enough to avoid "stealing the Saints", even if all the die-hard Saints fans could probably split a large pizza and a 12-pack of beer in my basement, but not politically sensitive enough to avoid taking a team from a city that's been kicked around for most of the last 100 years and doesn't have much left but its pro football team to distinguish it from Flint, Michigan.

That hardly seems fair, but that's the direction of the NFL now. Fewer old-line owners respect the value of tradition, and there are more owners who, driven by both necessity and desire, want the league and its members to be cash cows. I don't necessarily blame them; if you've begged, borrowed and saved enough to piece together the $800+ million it costs for an NFL franchise, you're certainly entitled to some return on investment. But still, it's not necessarily a pleasant feeling, especially when a team that means a lot to your little corner of the world is in the crosshairs of that mercenary attitude.

The ultimate answer to this, as my friend Joe once pointed out, would be public ownership. The only reason the Green Bay Packers haven't been moved elsewhere is because the people of Green Bay, WI own the team. Unfortunately, in today's NFL, public ownership is impractical. For one, franchises are simply too expensive. Wilson could probably sell the Bills for $850 million. A big-time business mogul would scoff at that; there's no way he could make that money back in a team based in Buffalo. Rochester's Tom Golisano bought the Sabres, but he also bought the team from a bankrupt company at a bargain price. Where would a group of small investors, i.e. a few hundred residents of Buffalo, Rochester, Niagara Falls and Syracuse, come up with that money? Apart from the money issue, ownership structure would be a nightmare. How would it be organized? Would the NFL seriously allow such an ownership structure, given that most ownership efforts that don't have one majority shareholder fail miserably? Look at what happened with the NBA's Atlanta Hawks for one fine example.

There will almost certainly be an NFL team in Los Angeles by the end of the decade. Right now, it would seem there's a good chance that team will be Buffalo.

Racing, Hoops, "The Media" and "The Unit"

2006-03-27T13:42:00.000-05:00

A lot of people piss and moan about racing. "Aw, it's just driving in circles" is the usual response. Fine; it's not everyone's cup of tea, but that's a pretty stupid line of reasoning. If you think about it, most sports sound inane at their most basic levels. Cases in point...

Football - run with a ball until hit. Get up and do it again.
Track - run in circles.
Baseball - hit ball with stick. Run.
Golf - hit ball with stick. Walk.
Hockey - chase rubber disk, on ice, with skates and try to put the rubber disk into a net.
Basketball - bounce a ball, try to put the ball into a net.
Women's basketball - bounce a ball, try to put the ball into a net, complain about how you don't get enough attention for doing this.

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This has been probably the best NCAA tournament I can remember. Of course, I enjoyed the 2003 tournament more than any other, for obvious reasons, but this tourney has probably had the best combination of excitement and well-played games. Just incredible. I mean, George Mason...GEORGE FREAKIN MASON, is in the Final Four.

Let's all give the selection committee some love, too. They took a TON of crap this year. Three of the most controversial selections for the field of 64 were George Mason, Bradley and Air Force. Air Force acquitted themselves well, but lost in round 1, Bradley made the Sweet 16, and Mason not only made the Final Four, but beat the last two champions (and 3 of the last 6) along the way. I'd like to think that entitles them to the benefit of the doubt in the future, but I'm sure we'll hear Billy Packer and others piss and moan once again in 2007 about how they blew it, yet never utter a word of apology, not even a single syllable of contrition, in response. As an aside, there's a reason we Republicans can't stand the media as an entity; its absolutely unrivaled ability to shirk responsibility for its actions is an envy to us all. And yet, I digress.

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There's another thing that drives me nuts about "The Media". Did you ever hear sportscasters, anchormen, commentators and other refer to "The Media" in the third person? Of course you have. On Sunday, I was watching the race, and heard one of the broadcasters say "the media just loves to get these guys riled up." Wait a minute, are we just talking about some gaggle of unidentified reporters from the Memphis Commercial Appeal and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram feverishly stirring the pot? Or are we, just maybe, talking about the talking heads in the TV booth who conduct these lengthy interviews on camera that are edited to produce the most controversial sound bite possible, to the point that your average athlete speaks entirely in cliches, while your average politician speaks entirely in vague platitudes?

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Anyway, back to basketball, if you haven't tuned out yet. I'd like to know if anyone's risen from "second round pick" to "top 5 pick" faster than Joakim Noah has. I mean, a month ago, no one outside Gainesville, FL had heard of this guy. Now, on a national stage, he's running the floor like a guard and throwing elbows and eating glass like a 7 foot, 300 pound monster, and doing all this at the highest level of college basketball.

On the flip side, has anyone gone from "top 5 pick" to "undrafted free agent" faster than Josh Boone? Anyone who's watched Connecticut all season saw Boone draw too many quick fouls and play too passively on the boards. Well, in the tourney, those flaws were exposed for all to see. The guy is L-A-Z-Y. At least Rudy Gay has an on-off switch; I'm not sure Boone will play hard without a cattle prod in his rear end.

I love Tyrus Thomas; I think he's the next Chris Bosh if he works hard on his outside shot. After watching LaMarcus Aldridge put on a dress and makeup and grab his ankles in that game, Thomas looks like the #1 pick in the draft to me. I don't love Thomas's teammate Glen Davis. The guy's got all the look of a monster college player who flops in the pros. Yeah, he's a wide body and yeah he works hard, I know. There's no flippin' way he's over 6'8. The guy's got Tractor Traylor written all over him.

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Anyone else enjoying "The Unit"? That's quality stuff; you've got President Palmer, the T-1000 and one of the Kids in the Hall headlining an action show. It's earned a spot on my season pass list. And it's on CBS, which means it's practically guaranteed at least a 5 year run. But I do think that as time goes on, the role of the women on the show will be scaled down. At least I hope so.

Right now, they're trying to package the show as an action show with lots of family drama. The problem is, the only people (I assume) who will watch the show regularly are men who like shows where stuff blows up and the bad guys get what's coming to them. And the women on the show are irritating; they get in the way. Apart from the blonde, none of them are all that attractive. None of them can act. The interplay between the always-in-control black chick and the ultra-whiny brunette fails terribly.

Only the blonde doesn't flunk Bill Simmons' "table test" miserably; she's hot and the inevitable storyline where the Colonel gets busted for sleeping with her by the borderline-abusive husband promises to be good. And then when it's resolved, she'll simply go back to being eye candy. So she brings something to the table. The other two are leaving with silverware, expensive china and my favorite wine glasses in their handbags.

But it's a good show. And it wouldn't be the first show to start well and then take some time to "find itself". If they dial back the family drama a bit, and maybe give the women some acting lessons, this could be a monster show. As it is, it's merely very good. And right now, given the never-ending river of crap Hollywood is churning out, "very good" is all you need to get my undivided attention.

Thoughts on the First Two Days of the Tourney

2006-03-18T09:52:00.000-05:00

Northwestern State defeating Iowa provided us with the HMFS moment of the tournament so far (Holy Mother....you get the idea). What a finish that was. Also, big props to CBS, who has done a fine job of switching telecasts to show the closing moments of some exciting games.

Here's one thing I was wondering though: when NW St. hit that three pointer, they had some guys running onto the court. If Iowa had inbounded the ball right then, NW St would have been (or at least should have been) hit with a technical foul, and the Hawkeyes could have had 2 shots and the ball. I don't blame the Iowa player for not doing so; those are not the sort of things you usually think about, but that strikes me as one of those things a coach should tell his kids. It's sort of like knowing how to hotwire a car; you'll probably never need to, but if the need arises, you'll be glad you do.

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I think Connecticut's winning it all. I thought that anyway, and I'm more sure now. Before the tourney started, I told a Connecticut fan that my big concern over UConn was not that they'd lose to Duke or Villanova, but that they'd lose to someone in the first three rounds. Connecticut has a really bad habit of getting lazy against weaker teams, and Rudy Gay and Josh Boone are the primary culprits. As a result, they play down to the level of their opposition at times.

The scare Albany put into them was, I believe, just what the doctor ordered. They were down 12 with 10 to play when the light bulb came on. After that game, and after hearing about it non-stop for the next 24 hours from Jim Calhoun, they should have all the motivation they need to stomp Arizona and whoever their next opponent will be.

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In the Arkansas-Bucknell game, I saw an Arkansas player take a hard fall when he was fouled, and came out of the game for a minute or so because he was hurt. The Razorbacks had the opportunity to select a player off the bench to shoot the free throws for him. Here's what I wonder: why don't more teams do this sort of thing? And by "this sort of thing", I mean fake injury to get a better free throw shooter in the game. And before you get all sanctimonious on me, players get away with rules violations all the time; they take falls to draw cheap fouls, they get away with travelling and carrying on a constant basis, rough play in the paint is often done away from the officials' attention, etc. So what's a little more gamesmanship?

Obviously, it would have to be the right situation; you're not going to have a guy like, say, Ben Wallace fake an injury to put a better free throw shooter in. One, he's too valuable at the defensive end, and two, no one would believe it anyway. But if you've got your backup center in there late in the game, and need a couple points, why not take the dive and get a better shooter at the line?

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I don't like the fact that Chad Ford's down on Tyler Hansbrough. If Hansbrough is legitimately smaller than his advertised 6'9, 225# frame, then so be it. But the guy works his butt off on the glass, he's got a refined face-the-basket game AND a quality back-to-the-basket game, he's got excellent hands, a decent handle for a big, runs the floor well, plays quality defense on the perimeter and in the post...where's the problem? At worst, he's Corliss Williamson with better defense.

I like the kid, and I think he should consider jumping to the pros. And I'm not just saying that because I hate Carolina (as usual, Syracuse's exit brings out my inner Cobra Kai: Go Blue Devils!). Think about it: how many draft-eligible bigs would you DEFINITELY take over Hansbrough right now? LaMarcus Aldridge and Shelden Williams. If you want to throw the Euro, Andrea Bargianni in there, that's fine. That's three guys. Chad's got Tyrus Thomas ahead of him, and compared Thomas to (I kid you not) "a more energetic Stromile Swift". Isn't that like saying "a thinner David Wells" or "a less crazy Ron Artest"? Not exactly high praise there. I'll take a guy who will be, at worst, a quality sixth man, thanks.

In any event, this is a horrible draft for big men. Just abysmal. Hansbrough's game is already remarkably refined, and if the concern is that he's not tall enough...well, he's probably not going to grow more anyway. Why not strike while the iron is hot?

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Here's an interesting mental exercise: how many currently active head coaches have an NCAA championship to their credit (as head coaches, none of this "assistant to John Wooden" stuff)? I'm only counting guys still active at the college level; though the prospect of using Larry Brown as a trick answer was inviting. I count 11.

