Well, it's almost 5pm. It's Friday. It's payday. My life pretty much rules right now. And because of that, I wanted to conclude my work-week posting with a picture that has made me laugh out loud about 5 times this week. Do I have the worst sense of humor ever? Is my job really that boring? Will readers understand this vague reference to the late 70's/early 80s television show "Soap"? Probably not.
Enjoy the picture, enjoy the weekend.
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In the event that you aren't hip to too many sports blogs besides Deadspin (hey, we've all been there), you may have missed the story about Colorado Avalanche beat writer Adrian Dater's furious rant aimed at ESPN a couple days ago. It was picked up by a few big blogs like The Big Lead and AOL's Fanhouse with big assists to Avalanche blogs Dear Lord Stanley and Jibblescribbits. In case you missed it, here is my favorite excerpt:
Do you hear me, Ed Werder? Do you hear me, Rachel Nichols? Do you hear me, Chris Mortensen? Do you hear me, Marc Stein? Do you hear me, ESPN producer schmucks? You didn’t break JACK SQUAT. Some real journalist at a newspaper broke that story. You’re nothing more than a bunch of pathetic piggybackers, trying to fool that gullible sports audience out there - of which you have legions of the duped tuning in daily. Oh, and here’s a little shout out to guys like the Bill Simmonses of the world - guys who never did the real work of journalism but just love to sit from their on-high funnyman thrones and crack wise on the doings of those who could: Hey, I’m from New England - I AM YOUR DEMOGRAPHIC - and I’m even tired of your act. Thanks, Bill, for the 113th “column” on a Vegas trip last weekend. Hench, J-Bug, the line at McCarran, Seventh Circle of Hell, oh, it’s all so fresh and funny, my man. Yes it was, the first 23 times I read it.Look out below!
Apparently there was a soccer game in Chicago last night featuring Team America (World Police...Fuck Yeah!) and our least favorite step-sister, the Canadians. America won (fuck yeah, again!) by the final of 2-1, the soccer equivalent to a 48-35 NFL final, but not without a bit of drama at the end.
Canada thought it was a goal. The Americans said it was offside. Fortunately for the Americans, the linesman and referee agreed with them. Canada had a goal in the final minute of stoppage time waved off Thursday night, preserving the Americans' 2-1 victory and their spot in the CONCACAF Gold Cup final.
I'm a little late getting to this but apparently the NCAA doesn't like it so much when people blog during live NCAA events. In fact, people have been kicked out of events, like the money-drenched cashpot that is the College World Series for live blogging (just blogging, live...with the fifteen-year-old daughter of the dean). From SI.com writer Chris Ballard:
"On June 10 Brian Bennett, a reporter for The-Courier-Journal in Louisville, was tossed from the press box at an NCAA Super Regional game for live blogging. The NCAA said the reporter was infringing upon broadcast rights by providing description of the action. This contention begs to be mocked, for it's hard to imagine a fan preferring to read a hastily typed account of a baseball game rather than watch it. Especially considering the content of most live blogs."Ballard makes a good point, because the contention does beg to be mocked. I've read live blogs and I've written live blogs and those usually come nowhere near any kind of game recap that the NCAA is afraid of. Most are just inside jokes, random sports references outside of the chosen event or just ramblings about pop-culture. And even then, some aren't written by Bill Simmons! But the NCAA owns these rights and they have the right to protect said rights (what?) so they kicked out the bloggers.
