Bad Ideas

I just wanted to say congratulations to the Washington Mystics for closing out the season as the number one seed in their conference this year for the first time in their history. I know and care very little about basketball, especially women's basketball, and could not name one player on the Mystics. However, I can definatively tell you exactly how they won the President's Cup of their conference in the WNBA. Ted Leonsis finally took down those idiotic WNBA attendance banners that had plagued MCI/Verizon Center for way too long. For years Caps fans took crap from visiting fans for having those stupid banners waving around flaunting the malaise that has plagued the sports in this town of late. Fortunately, all of the bandwagon visiting fans no longer come down to see their teams lose to the overtalented Caps anymore, and as long as Leonsis is the owner, no one will ever see those banners again.


So I was thinking of other things that could dispel the bad voodoo that has befallen the sports teams in the area. Sticking with Verizon, lets get rid of the Capstronaut. He is as new as he is irrelevant, and the logistics of sitting behind him infuriate me even when I am sitting across the arena from him. Furthermore, I think he is the definative symbol of an unnecesary schism that now exists between Caps fans. There is this attitude that now prevails around Caps circles where anyone who has not followed the Caps past a few years ago is somehow not a Caps fan. For years Caps fans have screamed that no one pays attention to their sport, and now that all eyes are on OV and company and tickets are a little harder to come by and people are upset. This needs to stop immediately, starting with the Capstronaut. Also in Verizon; the players introduction before the home playoffs this year with Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" and pictures of the Stanley Cup needs not be played until we win the Stanley Cup. This was as bad as Crosby handling the Wales trophy; the league doesn't hand out Cups for bad taste and dumb moves here like they do for Pittsburgh. Speaking of which, the final thing needed to be shed from Verizon is the biased refs.


Moving onto Nats Park I think there is one thing we can all agree on getting rid of and thats Rob Dibble. Going after Strasburg's manhood is career suicide. I have never berated the guy like most Nationals blogs have but the guy's time has come. I am pretty sure Lou Pinella is not doing anything next year, and I think he would make a great addition to MASN.


I'll even help other town's ballparks. The statue of Selig just went up today at Miller Park and I hope somone tears it right back down. Maybe you can ignore that he has presided over the steroids age, helped put MLB through the worst labor stoppage in the league's history, and let salaries and ticket prices spiral out of control across the country. But you can never forget how hard he tried to keep baseball out of DC. Blocking other teams from moving here, never awarding us an expansion team, considering putting a team in Vegas first (some pro team will be there one day but baseball should definately not lead the pack,) and trying to retract teams until finally having nowhere to dump the Expos but here. There is a tradition involving the statue of Civil War General Phillip Henry Sheridan and his horse on Sheridan and Belmont in Chicago. The horse's testicles are quite prominent, and all National League rookies have to paint them their team's colors the first time they visit Cubs. Well with the Selig statue we can put a big red X over that part of his anatomy to represent the steroid era, big green dollar signs in his eyeballs to represent the league's greed under his watch, and put a Nattos hat on his head just to rub it in.


Finally, what could we change at Fedex? Thats like asking what would you change about the Taliban's views on women. We could start with Snyder and end it there, but that guy is going to be one long nightmare. I don't buy the new act, it is temporary, the guy let it be known within Redskin circles that he wanted to draft Clausen, Allen wanted Berry, and Shanahan wanted Williams. Shanahan won and is in charge for the time being, but the ghost of the big oversized Snyder ego still haunts Fedex and will strike again in the future. We could get rid of the phony ticket wait list. I appreciate that young Snyder wants to keep up the appearance that the place is sold out in that 90,000 plus seat monstrosity because none of the Skins games are blacked out. But Boise State and VA Tech are two top ten teams, one of whom will compete for the National Title, and they have only sold 67,000 seats thus far for their matchup that is less than two weeks away. The fact of the matter is that the Skins could liquidate their entire "waiting list" for season ticket holders, but Snyder prefers to be the owner of the club with the line around the block even when the club is half full. Maybe its the traffic. Or the prices. Or the Tom Cruise. Maybe just scrap the place and start over.