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I saw that Villanova was playing at the Wachovia Center in Philly yesterday. This bothers me, as the NCAA forbids teams from playing an NCAA tournament game on their home floor. While the Wachovia Center isn't the Wildcats' home court, they play about half a dozen games there every season, as their prime time games against teams like Syracuse and Connecticut tend to draw a lot more people than they can fit in their on-campus arena. This would seem, to me, to be a flagrant violation of the NCAA's rule against having home games in the NCAA tournament.

I'm assuming that this is allowed since each team has one "home court", and for 'Nova, it's not the Wachovia Center. Of course, a lot of teams have a "de facto" home court in the NCAA tournament. For example, Duke nearly always ends up playing their first two games in the Greensboro Coliseum. And last year, Illinois played the regional finals in Chicago. I understand the logistical nightmare that would be involved in trying to cut out de facto home games; how far is a team's "home territory"? What about a team like Kentucky that has a phenomenal travelling fan base such that any neutral court is almost always like a home game for them?

Of course, it would be hypocritical of me to decry the de facto home game in the NCAA tournament. After all, Syracuse played the 2003 East Regionals in Albany. The Cuse was the #3 seed, and played Oklahoma, the #1, for a spot in the Final Four. The Pepsi Arena in Albany seats 17,500 people. Of those, I'd guess about 17,400 were wearing orange that day. So though Oklahoma was presumably "rewarded" with a #1 seed for their good season, they were indisputably punished by having to play what amounted to a road game in the East Regional Final.

Nevertheless, playing games in your home city seems to be a step too far. Either get rid of the home team provision, or at least bar teams from playing in a bracket where their city is the host.

---

Finally, 16 seeds are now 0-88 against #1s. It's going to happen some day. Personally, I think it will happen in the next 5 years, and I am nearly certain it will happen in the next 10. CBS showed a very interesting stat about the margin of victory by 1 seeds; it's decreased steadily over the last 5 years. Five years ago, I believe the average margin of victory was 37 points. Last year it was a bit over 15. This year it was 14.5, and with five minutes left, none of the games were decided. Thus, the gap appears to be narrowing. Why? I have a couple theories:

1. the NBA. The NBA has strip-mined college basketball over the last decade. The burden, of course, tends to fall more on better teams, since more NBA players get drafted from Duke, UNC, Kentucky, etc. So those top teams just aren't as deep anymore.

2. the decline of the JuCos. Junior colleges used to be training grounds for good players that maybe didn't have the grades, and would transfer to a really good D-I school after 2 years. Schools in the Big 12 and SEC were generally major beneficiaries. You don't see that much anymore. I think a lot of these kids are going right to lower-level D-I programs instead of going JuCo for 2 years.

So the top teams are less talented than they used to be, and the bottom teams are more talented. That, I believe, is why we're seeing a narrowing (if still huge) gap between the 1 and the 16 seeds. Upsets in the 2/15, 3/14 and 4/13 games are also far more common now. At least one 5 seed loses every year. Now, either a 3 or a 4 can almost always be counted on to lose. In fact, a 3 and a 4 have both lost in the first round this year and last year.

So, the #16 upset is coming. And I believe it's sooner than later.

An Open Letter to Gerry McNamara

2006-03-17T08:36:00.000-05:00

Dear Gerry:
I've been watching sports since I was old enough to stand up and pee. I've seen hundreds, maybe thousands, of athletes talk badly about themselves after a poor performance. But, I've never seen one that I felt as bad for as you.

It's been a rough senior season for you; it looked like you guys were going to miss the tournament, and then you suffered one of the most embarassing losses in the history of the Syracuse program. And to top it off, your own student newspaper called you overrated. All this was after you had to endure double team after double team all season, as opposing defenses basically dared someone else to step up and score, and had to stop themselves from doubling over with laughter everytime your teammates ran a pick-and-collide 25 feet from the basket. All in all, not exactly the greatest sendoff for the most beloved player in Syracuse history.

Something happened in the Big East Tournament, though. You took us 'Cuse fans for one last ride, with huge shots galore, pinpoint passes on the run that made me swear that Steve Nash had put on your uniform and gotten a haircut, and all that despite a bad groin that got worse every day. This was Isiah Thomas in Game 6 of the '88 Finals, except for four straight days. For a week, you were The Story in college hoops.

Here's the problem, though: you can't play 4 straight do-or-die games in the toughest conference in the country and expect to be sharp coming into the tournament. I don't mean you personally; no one can. Jim Boeheim was absolutely right when he noted that Syracuse went a lot farther in the NCAA tournament when they were an early out in the Big East tourney. The Big East is the biggest, baddest conference in the country. The intensity isn't matched anywhere else except maybe the ACC. The physical level of play isn't matched anywhere else except maybe the Big Ten. John Thompson III, son of the Devil Himself, said that Georgetown's win over you guys was bigger than their win over Duke. When you're playing four straight do-or-die games against that sort of attitude, it takes a tremendous toll both physically and emotionally. In retrospect, you guys would have been better off in the NCAA tournament folding up the tent against Georgetown and taking a #10 seed.

And you certainly can't expect to play well, after all that, with an injured groin that was obviously a whole lot worse than you were letting on. You gutted it out, and hoped either the groin would get better, or that maybe Eric Devendorf and Josh Wright could carry the load and you could come off the bench and hit a couple big shots. Before you graduate, you need to talk to Eric and Josh about finishing on the break, by the way. If I had a buck for every transition layup those two botched, I'd be a rich man. And yet I digress.

Obviously, it didn't work out. I've watched you for four years, and it was clear to me that you couldn't move very well. Your groin failed you (yeah, I know, it does sound like something that would happen to Ron Jeremy in his 60's), but you didn't fail Syracuse.

Over 2000 points, the Syracuse career leader (and NCAA top 5) in three pointers and steals, a multiple-time All-Big East selection, and an NCAA Championship. We should all be so "overrated".

Thanks for four phenomenal years.

Ireland Declares War on France

2006-03-16T10:48:00.000-05:00

Jacques Chirac, The French President, is sitting in his office when
His telephone rings.

"Hallo, Mr. Chirac!" a heavily accented voice said. "This is Paddy, down at the Harp Pub in County Clare, Ireland. I am ringing to inform you we are officially declaring war on you!"

"Well, Paddy," Chirac replied, "This is indeed important news! How big is your army?"

"Right now," says Paddy, after a moment's calculation, "there is myself, me Cousin Sean, me next door neighbor Seamus, and the entire darts team from the pub. That makes eight!"

Chirac paused. "I must tell you, Paddy, that I have 100,000 men in my army waiting to move on my command."

"Begorah!" says Paddy. "I'll have to ring you back."

Sure enough, the next day, Paddy calls again. "Mr. Chirac, the war is still on. We have managed to get us some infantry equipment!"

"And what equipment would that be Paddy?" Chirac asks.

"Well, we have two combines, a bulldozer, and Murphy's farm tractor."

Chirac sighs amused. "I must tell you, Paddy, that I have 6,000 tanks and 5,000 armored personnel carriers. Also, I have increased my army to 150,000 since we last spoke."

"Saints preserve us!" says Paddy. "I'll have to get back to you."

Sure enough, Paddy rings again the next day. "Mr. Chirac, the war is still on! We have managed to get ourselves airborne! We have modified Jackie McLaughlin's ultra-light with a couple of shotguns in the cockpit, and four boys from the Shamrock Bar have joined us as well!"

Chirac was silent for a minute and then cleared his throat. "I must tell you, Paddy, that I have 100 bombers and 200 fighter planes. My military bases are surrounded by laser-guided, surface-to-air missile sites. And since we last spoke, I have increased my army to 200,000."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" says Paddy, "I will have to ring you back."

Sure enough, Paddy calls again the next day. "Top o' the mornin', Mr. Chirac! I am sorry to inform you that we have had to call off the war."

"Really? I am sorry to hear that," says Chirac. "Why the sudden change of heart?"

"Well," says Paddy, "we had a long chat over a few pints of Guinness, and decided there is no way we can feed 200,000 prisoners."

An early Happy St. Patrick's Day, all!

(thanks, Alex)

Thoughts on Daunte Culpepper

2006-03-14T20:51:00.000-05:00

I was going to write a lengthy post about what a great pickup Daunte Culpepper is for the Dolphins, but instead, I'm just going to steal someone else's post on the Finheaven.com message board, because he dispelled any doubts about Culpepper better than I possibly could have. So, I'll just add a "Woo hoo!!" and do some lengthy cut-and-paste...

He’s ours. A lot of people on this board are very strongly anti-Culpepper. The following should allay your concerns and help get you excited about our new QB.
Culpepper has been the most productive QB in NFL history. When you account for his rushing numbers, his production has been absolutely phenomenal. Over his career, Culpepper has 164 total TDs in 81 games, an average of more than 2 TDs per game. Compare that to the greatest QBs (production-wise) in NFL history:

Marino (429 in 242 games, an average of 1.77)
Favre (408 in 225 games, an average of 1.81)
PManning (253 in 128 games, an average of 1.97)
KWarner (121 in 73 games, an average of 1.65)

In short, Culpepper is the most prolific TD scoring QB on a per game basis in NFL history.

Next, look at total yards (rushing and passing). Culpepper has 22,639 total yards in 81 games, an average of 279.5 yards per game. Compare that to the greatest QBs (production-wise) in NFL history:

Marino (61448 in 242 games, an average of 254 yards per game)
Favre (55360 in 225 games, an average of 246 yards per game)
PManning (33854 in 128 games, an average of 264.5 yards per game)
KWarner (19474 in 73 games, an average of 266.7 yards per game)

So Culpepper is also the most productive QB in terms of yards from scrimmage in NFL history on a per game basis.

Then compare his INTs to the aforementioned guys. Culpepper has 86 in 81 games, an average of 1.06 per game.

Marino (1.04 per game)
Favre (1.13 per game)
PManning (1.015 per game)
KWarner (1.07 per game)

So Daunte is the most productive QB (on a per game basis) in NFL history in terms of both yards and TDs. His interception rate is comparable to or better than any of the guys that are even close (and they're not that close).
His completion percentage of 64.4 is the second-best in NFL history. And that is not in a dink-and-dunk West Coast offense. It’s not terribly surprising, as he holds the single season NCAA record for completion percentage at 73.4%. That is with a vertical passing game. In 2004 he completed an incredible 17 of 34 passes thrown more than 31 yards from scrimmage in the air. And no, it was not because of jump balls to Moss -- Moss caught only 3 of them.
Physically, he has a lot more size and speed than any QB should be allowed to have. He's the size of a DE and runs like a fullback. His rushing numbers are second only to Michael Vick among QBs.
Below are my responses to the criticisms I hear from the Culpepper haters:

The Knee

It is legitimate to be concerned about the knee, but this is an area we all need to defer to the doctors on. They are saying he is well ahead of schedule and will play next year. The trade hinges on his passing a physical, so if it goes through, that means the Fins docs say he’s OK. The decision on a QB of the future should not hinge on whether he'll be at full strength at the beginning of this year (this goes for Brees too). I can't think of a single QB whose career was ended or derailed by a kneee injury. I’ve asked in several threads if anyone could think of a single on and nobody came forward with any. In recent years, there has been virtually 100% recovery from knee injuries, including RBs, WRs and CBs who are much more dependent on their speed and cutting ability than a QB (even a mobile one) is. For those positions, the difference between 4.4 speed and 4.6 speed may be difference between star and scrub. Any loss int he ability to plant and cut on a dime fundamentally changes who that player is. Nonetheless, guys like EJames, Jamal Lewis, McGahee, etc. have all come back as good as new. For a QB, even a mobile one, it is much less important. Even if Culpepper goes from a 4.7 40 guy to 4.8 or 4.9, it won't make a huge difference. When RBs are able to come back from hideous knee injuries, it seems like a stretch to say that Culpepper can't or won't.