So kudos to the NCAA for letting bloggers indeed cover their events. So long as there is no opinion. Or commentary. Or thought. Or humans, really. They should just let semi-trained monkeys live-blog now."The NCAA eased its restrictions on blogging and said live updates from its
events are permitted as long as they are limited to scores and time
remaining.The issue arose last week after a reporter for The Courier-Journal of
Louisville, Ky., was ejected from an NCAA baseball tournament game for
submitting live Internet updates during play. "
It seems that there was much interest taken in my criticism of Brett Beilema yesterday, so now this has to happen. First of all, I wasn't saying that what he and Wisconsin did to the indefensible IU football team was necessarily wrong. I personally thought it was, but some people (like the commenters) don't take any issue with it, and that's fine. There's a reason I'm a Sports Elitist and they're not. What I was really attempting to get across is the fact that right or wrong, when you run up the score on a fellow Big Ten team, it eventually will come back to bite you in the ass. Sometimes, it isn't even the team you embarrassed that exacts revenge. But this overwhelming backlash that I received from the post has caused me to unearth the inevitable truth: Wisconsin blows. And before you chastise me for not even having been there, I will say to you that i did spend a good portion of a summer there visiting a girl of mine who lived in Wauwatosa, a suburb of Milwaukee. So I know what I'm talking about. That being said, he is why Wisconsin sucks:
1. Ok, you drink beer. We get it. So does the rest of America. I love it how there are all of these people from Madison that think the Miller Brewing Company is a domestic beer only in Wisconsin. The difference is that people outside the State of Wisconsin drink to get drunk and have a good time. It seems that people in Wisconsin drink for the sole purpose of getting fat and being unattractive. You go to the University of Wisconsin and you think you drink more than kids at Ohio State just because there is a brewery in your state? Think again. In fact, I would venture to say that you drink the least of any Big Ten school, because you guys are so middle of the road that the teams above you drink because they accomplish stuff, and teams below you drink because they suck something awful. I have been on campus for a gameday at Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, and Notre Dame, and they all drink more than you. 
idiosyncratic phrases like, "yaaaaa", "dontcha know?", "doya now?", and "oh geez" are just not cutting it. Speak properly. All other areas of the United States have accents, but they don't waste words. Take a look:
That's right. Brett Favre has Desmond Howard to thank for his Super Bowl ring. I can't remember the last time I have seen one of the greatest pro football quarterbacks of all time be at the mercy of a washed-up Heisman winner. To put this in persepctive, this would be like Ron Dayne one day ending his career in Indianapolis and inexplicably gaining gaining 300 yards en route to a Super Bowl MVP while Peyton Manning falls asleep at the wheel. I use Ron Dayne as the example only because you people from Wisconsin are the only people who remember who he is.Last week GoCM and I were rapping on instant messenger about just how terrible we found the booth that ESPN/ABC had selected for the NBA Finals. He remarked to me that he would rather have Stanley, the grumpy guy from The Office, in the booth than either Mark Jackson or Jeff Van Gundy. I added that I'd rather have Kelly and Andy from The Office. If you don't understand the references yet, go to another blog. Just do yourself a favor and hit the "back" button on your browser. If you don't watch The Office on NBC, I don't think we can be friends.
Anyhow, this conversation got me on the track of thinking about which NBA national broadcast personalities were like which characters on The Office, and I found some really striking similarities.
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Rarely seen, has one good exchange per show, could be gay. | |||
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Reggie's sister is not fat, but she is a solid regular contributor. Always good for at least one insightful nugget per game. | |||
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Stockton is old-school and not highly internet-savvy. And by old school, I mean old... but still enjoyable. I don't think Creed would know how to pronounce "Anderson Varejao," either. Plus, try to imagine if Dick Stockton tried to write a blog. Ye gods. | |||
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Really, he's just there. If Len Elmore didn't appear on another broadcast, would you really notice? | |||
Sometimes you wonder there's so much hatred for this guy, then he goes and does something that makes you really wonder about him. Does Game 2 of the 1999 World Series ring a bell to anyone else? | |||
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When you first heard his name he was a highly respectable and powerful journalist but as he became more and more prominent he slowly revealed himself to be a total lunatic. I wonder if Jan enjoys cheez-doodles... | |||
Stu tries all the time to bring African-American slang to white America, but usually ends up teaching us nonsense. Probably inexplicably makes more than Barkley (Michael). | |||
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As a member of the Miami (OH) RedHawk family, I enjoy a good story of a former RedHawk as much as the next guy (though the whole Terry Hoeppner story was undeniably sad, in comparison). By far my favorite former RedHawk is Ben Roethlisberger, the man who led Miami to a 13-1 record and a #10 final AP ranking. Had he pulled his head out of his ass against Iowa that year maybe Miami would have busted through to the BCS before any other Mid-Major team. Personally I blame the announcing team of Pam Ward and Chris Spielman for that. Bygones, however.
