I hate to to post again so soon, as I already feel like I'm starting to dominate this blog (I don't really want to...but see the last five or six posts). HOWEVAH, I felt the need to comment on this, after being turned onto something by the DC Sports Bog that I take just a wee bit of issue with (as does D-Stein). Some guy who cbssportsline has been desperate enough for "opinions" to give a badly named column of poor quality, has written that DC is, "the most pitiful sports town in the country."
Really.
I don't want to make this as stupidly long as one of our draft wet dream fantasies, but pardon me while I spit some hot fire.
Now, I know dicks like this are just trying to get a rise out of fans like me who take this too seriously; they don't actually believe the nonsensical, retarded shit that comes out of their mouthes or, more likely, another orfice, they just want to raise their Q rating because they know when it comes to them writing with an actually feasible opinon, because, let's face it, most sports writers could be replaced by autistic monkeys and you couldn't find a difference in literary style. Hence, they only way most sports "journalists" can get noticed is by writing stuff that has no bearing and pisses people off, people, unfortunately, like me. This aside, let's delve into this little journalistic gem:
" As the flagship of the Washington area, there is no NFL franchise, of the ones 10 years or older, that is routinely more laughable than the Burgundy and Gold. Their owner is delusional, their management team misguided and their coaching staff unorganized."
How about the Lions, who have drafted four wide receivers with their first-round picks four out of the last five years despite having a wretched defense. But Calvin Johnson's going to be awesome enought o give them one of the best offenses in the league...quarterbacked by Jon Kitna. And Charlie Rogers and Mike Williams were "awesome" too...and yet, the Lions still suck, still have the worst GM in the (history of the?) NFL, and have still never won a championship. Neither have the Bengals, and I'd rather have a racially offensive nicknamed, overpaid and underperforming NFL team run by a raging asshole with the world's biggest Napoleon complex than root for a team that was called the "Bungles" for a decade and has about half the roster in a drunk tank/jail at any given time. And has never won a championship either. Oh, and Arizona should be a good team pretty soon...when we get Peace in the Middle East.
"Yeah, the XXVI win still brings that warm, fuzzy feeling, but that was so long ago in sports years that even Tony Kornheiser had hair back then."
Anyone who knows anything about Tony Kornheiser knows there are two things about hm that have never changed: He has NEVER had hair, and he has always been orange. And I'd still rather have that warm, fuzzy feeling from Superbowl XXVI (note: if you just write XXVI without the Superbowl, it makes no sense. It's exactly the same as me writing, "Yeah the 26 win was great." only in Roman numerals. It might not be a gramatical error or anything, but it just reeks of ignorance and poor syntax. Try writing less colloquially. Ass.
" In a sport valuing ballpark aesthetics and character nearly as much as the actual game on the field, the Nats play in a concrete hole in the ground that has as much charm as Mel Gibson three drinks deep at an Anti-Defamation League champagne brunch."
Uh, if you want people to think that you actually grew up in the DC area, you might actually appreciate that concrete (above) the ground. As much as everybody bitches about it, I went to a Nats game with six friends, one of whom actually is from Bethesda, the rest out of towners (all but one were from the South). None of them real sports fans, two of them were girls who couldn't care less about baseball and were just there to be amongst friends...all of them liked/loved RFK. And there were about 30-35,000 other people in the stands who felt similarly (this was the Friday night game against the Indians, one of the best teams in the AL, which the Nats won...just like they won the series). Also, you'd be a lot more credible as a "Washingtonian" if you didn't group DC together with Baltimore. No one in either city thinks the other city is the same, or desrve to be grouped as the same metro area (except Peter Angelos, but that's history now, thank God). It's like saying Oakland and San Fran are the same, LA and Anaheim are the same, you get the point. It's a dumb, telling statement that exposes you as either
A) A moron
B) A liar
C) Both
I'd like to believe C, but I have this bad feeling that it's only A, and you really are from the DC area. Congratulations, you brought the entire region down by your past residence here.
"Short-term prospects [for the Nats]: Putrid, considering half the team will be shipped out come late July"
Well, the first word is kind of accurate, although considering the massive drop in payroll, the fact that they're the same record as last year's "more talented" team suggests that they're not as craptastic as everyone likes to think. And if you mean Dmitri Young and Ronnie Belliard, and maybe Ray King, when you say half the team will be gone by late July, well, THAT would be a reasonable statement.
" While management's better than it's ever been with Big Ern Grunfeld calling the shots, the Wizards still haven't developed a big man of note since Gheorghe Muresan or found a point guard worthy enough to fill Rod Strickland's sneaks. Anybody ready for another try at the Brent Price era?"