There is a long list of QBs who have played at a HOF level for years with “bad knees” – Marino, Namath, Elway, Stabler, etc.

The Fumbles

Yes, he does fumble a lot. However, even if you treat the fumbles as interceptions, his numbers are still great. A rushing attempt is akin to a completed pass, albeit usually a short one. They usually come on passing downs and are positive yardage plays. If you look at combined rushing and passing numbers and treat each rushing attempt as a pass attempt and a completion, each rushing TD as a passing TD, and each fumble as an interception, Culpepper's adjusted rating comes out to 92.6, which is a little below Payton Manning's adjusted career rating of 94.3, but is above Carson Palmer (90.9). Gus's 2005 adjusted rating is 69.9. Marino’s career adjusted rating is 86.7.
People keep citing to the total fumbles numbers, as opposed to fumbles lost, which is really the relevant number. He's lost an average of about 5 fumbles per season, which is about 2-3 more than most other QBs. BTW, Gus fumbled 13 times last year and lost 4, but I have never heard anyone on this board bitching about that particular aspect of his game. Also, part of the reason Culpepper fumbles is that he runs with the ball, i.e., he actually gets tackled while holding the ball 100+ times per year. If the average RB had those carries instead of Culpepper, he'd fumble a few times too (Ronnie Brown had 4 fumbles in 239 touches and Ricky has 35 fumbles in approximately 2000 touches in his career).

The Boat

Give me a break. He is charged with getting a lap dance and touching the dancer's tushy. Are you such prudes that you find that to be outrageous conduct? Do you think no other NFL players get lap dances? Hell, Clinton Portis had a stripper pole and a bevy of strippers in his house. Do you really think the Fins players would be hesitant to follow his lead because he allegedly touched a stripper's tushy?

The Moss

Culpepper's great numbers are not because of Randy Moss -- any more than Montana/Young were products of Rice. Or any more than Manning is a product of Harrison. Almost every great QB has had some great WRs. In 2004, Mossed missed 3 games and was just a decoy in 2 others. In those 5 games, Culpepper completed 113 of 166 passes (68%) for 1179 yards, 9 TDs and 3 INTs, which comes out to a QB rating of 99. In other games, he was hurt and simply didn’t do much. For that season, if you exclude passes thrown to Moss, he completed 330 of 463 passes (71.3%), for 3950 yards and 26 TDs. Even if you assume that none of his INTs were on passes thrown to Moss, which is doubtful, his QB rating excluding Moss was 105.9. Moreover, Moss clearly didn't make Kerry Collins into the Pro Bowler this year, even though he was opposite other quality WRs.

The 2005 INTs

Culpepper had a very bad start to 2005. He had 8 picks in the first 2 games, but had 6 TDs and 4 INTs in the 4 games after that. He was playing for a new OC, with a new set of receivers and an OL that had lost its anchor, Pro Bowl center Matt Birk. The OL was really struggling -- he was sacked 31 times in just over 6 games. You can't disregard his career numbers based on 2 bad games at the start of the season. Even the best QBs will occasionally have a 3-4 INT game.

The Playoffs

True, Minnesota has not been a great team since he's been there, but they have consistently had one of the 5-6 worst defenses in the NFL. From 2000-04, the Vikes never had a defense that was better than 25th in the NFL. Even Marino had better defenses in the late 80s and early 90s. With a few exceptions, Minny had unremarkable running games during that time (especially if you exclude Culpepper's rushing numbers). Still, the Vikes were 39-41 during that time period, which is comparable to Marino's record from 1986-89 when the Fins defenses were bad (30-33). We all know that even a great QB cannot win with a bad defense.
When he’s been in the playoffs, he’s 2-2. His career playoff numbers are pretty respectable -- 73/134, 980 yds, 8 TDs and 5 INTs (82.3 rating). He had one terrible game against the Giants in 2001, a mediocre one against the Eagles in 2004, and two very good ones against the Saints in '01 and the Packers in '04 (total of 36/60, 618 yds, 7 TDs, 0 INTs).

The Money

Daunte is due to make $2 million this year, less than half of what Gus is due to be paid. Brees will undoubtedly cost several times that amount. The 3 years after this one, Culpepper is due to make around $6 million per year, which isn't much for an upper echelon QB. Brees would have cost more. Some are offended that he reportedly asked for more money, but it isn't clear that he did. His agent did, and then got fired for it. The Vikes owner had publicly said that he would re-evaluate Daunte's contract after this past season, so it wouldn't have been unusual for Daunte to expect him to do that.
The Backups

Some people argue that the fact that his backups have had success in Minny means he is a product of the system. When they make this argument, they usually selectively ignore the numbers of his backups who did not play well. Even so, the reality is that a lot of QBs will do well in a good offensive system, with a decent OL and some talent around him. The Viking backups success is hardly unique. Take a look at the QB ratings of the following backups, with the starter in parentheses:

Steve Young (Montana) 108.9
Steve Bono (Montana) 88.5
Jeff Kemp (Montana) 85.7
Scott Mitchell (Marino) 91.4
Craig Erickson (Marino) 86.3
Elvis Grbac (Young) 87.9
Jeff Garcia (Young) 89.9
Frank Reich (Kelly) 102.3
Jim Sorgi (Manning) 99.1
Matt Cassel (Brady) 89.4
Marc Bulger (Warner) 101.5
Trent Green (Warner) 101.8
Bernie Kosar (Aikman) 92.7
Rodney Peete (Aikman) 102.5
Jason Garrett (Aikman) 83.3
Billy Volek (McNair) 87.4

In addition to those, you have guys like Brooks, Brunell and Hasselbeck who looked good as backups to Favre and drew a lot in trades/FA. Same for Feeley behind McNabb.

None of this means that Culpepper (or any of the QBs listed in parentheses above) are not great QBs. They are. Culpepper has put up incredible numbers and is a proven commodity.

The Vikes improvement in the 2nd half of the season last year was not because Brad Johnson was better. It was because the OL, which was recovering from the loss of Matt Birk and a rookie at G, started to gel as the season went on. The OL gave up 29 sacks in the first 6 games. They gave up only 23 in the next 10 games. The other reason was that the defense improved dramatically in the second half of the season. In the first 7 games, the defense gave up 193 points, which is approximately 28 per game. In the next 9, they gave up 151 points, which comes out to an average of less than 17 per game. Gee, do you think a difference of 11 ppg allowed might make a difference in wins and losses?

Intelligence

First, and not that it is necessarily a true measure of intelligence, but Culpepper scored a 21 on the Wonderlic. This is better than Marino (14), McNabb (16), McNair (15), and a point less than Brett Favre (22). Obviously, the Wonderlic is not a foolproof indicator of the ability to understand NFL defenses.

What are good indicators of the ability to make decisions and read defenses is performance on 3rd downs, when blitzed, and in the red zone. On 3rd downs, NFL teams basically know you are passing and the defenses are at their most creative to stop the pass. Performance on blitzes shows the QBs ability to make decisions under pressure and find the open man in a very short time. Performance in the red zone shows what he can do with a short field in critical situations.

In 2004, Culpepper's performance on 3rd down and blitzes was phenomenal. On 3rd downs, he completed 93 of 134 (69.4%), for 1391 yards, 19 TDs and 3 INTs, which comes out to an absurd QB rating of 133.7. That year, on blitzes, he completed 101 of 159 (63.5%), for 1217, 15 TDs and 1 INT, which is a 115.7 rating. In the red zone, he completed 54 of 88 for 352 yards, 26 TDs and 2 INTs, for a rating of 158.2 (the maximum). These types of numbers simply are not possible if you can't read defenses and make good decisions. Do people think that every defense he faced was pure vanilla?

Yes, last year he struggled, especially in those first 2 games. But his 2003 numbers in these categories are comparable to his 2004 numbers.

3rd down -- 79/121, 1054, 12, 3 (Rating: 115.5)
Blitz -- 60/103, 785, 9, 4 (Rating: 95.3)
Red Zone -- 23/51, 147, 14, 2 (Rating: 126.8)

For comparison sake, Gus's numbers in these categories last year are:

3rd down -- 63/152, 813, 5, 5 (Rating: 56.2)
Blitz -- 73/162, 866, 5, 4 (Rating: 61.9)
Red Zone -- 28/65, 189, 12, 3 (Rating: 70.8)

Remember, these are in essentially the same Linehan offense (which we say we are keeping).

“Game Management”

A lot of people talk about certain QBs being good game managers. I hear that a lot about Brees and some Gusketeers also like to claim that he was a good game manager. I think that, in most cases, that is just someone's way of pumping up a guy they like on the basis of some intangible that cannot be verified or disproven. Let's face it, with the exception of occasional audibles, the coaches call the plays. Most of what people refer to as game management is really a reflection of the plays called by the coaches, not anything the QB has done.

That said, I think there is some QB "game management" in the way the guy plays on 3rd and 4th down. "Managing the game" basically boils down to how well the QB keeps the chains moving, which basically boils down to converting 3rd and 4th downs. Avoiding turnovers is another aspect of game management.

I was only able to find stats for this for the past 2 seasons. Culpepper’s conversion rate on 3rd and 4th downs has been excellent. Over the last 2 years, he has converted 98/196 (50%). This is the same as Payton Manning (119 of 238), but better than Brees (121/264 – 45.8%) and Brady (122/270 – 45.1%). Gus supporters claim he was a good game manager last year, but he converted only 50/160 third and 4th downs last year, which comes out to 31.25%. These numbers do not include plays in which the QB ran for a 1st down on 3rd or 4th down.

The Draft Pick

Giving up a 2nd rounder is a small price to pay (it's not clear to me now whether it is 2006 or 2007). Either way, there will be no one in the draft this year or next who is a proven commodity with Culpepper’s talent level. Certainly no one in the 2nd round. The price for high draft pick QBs is around $50 million over 6 years, with more than $20 million of that guaranteed. Culpepper’s contract is much more cap friendly. Clearly, the Fins decided that Brees’ price tag was simply too high.