Anyway, in Kissing Suzy Kolber's attempt to get one of their commenters into their fantasy football league (TSE has not been invited...yet) they have asked that would be participants submit a resume, of sorts. Their results have been varied and odd, but the best so far is a story about Big Ben Roethlisberger.
I did not personally know about Ben's crusade to pound all the hot Miami sorority ass flooding the campus when I was a freshman and he was the QB. But I applaud his effort. I also wonder just how far he got. With some of the sororities at Miami, it's as easy as a few tequila shooters (or in some cases responding affirmatively to the question "wait, are you that quarterbacker guy?") but, as per Ben's final statement, he probably had to take his shirt's advice on a few of the sororities. But Kudos to him, nonetheless."My friend is in Vegas by the craps table when he runs into Ben Roethlisberger, a few other Steelers, and their entourage. (This is after Roethlisberger's rookie year before the motorcycle accident, so he's still being treated like the man.) My friend is completely shitfaced and stays to watch Roesthlisberger throw dice. Everybody is cheering Ben on like it's the Super Bowl until he craps out, at which point the table goes silent. My drunk friend then interjects 'Roethlisberger? More like... CRAPSlisberger!'
The silence continues until Roethlisberger finally says, 'You know what man, people have been kissing my ass all night, and I did crap out. Let's get a drink.' So my friend stays and raps with Roethlisberger for a few drinks, and the conversation turns to, as you would assume, stuffing sorority chicks at Miami, Ohio. Roethlisberger claimed that he would pick a sorority and then try to plow every single member. My friend then asked, "Even the fat ones?" To which Roethlisberger replied, 'It's a matter of principle.' "
Over the past 24 hours or so, ESPN's Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic have been front and center in the sports broadcasting world. It started when USA Today reported yesterday that the Mikes had been tapped as the #2 Monday Night Football booth for next season along with Hall of Famer Mike Ditka and featuring the tasty-but-poorly-dressed Bonnie Bernstein on the sidelines.
This decision was, predictably, panned by pretty much every sports blog everywhere. At first I was annoyed by the decision but, really, it's not the worst thing ESPN could've done. It's not as if they decided to make a booth of Joe Buck, Joe Theismann and Rich Gannon with Tony Siragusa on the sidelines or anything (after I wrote that I realized, to my horror, that half of that booth has at one point existed on the same telecast). In the end it's only going to be one game and, granted it's Niners-Cardinals, it's not even going to be a game I'm going to watch, so I can't really get too upset. If I had to make one gripe about the whole thing it's that ESPN is using an idea they had with the AFL for a broadcast of a real football game. That's pretty lame.
I do, however, need to give the radio duo some credit here. They did the interminably hyped "Greeny Milking the Cow" segment this morning, and it was really funny. I honestly loved the concept of the sheltered metrosexual being forced to do some manual labor with farm animals and it made for pretty hilarious television.
In spite of their recent overexposure (AFL, Spelling Bee, MNF, etc), I personally believe Mike & Mike are two of the best that ESPN has got (along with Kornheiser and Wilbon) and I, to a large extent, don't mind their overexposure. Would you rather see more of Greenberg and Golic or more of Stuart Scott? Or more of John Kruk and Steve Phillips? John Clayton and Sean Salisbury? Precisely.
ESPN is, as I believe it's called, "pressing their advantage;" they're taking two personalities that aren't alienating people and giving them more face time. I know, it could be a move that turns the two into more of a polarizing combo, but I doubt it. Just like you haven't gotten sick of Wilbon in his expanded duties with the NBA, it just seems Greeny and Golic are middle-of-the-road enough to avoid becoming hated.