Uh, have you watched the NBA since the late 90's? Last time I checked, Gilbert Arenas was averaging 28 ppg, and an NBA superstar. Oh yeah, he plays point guard too. Rod Strickland does average about 28 pounds of weeds smoked a year though.
If big men with growth stigmatisms are what you consider quality big men, go watch the Maryland NightHawks' Chinese freak show. And the only person allowed to call Grunfeld "Big Ern" is Mrs. Grunfeld.
"With Arenas talking of exodus and no fresh blood of note having been drafted over the past handful of years, the Wizards are at that "are we Kate Winslet or Katie Holmes" how-will-our-franchise-be-perceived conundrum."
Despite making everybody in DC nervous, Arenas' own blog says that he isn't going anywhere. Why don't you do an ounce of research sometime?
"The team does have the best fan-run basketball blog , so that's nice and all."
Wrong. Wizznutzz is not the best fan-run basketball blog. It's the BEST BLOG EVER.
I don't really care about hockey, so what you say about the Capitals doesn't really bother me, except for this:
"Ted Leonsis, easily D.C.'s best owner, is the man."
If annoying the hell out of anyone who's ever around him is being the man, count me in. He also gets in fights with fans. What's not to like? That AOL Time Warner merger deinitely went off without a hitch too.
" With college basketball's second- or third-hottest coach, Georgetown's back on the national scene. But with no extension imminent for John Thompson III, it's a nervous delight on the Hilltop.
We can always expect George Washington to come up for air every once and a while and make a little bit of noise, but to expect any consistency from Karl Hobbs' under-resourced program would be unrealistic.
Maryland has the resources, but can't seem to get into college basketball's elite, which is frustrating considering Duke's recent woes and the supposedly diluted ACC. Gary Williams is slowly becoming a basketball dinosaur."
All three of these paragraphs are worthless. JTIII is under contract for two more years, GW is the cream of its conference and will probably continue to be (as it has been for the past three seasons...consistently) as long as Karl Hobbs is there. And I remember the exact same "dinosaur" statement being said about Williams the same season he went to the Final Four for the first time. Also, I guess having two down years does erase the '01 Final Four, the '02 National Championship, and the '03 ACC Championship. Maybe I'm living in the past, but Maryland also was the second best team in the second best conference in the country last year (usually the first). Not ideal, but the first place team was a National Championship favorite (North Carolina). And Georgetown did go to the Final Four this past year. And they return everybody except Jeff Green, and are adding a couple of monster recruits to an already Top 10 team. Uhhhh....that seems like a pretty good indicator for the future.
True, college football in this area sucks, since the only real local I-A team is Maryland, a basketball/lacrosse/soccer school. I guess that makes Duke and North Carolina pitiful sports colleges too.
"Lacrosse is the Emanuel Lewis of D.C. sports. It's cute, everyone generally likes it, but those same people keep saying, "just wait until it gets bigger." They've been saying that since Webster was on the air. The sport ain't getting any bigger.
Soccer and women's basketball are novelties to Washingtonians, sort of like the few remaining healthy animals at the National Zoo."
I'm not a big lacrosse fan, but it is the fastest growing sport in the country (or the second behind soccer depending on what stats you look at). Also, going to college in the South, I know it's growing exponentially down there, as evidenced by numerous schools of varying size (including my 1500 student DIII school) adding lacrosse programs.
I'm not a women's basketball fan either, but I think it's insulting and arrogant to say that people in DC don't care about women's basketball, when the Mystics have consistently drawn the biggest crowds in thier joke of a league, Maryland won the women's national championship last year, and gets some pretty good sized crowds.
As for soccer, I think DC has one of the best, if not the best, fanbases not only for the MLS but also for USMNT. Anecdotelly I went to a dinner a few weekends ago where me and another guy (an acqauintance) were both consistently keeping tabs on the US team's match. It wasn't a Gold Cup match; it wasn't a friendly against Mexico or some other decent team/rival. It was a friendly against China, not exactly an A-List match. I know far more people, both in this area and down South, who care more about Thierry Henry going to FC Barcelona than people who care about Anaheim winning the Stanley Cup. The TV ratings for soccer vs. hockey, and the attendance numbers for the United vs. the Caps favor soccer...by a lot. 5,000 more fans per game to be specific (stat via DC Sports Bog, which I trust did research).
All in all, I spent way to much time with this, but it's nice to find a productive way to vent a little bit of pent up frustration. I don't like making this blog negative, but it seemed appropriate in this case. I never mentioned Douchebag X's name, either. And his book review in the Washingtonian sucked.
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