Now stop crying about getting a 29-year old, physically dominant QB who has put up numbers over his 7 year career that compare favorably to the best who have ever played the position.

The Madness, and the Madness it Breeds

2006-03-13T08:40:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning and had a strange rash on my arm. Upon closer inspection, it was a series of interconnected rectangles, with the words "Atlanta", "Washington", "Minneapolis" and "Oakland" written at the sides.

I walked to the bathroom, saw my cat running at me, stood still and flopped to the ground when she hit me. I yelled to my wife, "that's a charge! Call it, ref!"

I've asked the University of Rochester about correspondence courses in Bracketology.

I've called a contractor to get an estimate on replacing my asphalt driveway with hardwood, and widening it to accommodate a three point line.

I saw my doctor and he said I had a case of March Madness. When asked for the cure, he simply said, "watch lots and lots of basketball." Unfortunately, he wouldn't give me an excuse from work through April 3.

---

Unfortunately, one unfortunate side effect of March Madness is a particular kind of verbal diarrhea that's just not found elsewhere. So, without further ado, my "Just Shut Up" list:

Dick Vitale. I ordinarily like Dickie as an announcer (believe it or not), becomes absolutely insufferable this time of year. If it were up to "Dukie" V, the NCAA tournament would have roughly 73 teams. "Missouri State should be in! Hofstra should be in! Maryland should be in!" Et cetera, et cetera. Understand, I don't necessarily have a problem with expanding the field to make all the 16 seeds have play-in games. I think adding 3 more at-large bids could only make the tournament more interesting. But the field is what it is. If Dick wants to see Missouri State, Hofstra and Maryland in the field, that's great, but for crying out loud, at least say who they should beat out for a spot!

People who piss and moan about their brackets. "The #13 seed beat the #4 seed you had ticketed for the Final Four? Gosh, that never happens!" These are the same kind of people who will wail for three hours, to anyone who will listen, about how they had an unbeatable poker hand, went all-in, and how some lucky stiff caught a 6 on the river to beat them.

Coaches who complain about getting "snubbed" from the tournament. Look, Bubble Boys, take a cue from Jim Boeheim: go out, win your conference tournament and make the whole debate moot. If you can't do that, stop whining. And yes, I appreciate the irony of using Jim Boeheim as an example of someone who's not whining. Let's just move on.

The Committee. By far the most awkward moment of the CBS selection show was the interview with the Selection Committee Chairman, who was (I believe) the Athletic Director at U of Virginia. I've never seen a man associated with such a prestigious academic institution misuse so many words with more than 2 syllables. I think he used "essentially" 3 times in 10 seconds at one point, a skill I thought was limited only to my Poli Sci 275 professor and Dave Wannstedt. If he'd thrown the word "standpoint" in there, I'd have been convinced it was Wannstedt, but with digital retouching to make him look like a bald, black man. I had to change the station because I felt so awkward watching the guy. Next year, pick someone who actually has some command over the English language.

"Last Team In" Bashers. Okay, I'll admit it, I was SHOCKED that Air Force made the cut. I didn't think they should have, but whatever; they're in. Deal with it. Personally, I love the rare occasions when the "last team in" actually does something and makes all their bashers look silly. In 2003, Auburn was the last team in, and pretty much everyone agreed they should have been left out. Well, they proceeded to win two games and took Syracuse down to the wire. No shame in that; The Cuse went on to win the whole shebang.

---

Personally, I've got an annual March Madness ritual. I take off the first Friday of the tournament, which is usually right around St. Patrick's Day. I use the leftover corned beef from our traditional St. Patrick's Day dinner and eat reubens until I look like the bass player from Bowling for Soup, while watching hoops and drinking beer from noon until my wife leaves me for dead on the couch. And yes, I know that's a violation of the whole "no meat on Lenten Fridays" thing.

But philosophically, I can only assume that God is a basketball fan. Why else would he make the sky Carolina blue? Or, for us here in Rochester, Georgetown gray?

(And if you think dropping the name of the two teams I hate the most is a way of trying to put some sort of reverse jinx on them, well, you know me far too well.)

It Feels Good to Be Wrong

2006-03-11T22:39:00.000-05:00

I thought they were too down on themselves to beat Cincinnati.
I thought they weren't good enough to beat Connecticut.
I thought they wouldn't be motivated enough to beat Georgetown.
I thought they were too tired to beat Pittsburgh.

Never have I enjoyed an 0-4 prediction run so thoroughly.

Even if Syracuse loses in the first round of the NCAA tournament, the 2005-6 season will be one of the most memorable ever. There's adversity, and then there's ADVERSITY. It bothers me when an announcer, say, one whose initials are D.V., talks about "what a tough year North Carolina has had, and how they persevered through all the adversity of losing all their top players to the NBA." Those are actual words I heard today, by the way. Yeah, it had to be real tough for Roy Williams to have to trot out just 4 McDonald's All-Americans a year after winning a title. Poor guy.

No, adversity is the student newspaper ripping one of the greatest players in team history, after an embarassing loss to a third-rate DePaul team that qualified as one of the lowest points in the program's history. Adversity is being legitimately written off for an NCAA tournament appearance and having the vast majority of the basketball world expecting the team to simply roll over and die after making only a compulsory defense of your Big East Championship.

Syracuse is, indisputably, one of the great programs in college basketball. But they're not Duke or North Carolina or Kentucky. They're not a school that has a birthright to success and can merely attract phenomenal recruiting classes simply on name value alone. Some years, they're less talented than others.

As I said before, I felt this was one of those years. The Class of 2007 (Watkins, Roberts, Nichols, McCroskey) never developed like Jim Boeheim hoped, Eric Devendorf was a year away, and so everything was put on the shoulders of Gerry McNamara. After the losses to DePaul and Villanova, the Cuse looked NIT-bound for sure. The Cuse came to New York with everything to gain and nothing to lose. They surely needed at least one win and probably two to secure an NCAA bid.

Somewhere on the trip to New York, apparently the collective light bulb came on. Roberts and Watkins worked harder than I've ever seen. McNamara did more to get his teammates involved and Boeheim encouraged him to do so. The question was: was it too little, too late? The win over Cincinnati was nice, but the win over Connecticut might have been the program's biggest since 2003. At that point, most people conceded that Syracuse was in the tournament. However, Jim Boeheim has, historically, been the cautious type. So, just to be on the safe side, he figured they'd better grab the Big East's automatic bid.

So they did.

For the first time ever, a team came to New York, and won 4 games in 4 days to take home the Big East Championship. And for the first time in 7 years, it was the same team as the year before. Suffice to say, one week ago, back to back Big East Championships seemed impossible to me. Obviously, I was wrong.

Right now, I don't know how equipped Syracuse is for a long tournament run. Though they'll surely be rested for the tournament, and they're certainly battle tested, I wonder if they can keep up this quality of play much longer. Assuming they come in around a 5 or 6 seed, I don't know that they can get much farther than the round of 16, if that.

But I've been wrong before.

Otto Never Dies

2006-03-10T07:47:00.000-05:00

Bizarre and crazy day yesterday. I went home at lunch to set the TiVo to record the Syracuse-Connecticut game. I couldn't bring myself to watch the first half of the game because I knew that if I did, there was a good chance I'd get engrossed and not go back to work. So I set the TiVo to record, and hoped I could avoid any mention of the score. One of my co-workers, Katie, is a big Syracuse fan, and was advised of this. She was kind enough to not give me score updates.

Then the chaos started. Around 1:15, my buddy Kev, a noted Georgetown fan and Syracuse hater, called. "No way", I thought. "Can't risk him saying something like, 'Syracuse is up 11 at the break'", which is precisely what he said when I listened to the message some 9 hours later.

Around 2:15, I could have sworn I heard Katie talking about the game, in a low murmur, so I closed my office door.

At 2:45, I got an email from someone I know who's a UConn fan, with the header "Cuse". Didn't read it.

I left work about 4:15, because I couldn't take it anymore. I drove home, taking care to avoid listening to any radio station that might, theoretically, give the game score. I don't think I've ever hit so many red lights in my life, nor have they lasted so long. By the time I got home, I was a 6'3 monument to road rage. I plopped down on the couch in my basement and immediately began adding to the empty beer can and bottle collection that's stacked up down there.

Suffice to say, that was by far the best basketball game I've seen all season. It has earned the coveted "Save Until I Delete" tag on my TiVo. At this point, I'd be more surprised if Gerry McNamara MISSED a game winning/tying three pointer, despite his mere 32% accuracy from beyond the arc.

And everything that was wrong with Syracuse all season was fixed yesterday, at least for 45 minutes.

They DIDN'T rely excessively on Gerry McNamara to shoot. G-Mac controlled the game with his passing in the first half, and with big shots in the second. If you hadn't seen McNamara for the last four years, and saw him for the first time yesterday, you'd swear he was an NBA lottery pick. That was a performance straight out of the John Stockton/Steve Nash playbook; control the game with passing and hit the big shots when the team needs it.

The bigs WEREN'T lazy. Terrence Roberts was everywhere; easily playing the best game I've seen him play in his three years. Active, aggressive, working hard. Darryl Watkins worked hard on the glass and on D, too. Granted, he played like he had boxing gloves on (McNamara could have easily had 16 or 17 assists if Watkins didn't keep dropping entry passes), but he and Roberts won the battle in the paint against Connecticut's more heralded big men.

The bench WASN'T terrible. I still cringe whenever Louie McCroskey has the basketball, but he managed to give the Orange quality minutes. Josh Wright was solid as well.

The chemistry WAS solid. This is what happens when you have a point guard distributing the ball. When the ball gets spread around, everyone gets into it. Passing, like effort, is contagious. With McNamara getting everyone involved, everyone worked harder, the ball movement was more crisp, and shots were easier.

The coaching WAS sound. It took Jim Boeheim a full year to realize that Gerry McNamara needs to get everyone around him involved for this team to win. In the past, when it was the Mac and Hak show, they could play their games and let guys like Josh Pace pick up garbage points here and there. Not this year. McNamara had too much of the scoring load on his shoulders. Yesterday, Boeheim made G-Mac more of a ball distributor than a 2 guard, encouraged him to get out and run, and trusted that he could get everyone involved, which he did to a T.

A week ago, I said that Syracuse hoops was dead for the year. It would seem that the rumors of Otto's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

At this point, it's almost impossible to imagine that Syracuse won't be in the field of 65. Of course, with two more wins, they could remove all doubt whatsoever by winning their second straight Big East Championship. If that seems improbable, well, so did beating UConn.

Sportsman of the Month Voting

2006-03-09T08:22:00.000-05:00

I'm going to try and post my Sportsman of the Month on a regular basis from here on out. Possibly even once per month. Anyway, here goes...

January - Steelers OG Alan Faneca, the REAL Super Bowl MVP.