Now, as for the guy that follows them on ESPN Radio...
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Normally when I wake up the first thing I do is turn on Sportscenter, just like the few million or so other guys on the planet. I don't like what Sportscenter has become since it's heyday about 5 years ago and it's a consensus that TSE doesn't like ESPN too much on the whole. But until a suitable replacement (read: Dan and Keith at 11, Kilby and Van Pelt in the morning on some other network; I'm thinking Versus) comes into our world, we're stuck with the WWL in the mornings.
There is nothing quite like the College Baseball World Series. The kids on these teams play hard, and every year, there is a great story. This year is no different: the UC Irvine Anteaters, a school that didn't have a program in 2001 is doing their best "The Spaniard" impression and just... not... dying. They are currently playing the Oregon State Beavers, who are attempting to become the first back to back college baseball champions since LSU did it in 1996-97. The only problem is ESPN is entrusting the commentary in part to Barry Larkin, who just cannot stop talking about himself.
This afternoon during a UNC-Rice game, he literally talked two full innings about how he thought he was a "Bubble" Hall of Famer. While this is a viable debate for a given forum, I can guarantee you that the forum is NOT during the CWS, where the story should not be Barry Larkin, but the play on the field. This is the worst part of having athletes do color for games: they have this urge to describe things that happened to them, like they think we give a shit. The reason you are there is to use your expertise that you gathered being a ballplayer, and apply those timeless principles to today's game. Orel Hershiser, who is also on-site in Omaha, is doing a fantastic job of doing just that, and his career is certainly one that will end up in Cooperstown. He gets it though, he realizes that people aren't watching for him, but for what he has to say about the game.
It then hit me: this must be a Cincinnati thing. For 11 or so years, we have listened to great yarns spun by the one and only Joe Morgan about the Big Red Machine on Sunday Night Baseball, sometimes ruining Jon Miller's call, one of the great play by play men in the game today. Folks, there is a reason why a lot of the great radio voices that broadcast baseball hand-pick their color men: because in all honesty, the best thing a color guy can do 95% of the time is shut up. There is a reason why these greats-- Vin Scully, Jack Buck, Marty Brennaman-- choose to split innings with their color men, instead of having them traipse over their calls for 9 innings.
I can guarantee you that Mike Patrick is pulling his hair out in his hotel room in Omaha because he has to work with Larkin this week, where he thinks he is the story. And this is the guy that spends his Winters with Dick Vitale.
more...It appears this week on TSE is evolving into one of those "Kopech's gonna do everything...again" weeks (my 6/9 posts this week back that up) so in my attempt to make that job as easy as possible let's see what's going on in this, our sports world.
Adam "Pacman" Jones has been formerly charged with two counts of felony coercion. Every sports website in existence has not only picked this up but most have found clever ways of making fun of it (for example...) but my take is pretty simple. Just as Paul mentioned earlier after Pacman was made a person of interest in a gun crime, I roll my eyes. At least Tank Johnson had the common courtesy to keep his guns and posse locked the hell up. And, I'm happy with this because someone needs to pay for paralyzing the bouncer involved. That's just awful.
Tom Hicks counts his money and, oh, yeah, says Juan "going, going gone" Gonzalez probably used steroids. From SI.com by way of the AP:
Hicks was responding to questions about a television interview in which heHicks, of course, is part of the un-holy triumvirate of batshit nuts Dallas-area sports team owners (he owns the Dallas Stars hockey team, too, and is joined by Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys and Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks). Having met "Juan Gone" myself (at a Boston bar after a Texas/Sox game was rained out and he was having a nightcap with Pudge Rodriguez...true story) I cannot confirm nor deny these charges, but in this day and age, who can believe anything about steroids?
was asked about decisions he regretted since owning the team, then mentioned the oft-injured outfielder and steroids. "Juan Gonzalez for $24 million after he came off steroids, probably, we just gave that money away," Hicks said in the interview, aired Sunday night on KTVT-TV in Dallas-Fort Worth.
