Showing posts with label Football. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Football. Show all posts
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Friday, November 30, 2007
Sorry, I'm Just Not Done with This.
Eugene Robinson, who I know from personal experience is a pretty nice guy, but whose writings I'm typically not a big fan of, has a pretty good take on the media/societal reaction to Sean Taylor. I appreciate the fact that he's one of (if not the first) major media figure to take on Wilbon's inappropriate and asinine comments that he is defiantly still sticking by the notion that, as Robinson puts it, Taylor's "suicide-by-bad-attitude".
There's also a little well-written article about Jason Campbell and his friendship with Taylor. Campbell speaks a little bit to the fact that the best tribute that the Redskins can give Taylor is to win out this season. I hope it doesn't sound insensitive, but it will be interesting to see how they play with his death hanging over them the rest of the season.
Still want to write one more thing about this (at least).
Monday, November 26, 2007
Further Reading
Cause I can link now and I don't feel like putting a whole new post up.
Sumo great calls it quits.
The Redskins are 5-6, and critics are saying they're dead in the water, everyone was convinced Gibbs was over the hill. Hmmmm, when was the last time this happened? Oh yeah, two years ago, when they went 10-6 and made the playoffs.
Yeah, Bill Cowher can suck my balls.
Sumo great calls it quits.
The Redskins are 5-6, and critics are saying they're dead in the water, everyone was convinced Gibbs was over the hill. Hmmmm, when was the last time this happened? Oh yeah, two years ago, when they went 10-6 and made the playoffs.
Yeah, Bill Cowher can suck my balls.
Yikes
We're not going to comment on the Sean Taylor incident right now. We know, everyone's been anxiously awaiting Sandy, Baby's take on the entire situation, but we're going to hold our official comment until the situation is more clear cut.
But really, it's too serious for the snarkiness that sports blogging typically entails, and we really don't know what's going on for sure. Nor, it seems, do most of the other Redskins (this is where I'd hyperlink the text to Jason La Canfora's Redskins Insider for the latest info, but the 11 year-old iMac my "job" provides me with won't let me...just click on the link to the side).
I was going to talk about how it was dumb to call the season over when the 'Skins are only a game behind Detroit and to dissuade any further talk of Chin/Colbert with a hard "t" for coach/GM in 2008, but it seems kind of dumb to talk about right now.
One thing "we" (I) do take issue with, though, is Michael Wilbon's snap judgement of the situation, witout having any knowledge of the details about what happened. In his usual Monday afternoon chat on washingtonpost.com, somebody asked him for his comment about the entire mess (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/11/20/DI2007112000544.html?hpid=topnews)
"I've known guys like Taylor all my life, grew up with some. They still have shades of gray and shouldn't be painted in black and white...I know how I feel about Taylor, and this latest news isn't surprising in the least, not to me. Whether this incident is or isn't random, Taylor grew up in a violent world, embraced it, claimed it, loved to run in it and refused to divorce himself from it. He ain't the first and won't be the last. We have no idea what happened, or if what we know now will be revised later. It's sad, yes, but hardly surprising."
Typically, we here at Sandy, Baby have the utmost respect for Mr. Wilbon, even if he is an ally of the Salieri, and even though he has made some ridiculous statements (he once criticized the Patriots for hiring Bill Belicheck instead of a black coach, with the inference that race was a factor. Now we know that Belicheck just got the job because he sold his soul to Beelzebub....he also said he was certain that Michael Jordan wasn't coming back to play for the Wizards (yeah, that actually happened). Uh, oops?) and despite the fact that he co-authored Charles Barkley's debacle of a "book".
But, in the words of GOB Bluth, C'mon! Like you know how the guy is living his life more than his teammates? The general consensus seems to be that (1) This was an armed robbery. This was not Batman rounding up a posse to go get his ATVs back, and (2) His teammates have said that he had matured a great deal in the past 18 months (which is a subjective judgment) but clearly he can't be that married to a "violent world" when he moves to the other side of town and the typical statement of each one of his teammates and coaches was that he's actually not a bad guy and WAS distancing himself from the people he'd been around when he was getting in trouble. AS Jason La Canfora, who actually covers the team and is with them on a day to day basis reports:
"Also, just to clear something up - this is a different house in a different part of South Florida than where Sean had the ATV incident two years ago and was arrested on firearms charges. He was in his old neighbrogood near his mom's house when that incident occured, he has moved to a nicer part of town since starting his family and, according to teammates, had stopped hanging around a lot of his former associates after his last legal problems."