Inner Voice: Wait a minute, the Super Bowl was played in February!
Phil: Quiet brain, or I'll stab you with a Q-tip.

February - Jason McElwain, Athena HS team manager/sharpshooter.

Who doesn't love J-Mac? He's an early favorite for my annual Man And A Half Award (previous winners: LaVar Arrington, Lance Armstrong, Magnus Ver Magnusson). As an added bonus, that led one of the best Sports Guy mailbag exchanges ever:

Q: What about Paul Shirley as the 12th man, just for the brooding, daily blog of the goings-on in the Olympic Village? Tremendous upside right there.
-- Spencer, Los Angeles

SG: You sold me. I'm bumping off Chris Bosh and adding Shirley.

Q: Suggestion for Team USA basketball: What about naming Jason McElwain to the USA basketball team's staff? Talk about energy. That kid has it in spades. Even the jaded NBA players would have difficulty not being inspired by him. Plus, if we're actually down in a game (ex: Puerto Rico hosing us by 20 points), we can put the kid in and let him rain down 3s for us. And he's a Token White Guy. That's a trifecta!
-- Andrew, Dallas

SG: That didn't take long -- Shirley's out, McElwain's in. That could lead to the greatest Olympic moment since the 1980 U.S.A.-U.S.S.R. hockey game.

March - Paul Tagliabue, NFL Czar/Peacemaker.

By all accounts, Tagliabue gave an Abraham Lincoln-level speech at the owner's meeting that probably saved the league from the dreaded uncapped year and a subsequent lockout.

The NFL is the runaway best sports league in America for a reason: parity. At the start of the season, every team believes it has a chance. Even fans of the Arizona Cardinals (both of them) believe they've got a shot at glory, because the financial system in the NFL is relatively balanced. No other sports league can promise that. If the league eliminated the salary cap, you'd have seen a dramatic disparity develop between the haves and have-nots, just like in baseball. If you can find a fan of the Kansas City Royals (believe it or not, a friend of mine is), ask them if the Royals have a shot at making the playoffs anytime in the next 5 years.

By upholding the league's commitment to revenue sharing and a salary cap, Tagliabue ensured that the NFL will remain King of North American Sports for many years to come. With another commissioner, does that happen? I'm sure David The Terrible could keep the NFL owners in line, but can you imagine how badly Bud Selig would mangle this? Or whatever putz is in charge of the league formerly known as the NHL? (Is it still Bettman? Do I even care?)

So, Paul Tagliabue, you win the award for Sportsman of the Month for March.

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By now, you've surely heard about Utah Jazz forward Andrei Kirilenko's wife. If not, well, bang it here. Frankly, I don't have any idea what to say about that. Really, I'm dead serious.

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My parents and sister came over Tuesday night for my stepdad's birthday dinner. After dinner, my sister commented that a friend of hers named his dog "Salma" after Salma Hayek. Well, apparently said friend's girlfriend didn't take well to that, and began to call the dog "Lola". Said Little Sister, "so everytime I see that dog, I start singing Cococabana! At the Coco, Cococabana! Ha ha ha!"

I looked at her quizzically and asked, "what did you call that song?"
"Cococabana."
"It's COPAcabana! C-O-P-A."
"Oh my God, I feel like such a dope! Well, it's still funny, because Lola was a transvestite in that song."

Blank stares filled the room.

"She was a transvestite, right?"
"No", I responded, "In Copacabana, her name was Lola, she was a showgirl. Lola was a tranvestite in the song 'Lola', by The Kinks."

Suffice to say, we don't go to my sister with many questions on music trivia. You know what the really sad part is? That song's been stuck in my head for two days.

Worse still, I was singing it in the shower this morning, and caught myself going "At the Coco, Cococabana..."

A Season On The Bubble: SU Hoops 2006

2006-03-05T12:10:00.000-05:00

This has been one of the most frustrating Syracuse teams I've ever watched.

The Orange have had recent years as bad as this (they missed the tourney in 2002 and 1997), but neither of those teams were as aggravating as this one. Both of those teams simply failed for lack of talent. At this point, Syracuse pretty much has to win two games in the Big East tournament to get in. No big deal, right? Well, if they win the first game (against a Cincinnati team that's coming on strong), the second one's against Connecticut, only the best team in the country.

At this point, barring a miracle, the Orange look NIT-bound, and the Syracuse basketball season, for all intents and purposes, is dead. Let's autopsy the body and examine the causes of death:

1. Excessive reliance on one player. Gerry McNamara will go down as one of my favorite players in Syracuse hoops history. Few players hit more big shots or wore the Orange uniform more proudly. McNamara always worked hard, and improved his game tremendously from his freshman year, going from a poor defender to a pretty solid one, particularly in transition defense.

Unfortunately, McNamara isn't nearly as good a shooter as he gets credit for being. His shooting percentage has declined four straight years, which defies description. His three point percentage was just .320 this year, which is terrible for a guy who takes that many shots beyond the arc. He's a good passer, but not a great one, and in any event, he usually looks for his own shot first. Much of that was out of necessity this year, but the last three years, he had Hakim Warrick around. How he failed to average at least 6 assists a game with the program's best low post scorer since Derrick Coleman also defies description.

Simply put, you can't be a top level team with a guy like Gerry McNamara as your first option unless the second and third options are just as good. We learned this sad lesson this year. And yet, the team relied too much on him, which had the disadvantage of retarding the development of some younger players (had Eric Devendorf called his own number more early in the season, he might have developed faster, for example), and costing The Cuse in the short run.

2. Lazy bigs. If I had a nickel for every time Darryl Watkins and Terrence Roberts stood around idly, I'd retire from my job. Watkins, in particular, had a lack of effort throughout probably 90% of the season that was just appalling. The guy is lazy. And I don't mean garden-variety, "I don't feel like mowing the lawn today" lazy, I'm talking about Stanley Roberts or Benoit Benjamin level lazy. This young man exhibits sloth at the highest levels, maybe even Jeff Lebowski level laziness.

Roberts is only slightly better. Somehow, he managed to grab 8 rebounds a game and be a marginally effective low post scorer. Even so, I could probably count the loose balls he grabbed this year on one hand. Like Watkins, he rebounds as though he's standing in a phone booth, and also like Watkins, he can't set a pick to save his life. And if you're going to rely heavily on one guy to carry the scoring load, then you'd better be able to get him open on some screens, because the other guys are going to double him constantly, which is what happened with McNamara.

Both Watkins and Roberts have talent, and will come back for one more year, but both need to be pushed, which brings me to the next problem...

3. No Bench. McNamara, Devendorf, Nichols, Watkins, Roberts and...what? Josh Wright had his moments, and Arinze Onuaku showed flashes late in the year of being a dominant big man. Matt Gorman wasn't a total embarassment. But the Cuse had their weakest bench in years, which says a lot because SU has seldom had a really strong bench. Nobody could come off the bench and take some scoring load off McNamara, Nichols and Devendorf. Louie McCroskey was supposed to be the second unit scorer, but he's a worse player now than he was as a freshman. At this point, I don't believe McCroskey has any basketball skills to speak of. He can't shoot, he can't rebound, he's got no handle, doesn't defend, and won't pass. The loss of Billy Edelin didn't help, either. In an ideal world, Edelin would have stayed on the straight and narrow, and Devendorf could have been the second unit scorer, ball distributor and energy guy.

Up front, Roberts and Watkins were both foul prone and needed a collective kick in the butt frequently. Without a big man to come in, steal minutes, block some shots, clean the glass and shame Watkins and Roberts into actually, you know, working hard, the Cuse suffered. Onuaku can probably fill that role just fine in 2006-7, but that's no help now.

4. Lack of Chemistry/Poor Coaching. These guys never blended together. In retrospect, that's a not uncommon result of putting a pair of shoot-first guards in the backcourt with a small forward who can't get his own shot and two lazy big men. Way too often, SU degenerated into playing one-on-one basketball and the other guys just let McNamara do his thing.

Coaching also plays a big role here. Nichols and Devendorf are both good outside shooters; why didn't Jim Boeheim call for G-Mac to do more drive-and-kickouts? He's a good passer, and though he's been conditioned to look for his own shot first, he's hardly a selfish player. Watkins and Roberts get lazy; why not try getting them the ball down low more often to see if it motivates them to do more than get garbage points? Why not just sit Watkins for the rest of the half when he shows late on a pick and roll for the 15th time? The lack of depth hurts, but you need to see the forest for the trees, and let it be known that you'll take some lumps to prove a point. Who knows, maybe Onuaku would have developed faster than he did if thrown into the fire? This was easily Jim Boeheim's worst coaching job in at least a decade.

At this point, Syracuse probably won't make the NCAA tourney, and frankly, they don't deserve to.

The Problem With FOX

2006-03-02T17:49:00.000-05:00

I was thinking the other day about the dearly departed Arrested Development and why it failed on FOX. "How", I wondered, "could a network so starved for a good sitcom give up on this show so quickly?" And then it hit me: FOX isn't even in the sitcom business.

Think about this: what's the most successful non-animated sitcom in FOX history? One has to specify non-animated, because The Simpsons single-handedly made the network viable and no other network has even come close to matching FOX's success with animated sitcoms, which are an entirely different medium than the average family sitcom. In terms of critical acclaim (a terrible measure for success, IMHO), it's probably Arrested Development. We know what happened to that show. In terms of longevity, it's Married With Children (a mind-boggling 11 seasons). If you're lumping Married With Children with the all-time greats, well, you've got problems far beyond my limited powers.

What else is there? Ally McBeal enjoyed a brief run of success, although that was halfway between drama and comedy. Bernie Mac, Malcolm in the Middle and That 70s Show all followed the same pattern: early success, then staleness set in, but they had enough of a following to justify additional seasons. I suppose they were successful enough. And apart from that? Uh, not much. Everything else has come and gone. FOX has had other successful shows, but none in that genre. Remember the intro to the Family Guy return to FOX, where Peter rattles off about 30 different shows that had to completely bomb before they could come back? That was just in the span of three years!

FOX has been around for about 20 years now, and you can count the number of successful non-animated sitcoms they've had on one hand. I think it's safe to say, at this point, that they don't know what they're doing. And that may not be a terrible thing. The sitcom, for better or worse, is a dying format. Innocent misunderstanding gives rise to major problem that's resolved with a few laughs in the span of 30 minutes? Frankly, I'm surprised it's had this much longevity to begin with.

And maybe the reason FOX sucks at coming up with (or hanging onto) a decent sitcom is the fact that they've tried hard to market themselves as a network for young people. Think about it: what are the most successful shows on FOX? American Idol, The Simpsons, 24, Prison Break, King of the Hill, The OC, and House. With the possible exceptions of House and 24, these shows all appeal disproportionately to a crowd under 35. Those are the people (actually, since I fit that bracket, I should say "we are the people"...nah, let's retain objectivity) that aren't watching sitcoms anyway.