In other athlete-related-baby-daddy news, Jeff Gordon and wife (??) have baby girl. Ella Sofia Gordon was born this morning, tipping the scales at 7 lbs, 1 oz and 20 inches, putting her right between LeBron's second son and Tiger's new girl. Kind takes a bit of the weight out of my favorite NASCAR song, "Jeff Gordon's Gay" (no link, sorry) but Jeff Garcia is married to a Playboy Playmate, so there's that.
If there is one thing that Justin Timberlake has taught us, it's that what goes around comes around. This is especially true in Big Ten football, where class is a prerequisite to coach in one of the best football conferences in the country. Or, at least it used to be. I cannot recall a time last season, outside of a Notre Dame loss, that I was more enraged as I was last year when the University of Wisconsin traveled to Indiana University to play the Hoosiers. This game marked the return of Terry Hoeppner to the IU sidelines, missing the first few games recovering from brain surgery. Now Wisco head coach Brett Bielema was in the midst of his first year taking over for Barry Alvarez as the Badgers' head man, and he was looking to make a name for himself. And boy, did he ever. He proceeded to hang 52 points on the Hoosiers in the first three quarters, before deciding to be merciful and calling off the dogs in the fourth quarter.
Remembering Coach Hep...
While doing my show yesterday morning, an emailer tipped me off about the story. About 10 minutes later, it showed up on Deadspin. 10 minutes after that, America rolled its collective eyes.
The story, as you may have heard, is that Adam "Pacman" Jones is wanted for questioning in connection with a shooting near an Atlanta-area strip club. As you may have heard, Pac and his boys allegedly got in an argument with three other guys at Club Blaze after 4am over a girl. One of Jones' pals threatened one of the other guys, and it all escalated to the point that Pacman's homies followed the other three in a couple cars and exchanged gunfire with them.
There wasn't one NFL fan anywhere who was even remotely surprised.
The critics of NFL Commish Roger Goodell's new player conduct policy often cite the fact that Pacman has not ever been charged with any crimes and yet he is about to serve a full year suspension for constantly being in trouble. For those folks, yesterday was just more grist for the mill. These folks may even have a point if not for the fact that one of the biggest driving forces behind the player conduct policy has been the NFL players themselves.
The fact of the matter is that the players in the league who are sick and tired of being associated with the Fred Smoots, the Chris Henrys and the Tank Johnsons of the world. And of course the man at the top of the NFL miscreant pyramid is Jones. The reason Pacman sits 'above' the others on the list is not that he's done anything technically illegal; it's the fact that his name, as a well-known NFL player, continues to appear in stories usually reserved for the crime beat in the Tennessean or the AJC or whatever.
And it's for this reason that Big Rog should tack on a couple games in the '08 season to Pac's suspension. Jones needs to learn to stop putting himself into these positions. Someone close to him has to force him to take a step back and really consider the consequences of the idiotic crap he does.
Far be it for me to tell anyone to not visit a strip club -- that would be like John Daly telling someone to stay away from beer. What I will to say is this: Pacman himself needs to consider the argument of the very people trying to defend him. That is to say, he keeps getting into trouble without actually being charged, without being the main troublemaker... it's always his posse!
Obviously it's a nettlesome issue when you have to deal with some of your closest friends getting you into trouble, but it's something that has to be done. The argument "you can't break off your homies, you've got to remember where you're from" just doesn't hold any water in this case. I'm not saying I understand the sentiment, especially if the ones that have been doing the shooting are some of Jones' oldest and dearest friends, I'm just saying that it can't be the going thought anymore.
Pacman Jones is a dynamic young talent in the NFL with almost infinite earning potential in the future, but he is constantly jeopardizing that future when he does dumb things like rolling with his boys to the rippers at 4am. He needs to realize that just because he dipped out before rounds were exchanged, it doesn't mean that he isn't responsible for what they do when they hop in their cars and go chasing after some dudes that they've got beef with. Because the headline the next day is not going to read "SOME GUYS SHOOT AT EACH OTHER IN DEKALB COUNTY;" it's going to read "PACMAN JONES SOUGHT FOR QUESTIONING IN STRIP CLUB SHOOTING."