Of course, all of this seems trivial since the latest headline on Redskins Insider is "Sean Taylor "Clinging To Life"".
But really, it's too serious for the snarkiness that sports blogging typically entails, and we really don't know what's going on for sure. Nor, it seems, do most of the other Redskins (this is where I'd hyperlink the text to Jason La Canfora's Redskins Insider for the latest info, but the 11 year-old iMac my "job" provides me with won't let me...just click on the link to the side).
I was going to talk about how it was dumb to call the season over when the 'Skins are only a game behind Detroit and to dissuade any further talk of Chin/Colbert with a hard "t" for coach/GM in 2008, but it seems kind of dumb to talk about right now.
One thing "we" (I) do take issue with, though, is Michael Wilbon's snap judgement of the situation, witout having any knowledge of the details about what happened. In his usual Monday afternoon chat on washingtonpost.com, somebody asked him for his comment about the entire mess (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/11/20/DI2007112000544.html?hpid=topnews)
"I've known guys like Taylor all my life, grew up with some. They still have shades of gray and shouldn't be painted in black and white...I know how I feel about Taylor, and this latest news isn't surprising in the least, not to me. Whether this incident is or isn't random, Taylor grew up in a violent world, embraced it, claimed it, loved to run in it and refused to divorce himself from it. He ain't the first and won't be the last. We have no idea what happened, or if what we know now will be revised later. It's sad, yes, but hardly surprising."
Typically, we here at Sandy, Baby have the utmost respect for Mr. Wilbon, even if he is an ally of the Salieri, and even though he has made some ridiculous statements (he once criticized the Patriots for hiring Bill Belicheck instead of a black coach, with the inference that race was a factor. Now we know that Belicheck just got the job because he sold his soul to Beelzebub....he also said he was certain that Michael Jordan wasn't coming back to play for the Wizards (yeah, that actually happened). Uh, oops?) and despite the fact that he co-authored Charles Barkley's debacle of a "book".
But, in the words of GOB Bluth, C'mon! Like you know how the guy is living his life more than his teammates? The general consensus seems to be that (1) This was an armed robbery. This was not Batman rounding up a posse to go get his ATVs back, and (2) His teammates have said that he had matured a great deal in the past 18 months (which is a subjective judgment) but clearly he can't be that married to a "violent world" when he moves to the other side of town and the typical statement of each one of his teammates and coaches was that he's actually not a bad guy and WAS distancing himself from the people he'd been around when he was getting in trouble. AS Jason La Canfora, who actually covers the team and is with them on a day to day basis reports:
"Also, just to clear something up - this is a different house in a different part of South Florida than where Sean had the ATV incident two years ago and was arrested on firearms charges. He was in his old neighbrogood near his mom's house when that incident occured, he has moved to a nicer part of town since starting his family and, according to teammates, had stopped hanging around a lot of his former associates after his last legal problems."
Of course, all of this seems trivial since the latest headline on Redskins Insider is "Sean Taylor "Clinging To Life"".
Sunday, November 4, 2007
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now....
Brothers, friends, Washingtonians, lend me your ears! Hear me for my cause; and be
silent, that you may hear: believe me for mine fandom, and have
respect for my fandom, that you may believe: censure me in your
"wisdom"; and stop talking out of your asses.
So let it be with J. Gibbs.
He is our coach, faithful and innovative,
Yet Minor Thread says he is senile,
and wants the Chin to assume the position,
because Joe is over the hill,
and the Chin reclines in a heated studio.
Joe hath brought many Lombardis home to Ol' DC,
for whom doth he win these trophies of inconceivable
value? Dost this seemeth anachronistic playcalling?
See the wounds that the Wide Receiver rendeth,
Missing important team meetings with "shin splints",
A thousand curses upon B.Lloyd and his "Euro-cut"!