Originally, I thought that Arrested Development failed on FOX because most of the humor went over the head of the average viewer. While that may be true, the bigger problem seems to be that FOX has set itself up as a network that doesn't cater to an audience that's disposed to sitcoms in the first place.

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Good news, though. Arrested Development's been picked up by Showtime AND they've ordered a full 26 episodes.

Bad news is, I'll have to order Showtime next year. Is it worth an extra $12 a month to watch the Bluth clan, crummy new movies that HBO didn't want, B-level boxing and C-level soft-core porn? Eh, maybe I'll wait for the DVDs.

The Mousecutioner

2006-03-01T15:41:00.000-05:00

My work day got off to a strange and unfortunate start this morning. I am usually one of the first two or three people into my office, and today was no exception. When I got in, one of the people in the office informed me that there was a mouse in the kitchen.

"Cool," I thought. The idea of a small, furry, harmless rodent scurrying around the office would be guaranteed to add some spice to the day. "Maybe I can train him to do tricks and reward him with tasty treats."

Alas, I got to the kitchen, and there was Mickey's poor little cousin, stuck in a sticky trap. I believe these are sometimes called "humane traps", which is the biggest contradiction in terms since "Central Intelligence Agency". (5 points for whoever can remember the movie from which I lifted that quote.)

I had hoped that I could take the mouse outside, pull it from the "humane trap" and send him on his way, where he would presumably be killed and eaten by a stray cat. And so it goes. Unfortunately, it became apparent that he (or she, I didn't really check the animal's gender, so I will hereinafter refer to the mouse as a "he" since I am a chauvinist) was so stuck that the amount of force necessary to pry him loose would dismember the mouse, kill the mouse, or (more likely) both. Thus, my options were as follows:

1. leave the mouse outside, on the "humane trap", to either be devoured by a stray cat (which might get stuck itself, which wouldn't be very humane, but would be funny as hell), or to dissuade potential tenants from renting real estate in the building.
2. throw it across the street and let the greasy diner over there deal with it (probably by using it in a stew).
3. take the mouse across the street and slip it in the briefcase of a particularly unpleasant attorney. I have to admit, this appealed to me.
4. put the poor thing out of its misery.

Now, I am, at the core, a compassionate person (despite what pretty much everyone I know thinks about me), so I opted for #4.

Since it is virtually impossible for a mouse to be detached from a "humane trap" intact, I fail to see how letting it get stuck and either starve to death or die of a heart attack because it's scared shitless is any more humane than the quick, final death of the good old steel traps that snap their necks as they nibble on cheese or peanut butter. In fact, it seems decidedly less humane.

I found an empty bag of cheez-its in the vending machine room, with (fortunately) a few crumbs left. If a more appropriate final resting place was possible, I haven't thought of it. I put the mouse and the trap to which it was hopelessly stuck in the bag and tossed the crumbs around a bit. After all, the condemned is entitled to one final meal. If I smoked, I'd have given him a cigarette. Maybe even put a teeny little blindfold over his eyes, but I suppose the darkness of the cheez-its bag was sufficient for that purpose.

Then I ran him over with my car, twice.

Why I'm a NASCAR Fan

2006-02-27T08:42:00.000-05:00

I take a fair amount of flack for being a NASCAR fan here in one of the bluest states in the Union. My response is usually, "who gives a shit what you think?" And I stand by that.

Nevertheless, I feel compelled to share a few things about myself with you, the loyal reader, about my upbringing:

I grew up in a town so small that we referred to it as part of the next town over.

The next town over contained roughly 1200 people and one blinking stop light.

I chewed tobacco for the first time at age 11.

I fired a gun many years before I drove a car.

My family never had a field car...but we knew plenty of people who did.

I knew lots of people who lived in trailers, and that seemed perfectly normal.

A very well-respected member of the community where I grew up married her first cousin.

I know more people who were injured by farm equipment and killed in hunting accidents than injured or killed by gang violence, drug overdoses or robberies.

Before moving to this bustling metropolis in Western New York, my 8th grade class consisted of 20 people.

I've eaten rabbit. It tasted like chicken, if I remember right.

To me, voting Republican comes as naturally as breathing.

I watched pro wrestling for a long time, even through law school and some time after.

In fact, I'd vote for Vince McMahon for U.S. Senator from New York before I'd vote for Hillary Clinton.

I'll drink cheap beer without a word of complaint, and wash it down with even cheaper beer.

My name is Phil, and I'm a redneck.

Weekend Update

2006-02-25T08:25:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. The good news is that I'm billing a lot of hours and so my boss is making lots of money on my labor these days. This will, one hopes, ultimately lead to a nice raise at some point for Yours Truly. The bad news is that you've been deprived of several minutes of free entertainment.

Fair trade.

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Speaking of the title, who was the best host of SNL's "Weekend Update"? My personal favorite was always Dennis Miller, but Norm McDonald was great, too.

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Scott Adams has some fantastic advice for new college grads:

The person who sits nearest the boss’s office gets the most assignments.

Your potential for senior management will be determined by the three H’s: Hair, Height, and Harvard degree. You need at least two out of three. (Non-Harvard schools will be acceptable if it’s clear that you “could have gone” to Harvard.)

Your hard work will be rewarded. Specifically, your boss’s boss will reward your boss for making you work so hard.

There’s no such thing as good ideas and bad ideas. There are only your own ideas and other people’s. If you want someone to like your idea, tell him he said it last week and you just remembered.

Teamwork is what you call it when you trick other people into ignoring their priorities in favor of yours.

Leadership is a form of evil. No one needs to lead you to do something that is obviously good for you. (Note: this is my personal favorite.)

You can estimate the time for any project by multiplying the number of idiots involved by one week and adding the number of capable co-workers times four weeks. (The competent ones are busier.)

In any group of three coworkers, at least one of them will be a sadistic loser intent on grabbing your ankle as he circles the drain.

Non-monetary incentives are every bit as valuable as they sound.

Business success is mostly about waiting for something lucky to happen and then taking credit.

Preparing a Powerpoint presentation will give you the sweet, sweet illusion of productivity.

It is better to be an “expert” than it is to do actual work.

The first month on any new job should be spent talking smack about the “idiot who had the job before you.”

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As you probably know, the South Dakota Legislature is deliberately drafting a law directly designed to force a challenge Roe v. Wade. I'm not entirely sure what I think about this. On the one hand, I'm very much opposed to the precedent in Roe v. Wade, and would be delighted to see the Supreme Court strike it down. (I don't think they will without one more conservative on the Court, but I've been wrong before.)

On the other hand, the "responsible government" advocate in me dislikes the idea of a state legislature drafting a law that they KNOW is unconstitutional as written under current legal precedent. No one else seems to be real concerned about this. Maybe wasting taxpayer time and dollars to challenge the Supreme Court is like leaking grand jury testimony: no one really cares anymore.

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Finally, my favorite news story of the week. This restores my faith in humanity...at least for a while. Doesn't hurt that it comes from my high school.

The Scorpion

2006-02-19T22:25:00.000-05:00

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."

The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"

Replies the scorpion: "Its my nature."

Aesop probably didn’t have Ricky Williams in mind when he wrote that fable, but he might as well have. I’m not going to pontificate on the evils of drug use, or show sympathy for an addict or anything like that. I don’t know why Williams has done what he’s done any more than that poor frog knew why the scorpion stung him.

I do know this, however: in one fell swoop, Ricky Williams has probably ended his NFL career, crippled the team that bent over backwards to accommodate him upon his return to the league, betrayed friends and guaranteed that he’ll be filing for bankruptcy.

A friend of mine, some years ago, got arrested for DWI and had his license suspended. When he went to the court-ordered seminars, they had the people there total up the cost of their actions, and express it in terms of the cost of each drink they had that night. So, for example, a man who totals his $30,000 car after drinking 10 beers paid $3000 per drink that night. By comparison, Ricky Williams has apparently taken a $9.1 million bong hit.

Man, that must be some good stuff.

Williams, of course, will now have an $8.6 million judgment hanging over his head, (which the Dolphins have already showed they are serious about collecting), not to mention likely forfeiting half a million in salary this year. Assuming he is, in fact, suspended for a full season (and it’s hard to imagine any other outcome unless this is a really bizarre misunderstanding), it is impossible to envision him playing for the Miami Dolphins again, and probably anywhere else in the NFL. Williams will be 30 before the 2007 season, will have missed almost two and a half of the previous three seasons and already have shown a complete inability to abide by the league’s substance abuse rules and a complete disregard for his teammates and coaches. Who’s going to take a chance on a guy like that?

You’ll notice that, throughout this column, I’ve referred to this gentleman as “Williams”, rather than the more familiar “Ricky”. In fact, I’ve done that ever since he retired. Even when he returned, I viewed Williams as little more than a hired gun, who was doing his job (and doing it well) to satisfy his financial obligations. In a way, that may not separate him from a lot of NFL players. But even so, I like to hear that Jason Taylor is a happy guy. I like to read that Ronnie Brown is a good human being. I view them as real people. Not Ricky Williams. I don’t care about Williams’ personal life and haven’t in a long time. I don’t know if he needs psychological help, or needs to check into rehab, or is just plain stupid, and I don’t care in the least.

Williams was a mercenary. That was an arrangement it seemed everyone had accepted. By staying clean, Williams would get the opportunity to play football, make some cash and work off the judgment hanging over his head. The team’s interest was intertwined with his; by staying clean, everyone was a winner. If he abused drugs again, everyone was a loser.

Well, here we are. Reports of yet another failed drug test have been verified. The scorpion stings the frog. Life, it seems, imitates art.

The Dolphins, of course, are fortunate in the sense that there’s little doubt that Ronnie Brown is ready to carry the load full time. That’s a good thing. Williams was viewed either as trade bait or a luxury item, depending on whom you ask. Those options are out the window now, of course. They’ll likely have to pick up an established backup running back, hopefully on the cheap, and scrap those wild trade scenarios that involved shipping Williams out for a second round pick or the equivalent. This robs the Dolphins of a valuable item, but it doesn’t create a major need. It doesn’t dramatically alter Nick Saban’s offseason plan.

In short, they’re still a hell of a lot better off than the frog.

And what of the scorpion? What about the guy whose very nature appears to be to self-destruct? $9 million in the hole, one foot in bankruptcy court, almost sure to be blackballed throughout the NFL?

He’s going to sink to the bottom of the river.

Who's Crazier: Terrell Owens or the Cartoon Protesters?

2006-02-10T07:46:00.000-05:00

I've given this some thought and decided that I am completely on board the Terrell Owens to Miami bandwagon. Recent world events have forced me to redefine the term "crazy". T.O. now looks like a perfectly rational and reasonable person compared with a large percentage of planet Earth.

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You know, there's comedy, there's high comedy, and then there's the demise of a murderous sea anemone.