If his inner circle keeps putting him into a position where he can't play in the NFL and he can't make an insanely good living by playing a game, he needs to re-examine his inner circle. Let me put it this way: if you're making 7 figures and one of your oldest and closest friends puts you into a position where you might not be able to work for a whole year, what would you do? Are you gonna "remember where you're from?"
That's what I thought.
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Former Miami RedHawks head football coach Terry Hoeppner passed away this morning in a Bloomington, IN hospital of complications from brain cancer. He was 59. This is incredibly sad news for the whole college football world, especially Indiana, where he was just starting to turn that team around. It also hits close to home here at TSE, as Hoeppner coached through the wonderful 2003 season at Miami, with a 13-1 record, a MAC championship and a GMAC Bowl win over Louisville, all with Ben Roethlisberger taking snaps. The Indianapolis Star has the updating story.
As a Miami student, I am stunned by the sad news of the day and I wish nothing but the best to his family, the Indiana University football community and anyone lucky enough to meet, work with or see Hep coach. I will always remember Hep getting the Gatorade shower after beating Bowling Green for the MAC Championship and later after trampling Louisville in the GMAC Bowl. Those were great times for the program and for the Coach. The next year, when he announced that he was going to IU and handing the reigns to Shane Montgomery, he seemed very proud of not only what he accomplished at Miami, but also what was in store for him at IU.
As a sports fan, death's like this always confound me. I knew of Hep as a football coach whose family wore pads and got together every Saturday. But he had a life outside of Miami and IU. And for as difficult as this must be for the Indiana football community, it must be innumerably more difficult for Hep's real family, his friends and his colleagues. Hep's death transcends football in that way, and means so much more on the whole. Though I never met Coach Hoeppner, I know that the man touched many lives inside and out of football and one can only hope that those people remember Hep for all the good that he did, football-related or otherwise.
Again, TSE's thoughts and prayers are with the family today.
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I get the feeling that athletes hate me. And why shouldn't they. I have a morbid problem with picking out losers. It's not that I root for bad teams, quite the contrary. But whomever it is I root for usually takes a nice ride down washout lane as soon as my allegiances are broadcast. Let's go ahead and line up the most recent victims from my horrid past of rooting for teams and then said rooting for them screwing said athletes out of, you know, winning or even showing up to win.
We start most recently with Brandon Watson, the Columbus Clipper who broke the 95-year old record for longest hitting streak in the International League. He was off to fame and fortune, and even garnered coverage from the likes of Dan Shanoff. Could he get to DiMaggio's record 61? The all-time minor league record of 69 (chuckles)?? Of course not. Record snapped, thanks.
Sean O'Effhimself. Seemed like a good pick for the Open: a disciplined player with a troubled past he's just now starting to block out. And what better way to crush the memories of his moron father by winning an Open on Father's Day? How about shooting 80 on day 2 and booking an early flight from Pittsburgh Int'l Airport? Cut you very much, Sean.
Jed will love this. The would-be greatest team in the history of college football played perfectly through 12 games. They beat two #2 teams, one on the road, and walked through the Big 11 with ease and grace, even winning the stud QB a Heisman Trophy. They were playing in a city where they were 3-0 in their last three games there, and standing in their way was the SEC champions, limping in with a loss and a few lucky wins. Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2006 National Runners Up, The Ohio State Buckeyes.
In a similar theme as above, the Georgetown Hoyas made their way through the regionals and through a tough North Carolina team and to the Final Four, where they met tOSU in the national semi-final. Apparently Jeff Green forgot the game was that night and G'town lost. I was sort of okay with it, as tOSU was headed to another national final. But, after I picked them on Teeple's show, that was all she wrote.
I should just shut the hell up, for the sake of every other fan in the world. Doubt it will happen, but it's nice to think about. Enjoy your days.
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