Lo, how quickly the hurts of Burgundy and Gold faith
full turn on he who brought us to the promised land, not
once, not twice, but thrice.
Et tu Minor Thread? Et tu Lil Bro?
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Good Lord, for the Love of All that is Good in this World, Make it Stop!
(Bill Belicheck, left, clubs Joe Gibbs, right)Since the blog has been quiet for a while I thought about liveblogging this game, but hey, I'm lazy. That and I think if I was actually registering the beatdown that the Skins are taking I'd try and hide in a swimming pool like Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate".
On a lighter note, as I'm writing this during halftime and listening to Terry Bradshaw "read" highlights, I found myself wondering: is he drunk or just brain damaged?
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Hell Hath No Fury like a Spurned Fan
Ladies (ha!) and gentlemen, I have BREAKING NEWS. Michael Vick's defense attorney, has said he's NOT GUILTY. THIS IS A SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT!!! AND BARRY BONDS IS GOING TO BREAK HANK AARON'S RECORD UNLESS HIS HEAD EXPLODES! AN NBA REF MODELS HIS LIFE AFTER THE SPORTING GOODS OWNER/COMPULSIVE GAMBLER/T-1000 FROM SEASON TWO OF THE SOPRANOS! AND PEOPLE CHEAT IN THE TOUR DE FRANCE! AND DID I MENTION DOG OWNERS DON'T LIKE MICHAEL VICK!
Seriously, who the fuck cares? There's so much negativity in this world, especially in the News world; I mean, don't they realize there's more important stuff in the world than Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron's record...like we knew he was going to do for the past three seasons?
I, and I'm pretty sure most other Americans (and fans in general), watch sports to find some kind of semblance of a distraction from the gravitas of the real world...which is where that belongs. When someone like Barry Bonds cheats and breaks a historic record that was set by a man infinitely more classy, an individual who dealt with a great deal of adversity throughout his career in an era where being black was a much bigger deal, and to many people, a major sin. And that's about all I care about that story...Bonds is going to break the record, I wish every pitcher he's faced this year had thrown at him because he's a gigantic asshole and a cheat. That took me 30 seconds to make my mind up about that, and yet, every time I turn on ESPN I have to see some bullshit update about "Breaking Aaron" or "Chasing Aaron" or whatever the hell they call it, the soulless husk that is Skip Bayless arguing about oh so sanctimoniously, or some poor reporter who thought he'd be on NBC Nightly News by this point in his career giving a thousand yard stare into the camera and trying. so. hard. to act interested about the "story" he's (or she...Rachel Nichols) covering. All it does is make people's blood pressure go higher in a world, where, frankly there's plenty of better reasons for your blood pressure to be high. Though mine did spike after reading this non-researched, uninformed piece of crap column from a normally professional columnist(and nice guy).
The same goes for Michael Vick, who, it seems, makes Ted Nugent look like a hippie for his stance on animal cruelty (by the way, the odds are set at 1:2 that Deion Sanders is the next (ex)athlete to be uncovered as a dogfighting criminal mastermind...at least based off of this Op-Ed piece, which could only be written by someone as oblivious and annoying as...Deion Sanders).
As for Tim Donaghy, well, he's a moron, but the most damning thing about the whole situation is that he was fixing the games he was working and he probably wasn't even the worst official on a lot of them. David Stern should probably just clean house and offer a shitload of money to a bunch of college refs with clean backgrounds, since the officiating was/is so horrendous no one could actually tell when someone was intentionally making bad calls.
At least people are responding to all this stuff like they should; with the unmitigated outrage of someone who's been betrayed.
Or like this.
(I like to think Robert Byrd saw one of his great grandchildren playing Rock'em Sock'em Robots).
It's the reaction people should have. Hey, they cheated on us; we expected them to help provide that escapism that we so desperately crave, and in some cases, need to stay just a little bit saner than we would thinking about all of the life's problems constantly, and instead, they fucked up the world just a little bit more. But hey, we're big people, we can get over it. Let's move on. Life's too short to worry about Tim Donaghy. We should be focusing more on orchestrating a theoretical four team trade for Kevin Garnett using Juan Carlos Navarro as a centerpiece.