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Scooter Libby says that "his superiors" authorized him to disclose information on Valerie Plame. However, the article goes on to quote a legal source that says that Libby never said that anyone in the administration authorized it. Well, if Libby was the chief of staff for Dick Cheney, it would seem that all his superiors are IN the administration! So, essentially, CNN is reporting confused nonsense (but of course, slapping the "Libby: My Superiors Authorized Leaks" header on it, rather than the much more appropriate "We Have No Idea What Libby Was Instructed To Do" header). Well done.

Incidentally, does anyone even care about keeping grand jury testimony secret anymore? Grand jury leaks seem to be how we get about 90% of our news these days.

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I've got to tell you, I hope this whole "sensitivity to Islam" thing is finally running its course. CNN's even changed their story. Originally, at the end of each of their articles on the subject of the infamous Mohammed cartoon, they'd write "CNN is not showing pictures of the cartoon out of respect for Islam." They've since changed it to "CNN is not showing the negative caricatures of the likeness of Prophet Mohammed because the network believes its role is to cover the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons while not unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy itself." That's actually a fairly reasonable position, I think.

Mark Steyn is rapidly becoming one of my favorite columnists. And frankly, I think he makes another excellent point about this whole situation. It's entirely acceptable for artists, actors and other right-brained, left-feeling souls to defame Christianity or Judaism all they want. That's part of the freedom of expression we all prize. Yet suddenly, Islam has to be treated with kid gloves. Why?

My buddy Nick (who pretty much sucks at updating his share of our blog, so I'll pick on him for this paragraph) can say things like "I'm an atheist because I can think for myself", and you know what? I won't beat the holy shit out of him. I won't send suicide bombers to his home, and I won't torch the New Hampshire State Capitol in reprisal. I won't do any of those things because: 1. Nick's my friend, and 2. it's an absolutely psychotic response. In Tehran or Jakarta, however, poor Nicholas would be cursed as an infidel (he'd surely be given away after consuming a triple bacon burger with extra bacon), and all those things would happen (except they might torch the nearest American embassy, since Concord, NH is pretty far away). Seems unreasonable to me. In fact, it sounds pretty damned crazy to me.

And, I'm pretty unhappy at the world response to this so far. I'm tired of hearing the leaders of the free world talk about "sensitivity" and "understanding" and bending over backwards to accommodate a bunch of crazies. And I recognize that there is probably a huge Muslim contingent that sees this stuff on TV and says "STOP, you fools! You're making us look bad!", but unfortunately, they're apparently not running the show. Why on earth hasn't some world leader come out and said "are you people completely f**king nuts? Stop burning our embassies, or we start bombing." I would have thought for sure George Bush could have handled that role, but I guess not.

So basically, we treat Islam with kid gloves because we're afraid of a large, angry, violent mob. Fantastic international policy. To paraphrase the immortal words of my buddy Kev, "Allah, please protect us from your followers."

---

But then, Scott Adams might have had the best take of all .

Grading the Super Bowl

2006-02-06T09:09:00.000-05:00

For lack of a more creative way to break down last night's big game, let's assign some grades to the relevant and irrelevant goings-on...

The Game - C
The thing is, the Super Bowl basically delivers a big game once every other year or thereabouts. In fact, since XXX, the even-numbered games have all been excellent, and the odd-numbered ones stunk. At least, that was the trend until recently. Last year's game was fairly competitive, but never really all that great. It wasn't helped by the least-urgent two-minute drill in recent history. And this year? Well, there just wasn't anything that stood out. It was fairly close throughout, so that's good, but really, apart from the Willie Parker 75 yard TD run and the Randle-El TD pass, what will you remember? Not much, except for one particularly bad thing we'll get to shortly.

The Coaches - C-minus
Let's just say that neither one of these game plans will go down in history with Mike Shanahan's XXXII or Bill Belichick's XXXVI game plan. Both teams, in an effort to "surprise" the other guys, constantly went away from their strengths. Why do this? Mike Holmgren, you have the league MVP in the backfield, and you have the best left tackle and left guard in the NFL. Here's a hint: Vince Lombardi called it "student body left". If it was good enough for him, it's damn sure good enough for you.

Bill Cowher didn't honk the Big Game, for once, so good for him. I think Cowher is a terrible coach when he's coaching from behind; he loses faith in his running game far too quickly, but fortunately for him, it never really came up. And, to his credit, he certainly picked the right time for the reverse pass play: Seattle was back on their heels, and as soon as they were in striking distance, Pittsburgh went for the jugular. I thought it took him too long to establish the run; Roethlisberger was terrible. I'm not sure if he was feeling the pressure or what, but Cowher was fortunate that his defense, Seattle's receivers and the refs bailed him out; Seattle could have been up 10 at halftime. Nevertheless, he's got a ring now, which probably seals his Hall of Fame bid.

The receivers - D
More dropped balls than a Greece Athena-Greece Olympia contest. Actually, that's not fair...high school teams around here run probably 3 times more than they pass (thus making me believe that Athena Coach Rick Cerone probably would have crafted a better game plan than Mike Holmgren). Anyway, way too many dropped passes. For Seattle, that's not a shock; the dropsies have killed them for the last couple years. I saw Hines Ward drop three balls, though, one of which was a touchdown. And yet somehow, he got MVP (more on this in a moment).

Food - A
We had pizza bread, chicken wings (I'm not going A-plus because my wings were good, but could have been better; I should have deep-fried them longer and at a higher temperature for extra crispiness), the obligatory veggie platter and chips, some fantastic desserts my friend Stacy baked, and ended with Carvel's Snicker's ice cream cake. We all get an A for that. Fantastic!

Commercials - C
Either excellent (the Fed Ex caveman ad) or duds (every cell phone ad), with a fairly even distribution. And by the way, I liked the Budweiser clydesdale ad...even if no one else at my house did.

I'll tell you what, though, I could have come up with a MUCH better ad for that whole "little girls need self-esteem" campaign. Show a little girl, at age 9, being neglected by her parents. Then, show her 10 years later, appearing on stage number 2 as "Cinnamon" or "Tiffany". It doesn't even have to be risque; just show the father at the strip club, then show his shocked and mortified expression as his little girl comes out from the back. This would work roughly 20 times better than these stupid "feel-good" ads.

On second thought...don't. If this self-esteem ad campaign catches on, the porn industry in our nation will dry up over the next decade. Just forget I ever said anything.

Phoebe the cat - A-plus
Every Super Bowl, my cat makes her pick. We put two index cards on the ground, with a team name on each, with a cat treat. Whichever cat treat she takes first is her pick. Well, this year, when asked to make her pick she came over to me instead. So basically, Phoebe picked Team Phil to win the Super Bowl. It's hard not to love an animal like that.

(Incidentally, when pressed, she went for the Seahawks. She should have stuck with her first choice.)

The refs - P
I say P because I needed a grade several notches below F. And P happens to start words like "Putrid", "Pathetic" and "Possibly Pre-Paid by Pittsburgh". Okay, that last one was actually four words, one of which was a compound word, but I think it fits.

Officiating has been a HUGE problem throughout the playoffs. How many games could have gone the other way because of bad calls? I count four...one of which was the Super Bowl. (The other three, if you're wondering, were Chicago-Carolina, Pittsburgh-Indy, and Denver-New England.) And the Super Bowl was the worst one of all. Every borderline call went for Pittsburgh. Not just most of them, ALL of them. To itemize:

1. Darrell Jackson's offensive pass interference, while a technically correct call, is so rarely made that I would not have been at all shocked if the refs let that go. Personally, I thought Steve Smith's pushoff in the Bears game (which was not called), that led to their first touchdown, was much worse.
2. Roethlisberger's sneak for a TD. It looked like the nose of the ball might have scratched the plane of the goal, but still, that could have easily gone the other way.
3. The holding call on Sean Locklear, which prompted John Madden to quip on replay, "if there was holding, it wasn't in that shot." If there was holding elsewhere, and they called the wrong number, so be it. But that call wiped out a gain to the Pittsburgh 1. The Seahawks would have had Shaun Alexander and the best left side of an OL in football at the one yard line. What are the chances they'd score a TD there? 90%? 95%? It's probably 17-14 Seattle if they don't blow that call. Instead, Hasselbeck throws a pick two plays later...
4. ...and gets called for an illegal block. The absolute most mind-numbing call of the game. Three Steelers, one Seahawk (a QB no less), so Hasselbeck dives at the ball carrier and gets called for an illegal block. Why on earth would he want to BLOCK a guy on an interception return when he's probably the one guy keeping the DB (Ike Taylor, I think) from scoring?
5. Hasselbeck's fumble. Not worth worrying about too much, because it was overturned on review. Of course, it forced the Seahawks to burn a challenge and took some momentum away from them after a good run.
6. The no-call on Joey Porter's horse collar tackle. Porter hauled Alexander down by the back of his jersey, in the exact same way Roy Williams did to Terrell Owens. Isn't this a 15 yard penalty? Or does it just get called when someone's carted off the field?

If I'm missing one, feel free to note it. I'm sure there were others. Frankly, I would have felt better if the NFL had just gone all-out and announced that the referees would be Terry Bradshaw, Jack Lambert, Meaghan Cowher and three random fans with mustard-stained Jerome Bettis jerseys.

The MVP voting - D-minus
Here's what I think happened: the game, while interesting and intense, wasn't all that well played. When this happens, the voters will usually pick the winning team's quarterback as the MVP, for lack of a clearly superior choice (e.g., Joe Namath, SB III).

Unfortunately for them, in this case, Ben Roethlisberger was terrible. Admittedly, his receivers dropped about 5 passes, which didn't help, but he threw two picks (one of which should have gone for 6), and ran for a dubious touchdown. They couldn't pick him and retain whatever marginal credibility they might have had. So they looked at the stat sheet, saw that Hines Ward had 5 catches for 123 yards and a TD. "Good enough!" they said. Only one problem: Ward didn't play all that well. He dropped three passes, one of which cost Pittsburgh a touchdown.

I would have felt much better if they'd given it to Willie Parker. Yeah, he basically had one big play all night. But that play put Pittsburgh in front for good, and it's probably the one that we'll be seeing on highlight films over and over again. How about Ike Taylor, who had 7 tackles, a huge INT, and played pretty good defense all night? Or how about, God forbid, picking a Pittsburgh offensive lineman? I mean, they ran for 181 yards, and Parker's run aside, none of the running backs stood out all that much. Alan Faneca pulled on Parker's big run, had the key block and played an awesome game all around. Why not him?

The Football Gods - A-plus
The NFL ran a bunch of ads that showed players and coaches with the Vince Lombardi trophy, almost all of them touching it. And the vast majority of players in those ads were Steelers. Touching a championship trophy before winning it is about as smart as building your house on an Indian burial ground. The Steelers have no cheerleaders, got a ridiculously favorable run from the refs, did not establish the run early, talked smack about their opponents for two weeks, and got an insane amount of media hype, which they collectively ate up with a spoon. The Football Gods have inflicted career-ending and life-shortening injuries for lesser offenses. So of course, it makes perfect sense that the Football Gods favored the Steelers with victory.

(Why am I giving the Football Gods an A-plus, despite their terrible performance? Because I refuse to anger them and risk the chance that they'll inflict a 5-11 season on the Dolphins next year.)

Jerome Bettis - F
Was anyone else REALLY tired of the whole Jerome Berris/Detroit thing? It got bad at our house; when the NFL showed the picture of Bettis holding the Lombardi Trophy (which they were clearly saving for the end of the game), we all started shouting and throwing middle fingers at The Bus. But hey, he's a nice guy. At least that's what I keep hearing. Oh, and he's from Detroit. He's a nice guy from Detroit. A nice guy from Detroit who couldn't gain 5 yards if his life depended on it last night.

Lady Luck - A
You have to be lucky to be a Super Bowl champion. There's no doubt about it. But I can't remember a team getting more good breaks than the Steelers did in these playoffs. If Carson Palmer's knee isn't turned into ground beef two plays into the game, there's an excellent chance the Bengals knock them out in round 1. If Nick Harper cuts to the outside, instead of trying to juke Ben Roethlisberger (I still don't know why he didn't just run up the sideline), or if Vanderjagt and Manning don't collectively choke away the final drive, the Colts probably knock them out in round 2. If the refs don't screw the Broncos, there's a good chance the Steelers end up playing the Patriots, and not the Broncos, and possibly have a much different outcome (I mean, there's a big difference between playing Jake Plummer in an AFC Championship game and Tom Brady in an AFC Championship game). If the refs don't screw the Seahawks, there's a decent chance the Seahawks win the Super Bowl.

So basically, the Steelers got a huge, unexpected and largely undeserved (in their defense, the officiating in the Colts game was also terrible, but was terrible AGAINST them) break in each round, and each time, there's a decent chance it would have changed the outcome.

Whoever said it's better to be lucky than good sure knew what he was talking about.

For Sale: One Ego, Well-Used, Seldom-Bruised. Dignity Not Included.

2006-02-03T12:46:00.000-05:00

A man goes into a bar, sees an attractive woman sitting there and walks over to her.
"Hey," he asks, "would you sleep with me for a million dollars?"
She thinks for a second and says, "A million bucks? Absolutely!"
"Okay, how about for twenty bucks?"
"Twenty bucks?!? What do you think I am?"
"Well, we've established what you are. I'm just trying to negotiate a price."

My wife and I were hypothesizing what we'd do if she got a new, higher paying job someday. By way of background, my wife and I are both attorneys. She makes more money than I do. Not a lot more, but more. But then, she also works longer hours and harder in the hours she does work (for example, check the time stamp on this post). This isn't the best situation for me, and I imagine that most men, on some level, feel the same way. You see, I would be fine with making more money than my wife, since it would make my ego feel good. But I would also be fine with my wife making significantly more than me, since whatever bruises my ego sustained could simply be massaged away by handfuls of cash.

So basically, my ego's for sale. It's just a question of finding the appropriate price.

---

From the file of "Couples that might not make it": I was listening to the radio today, and a man dedicated the song "Fat Bottomed Girls" to his fiancee.

Someday, I'll make a list of the absolute worst songs you could dedicate to your wife or girlfriend. However, I'm nearly certain that "Fat Bottomed Girls" would be #1 on the list. Pretty much anything by Ike Turner would be #2.

---

In my family, we have a problem with the word "everything".

There's a hot dog place I like very much. When I order my dog, I like hot sauce, onions and mustard on it. Somewhere along the way, I realized that "everything" was shorthand for "hot sauce, onions and mustard" at this establishment. This seemed bizarre to me, since they also have relish and ketchup available as potential condiments. And there's always the possibility that, upon hearing "everything", some overzealous fry cook might throw hash browns, a hamburger, a fried egg, a strawberry milkshake and some window cleaner on it.

Be that as it may, "everything" is understood to mean "hot sauce, onions and mustard", regardless of how little sense it makes. Do they concede that relish is for losers? If so, why offer it at all? Nevertheless, every time I order a hot dog there, I always say the words "with everything" with complete trepidation, ready to leap over the counter and use force to stop them from putting relish on my hot dog, if need be. It's a bizarre little ritual.

Nevertheless, it is not half as bizarre as the ordeal my stepfather endured. One morning, he, my mom and sister went to a bagel store. He was desirous of ordering a bagel with egg, ham and cheese on it. He saw a sign for an "everything bagel" and assumed, not unreasonably, that this was what he needed to order.

Unfortunately, the "everything bagel" merely referred to the bagel itself, which had all manner of seeds, spices, dried fruit and other nonsense baked into it. It did not refer to the toppings on the bagel (or, since the bagel would be sliced in half, the innards). My stepfather is an intelligent, learned, successful man. He is, however, arguably the most stubborn human being on the planet.

I am told the exchange went something like this:
Minimum-wage earning, minimally-educated bagel shop functionary: And for you, sir?
Stepdad: I'd like an everything bagel.
BSF: Okay, sir, what would you like on it?
S: Everything.
BSF: (confused)
S: I want everything on it. Isn't that what the everything bagel is?!?
(At this point, my sister slowly walked away and toward the car.)
BSF: (confused and frightened) No, sir, that's just a type of bagel. Now, what would you like on it?
S: EVERYTHING!!!

We're no longer welcome at that establishment. It's probably just as well.

The Big Two

2006-01-28T12:21:00.000-05:00

No, I'm not talking about James Westfall and Dr. Kenneth Noisewater, I'm talking about Ford and GM. Ford announced last week that they're cutting 30,000 jobs. Chapter 11 talk has been floating around GM for some time, and they're poised to lose their long-held position as the world's #1 automaker to Toyota sometime this year.

So, uh, what happened?

I hear a lot of people say "well, American automakers don't know how to make a good small to mid-sized car." Preposterous. While it's certainly true that both GM and Ford have failed to find an acceptable American alternative to the Camry and Accord, I personally believe this stems not from ignorance, but a half-baked business plan. Does it REALLY make sense to say that American engineers are somehow less capable than their Japanese counterparts? The thought that this falls on American auto workers is false, since most Camrys sold in the US are made in Georgetown, KY and most Accords are made in Ohio (Sandusky, I think, but maybe I'm just thinking of the movie "Tommy Boy").

Nope, the fault here falls squarely on management. Bill Ford himself admitted as much when he said, "for years, we've essentially said 'if we make it, the public will buy it.'" I give the man credit for publicly admitting the shortcomings of his company's business plan, when most CEOs would have blamed Congress, rising costs, the Japanese, Hurricane Katrina or some other set of calamities. Of course, then he shitcanned 30,000 people, so I'm probably giving him a little too much credit.

Ford and GM have long had a business plan that assumes that Americans don't want to own the same car for more than a few years. As such, it made business sense to them to consciously avoid building a car that would run great for a decade. It made sense to save costs up front since they don't care about the resale market for those cars and neither would the initial consumer, who simply wanted to move on to a newer model. Given their understanding of the market, this was a perfectly sensible choice. Of course, that understanding proved to be flawed. Honda and Toyota came in, showed people a car that could run great for a really long time and allow them to blow their money elsewhere (perhaps as an indirect result we can blame Honda and Toyota for rising home costs everywhere). And as a result, they kept grabbing market share here in the US.

How did The Big Two respond? High profit vehicles like SUVs kept the bottom line attractive until that market was flooded, and then rendered less attractive by rising gas prices. Snazzy concept cars were pushed onto the public. Then they tried slashing prices and offering cash back deals and all sorts of other things to make buying their products attractive, essentially sacrificing profits to try and hold onto market share. That's a winning proposition when you're trying to gain a foothold in a market, but not so much when you're trying to RETAIN your market share. Essentially, they did everything BUT try to build something to counter what the Japanese automakers were doing. Unfortunately, this is precisely what American consumers wanted, and GM and Ford had become so hung up on their "if we build it, they will buy it" mentality that they simply refused to do this.

Now, a whole bunch of auto workers are paying for that mistake, and more will pay in the future. Ford's probably done laying off people for awhile, but GM's problems are just beginning. Chapter 11 talk has centered around the costs associated with GM's ultra-generous (and therefore ultra-expensive) pension and medical plans, coupled with the mounting debt associated with high expenses and a drop in sales. GM can't even borrow money at a reasonable rate anymore. The various bond rating agencies have progressively downgraded their credit rating from "bad" to "worse" to "they might as well pay you back in Confederate currency". The last I saw, GM was paying 12% on their bonds. That's junk bond territory at this point.

At some point, some pinhead from UAW is going to start demanding increased tariffs on foreign autos. Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. I like to think it's because someone intelligent runs the auto union and realized that every single time that's been tried, it's failed horribly. On the upside, that strategy helped kick the Great Depression into high gear.

Is it too late for The Big Two? Maybe, maybe not. I think that there's enough latent affection for our corporate behemoths that if they came up with a reasonable alternative to the Accord and Camry, people would buy it, but that alone isn't going to solve their problems. If they'd done it in 1994, it would have, but not now. Ford, I think, is going to simply accept life as a smaller automaker and continue to shift their focus to trucks. They've been doing that for awhile anyway. They'll probably finally pull the plug on Ford's retarded, braindead little brother, Mercury Schaivo, and recast Ford as a truck company that sells a couple cars, and Lincoln as their luxury brand (there will always be a demand for this). As I noted, the worst is probably over for Ford, who doesn't have the massive debt problem GM does.

GM is in deeper sewage. They seem so hung up on retaining that title of "world's biggest automaker" that I wonder if they've got the guts to slim down before it's too late. They killed off Oldsmobile a couple years ago, and I would assume that Pontiac or Buick is next. Maybe both. They seem to be phasing out Saturn as well, their initial, somewhat feeble attempt to "give the public what they want." They could recast their lineup like this: Chevrolet for the everyman, GMC for trucks and SUVs (why they simply run trucks down an assembly line slapping "GMC" on one and a bowtie on the next is beyond me), Cadillac for the luxury cars, Hummer (the one brand that's actually been profitable) for the anti-environmentalist, cow-butchering, Red State soccer mom.

But even if they scale back operations appropriately, their financial problems are far worse than Ford's. The combination of problems they've got (massive employee costs, lousy credit and humungous debt) simply won't be solved easily. If they go Chapter 11, one wonders if they'd ever recover at all. It would almost certainly be the most disastrous bankruptcy in US history; the impact on the financial markets would be hard. That's a LOT of commercial paper that would be paid back at 40 cents on the dollar (or whatever).

American automakers have faced major problems before. Chrysler was d-u-n DONE in the early 80s, and they came back from the dead. One hopes the spirit of Lee Iaccoca lives on within Bill Ford and Rick Wagoner.