Oh, and by the way: Cycling? Everybody but Lance Armstrong cheats at cycling.
Seriously, who the fuck cares? There's so much negativity in this world, especially in the News world; I mean, don't they realize there's more important stuff in the world than Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron's record...like we knew he was going to do for the past three seasons?
I, and I'm pretty sure most other Americans (and fans in general), watch sports to find some kind of semblance of a distraction from the gravitas of the real world...which is where that belongs. When someone like Barry Bonds cheats and breaks a historic record that was set by a man infinitely more classy, an individual who dealt with a great deal of adversity throughout his career in an era where being black was a much bigger deal, and to many people, a major sin. And that's about all I care about that story...Bonds is going to break the record, I wish every pitcher he's faced this year had thrown at him because he's a gigantic asshole and a cheat. That took me 30 seconds to make my mind up about that, and yet, every time I turn on ESPN I have to see some bullshit update about "Breaking Aaron" or "Chasing Aaron" or whatever the hell they call it, the soulless husk that is Skip Bayless arguing about oh so sanctimoniously, or some poor reporter who thought he'd be on NBC Nightly News by this point in his career giving a thousand yard stare into the camera and trying. so. hard. to act interested about the "story" he's (or she...Rachel Nichols) covering. All it does is make people's blood pressure go higher in a world, where, frankly there's plenty of better reasons for your blood pressure to be high. Though mine did spike after reading this non-researched, uninformed piece of crap column from a normally professional columnist(and nice guy).
The same goes for Michael Vick, who, it seems, makes Ted Nugent look like a hippie for his stance on animal cruelty (by the way, the odds are set at 1:2 that Deion Sanders is the next (ex)athlete to be uncovered as a dogfighting criminal mastermind...at least based off of this Op-Ed piece, which could only be written by someone as oblivious and annoying as...Deion Sanders).
As for Tim Donaghy, well, he's a moron, but the most damning thing about the whole situation is that he was fixing the games he was working and he probably wasn't even the worst official on a lot of them. David Stern should probably just clean house and offer a shitload of money to a bunch of college refs with clean backgrounds, since the officiating was/is so horrendous no one could actually tell when someone was intentionally making bad calls.
At least people are responding to all this stuff like they should; with the unmitigated outrage of someone who's been betrayed.
Or like this.
(I like to think Robert Byrd saw one of his great grandchildren playing Rock'em Sock'em Robots).
It's the reaction people should have. Hey, they cheated on us; we expected them to help provide that escapism that we so desperately crave, and in some cases, need to stay just a little bit saner than we would thinking about all of the life's problems constantly, and instead, they fucked up the world just a little bit more. But hey, we're big people, we can get over it. Let's move on. Life's too short to worry about Tim Donaghy. We should be focusing more on orchestrating a theoretical four team trade for Kevin Garnett using Juan Carlos Navarro as a centerpiece.
Oh, and by the way: Cycling? Everybody but Lance Armstrong cheats at cycling.
Monday, June 25, 2007
_____ is the Most Pitiful Sportswriter in the Country (besides Greg Doyel and Jay Mariotti...but at least people have heard of them).
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.
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.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
dumber than a blow to the head
I have a brillant idea: Let's pay lots of money to have a conference in lovely Rosemont, Ill., bring smarty pants scientists together ... and then friggin' bicker about neurons!
Okay, National Football League and Roger Goodell, here's the deal. Getting hit in the head really hard really sucks. Next time, take the money for a meeting to discuss how much it sucks, and instead spend it on actually helping the players.
See this would never happen if Marion Barry were in charge of the NFL (yes, we just gave him a promotion).
Commissioner-for-Life Barry make it happen!
Okay, National Football League and Roger Goodell, here's the deal. Getting hit in the head really hard really sucks. Next time, take the money for a meeting to discuss how much it sucks, and instead spend it on actually helping the players.
See this would never happen if Marion Barry were in charge of the NFL (yes, we just gave him a promotion).
Commissioner-for-Life Barry make it happen!
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