Boss Hog, et. all

Congratulations to Russ Grimm, he did great last night. Overall it was a pretty good job by the NFL as well. Grimm and Randle gave the best speeches by far, Jerry Rice is clearly a better receiver than public speaker, Rickey Jackson loves his home town, and its good to see that Michael Irvin is still a great person for parents to point to and explain to their children that this is why we do not do drugs. I'm still fairly certain the only Montana that overrated Cowboy is hanging out with up in Canton is Tony. The only low points were as always, Chris Berman, the over-done Cowboys coverage, and Emmit Smith crying so much that he made Dick Vermeil look like John Wayne.


But it was good to see the "captain" of the Hogs, the greatest unit in football since the four horseman of Notre Dame, inducted. I think the NFL dropped the ball and should have put all of them in. If you wanted to further set the sport apart from other team sports, a big bust of a pig with a Joe Bugel head should have been put in one of the wings of Canton. You can put Jacoby, Lachey, and Bostic in separately, but guys like McKenzie, Stark, and Warren will be overlooked. They were the key component to the Skins dynasty of the 80s, and should not be overlooked. Skins fans will never overlook them, but they will never be the over-hyped unit that seems to come to every over-rated player that happened to wear a star on the side of his helmet.


Case in point is Randy White. How this guy made it into the Hall of Fame 16 years before Grimm is beyond me. Yes, like the triplets in Dallas he was bound to make it in at one point or another, but before a great player like Grimm and his cronies is a crime. Grimm thoroughly dominated the guy, as was highlighted numerous times over the weekend in recountings of the 1983 championship game. (Someone needs to get that story right. People say we ran 50 Gut anywhere from nine to eleven times in a row, and either Grimm, Gibbs, Bugel, or Theismann called the play and told the Cowboys where it was going every time. All that matters is the Skins won the game and thus the championship and the "Doomsday Defense" ended up on their butts every time the play was called. But does anyone still have the full tape of the game?)


Its just insulting it took a guy like Grimm so long to get in, and Emmitt Smith was a first ballot guy. He is the most overrated running back of all-time. He broke Payton's records, but he could not hold a candle to Sweetness. Barry Sanders could have run backwards through Wayne Fontes' run and shoot offense and still be considered head and shoulders above the guy. Russ Grimm belongs in the great wing of the Hall of Fame, Smith only belongs in the good wing with his buddy Leon Lett.


Good, as in Priest Holmes good. Lets take Emmitt Smith's best four years, 1992-1995. 1401 att., 6,456 yds, 73 TDs, 4.65 yds/att. Priest Holmes in '01-'04: 1156 att., 5532 yds, 70 TD and 4.71 yds/att. with twice as many receiving TDs in these two spans. You can put those two busts side by side, except for some reason, Priest Holmes is not in the Hall of Fame, because he is not an over hyped Cowboy. I understand there were Super Bowls involved. The Cowboys had a great, not good team, assembled through draft picks obtained by the worst trade in the history of sports. (The Redskins were not allowed to make trades like this. For example, when Paul Tagliabue said that the Houston Oilers traded too many picks for Wilbur Marshall, he cancelled the deal outright.) The Cowboys had many good players that made up a great team that some call a dynasty.


Most call it the weakest dynasty ever. They beat the Bills in two of those Super Bowls. That is like beating your wife and saying you are a boxer. The 90s Cowboys can't hold a candle to the 60s Packers, 70s Steelers, 80s 49ers or Skins, and the new millennium's cheating Pats. (I have always argued that the 49ers and Skins dynasties were the best, as they had to co-exist simultaneously.) In reality, Troy Aikman was an over-hyped Danny White, Emmitt Smith was a poor man's Priest Holmes, Irvin was a coked-up Willie Gault, Leon Lett was just a dumbed-down Daryl Grant, Jimmy Johnson never did anything without a disproportionate glut of draft picks, and Jerry Jones was an opportune huckster who now looks like Bruce Jenner. It was a great sum with good parts, but not great ones put together in the typical Cowboys packaging designed by "Mad Men" type guys at Nike.


I know Cowboys fans will be upset that I say these guys are over-rated, but isn't that the reason you jumped on that bandwagon? I can already see you at sports bars across the country, sauntering up in your Cowboy's jersey, Yankees hat and Kobe Nikes like some John Goodman King Ralph retread. Or the sports world's version of the women who joined the ya-ya sisterhood with their funny straw hats who everyone looks at quizzically, you pick. We will laugh at you for a moment, then go back to enjoying real sports, with real men like Russ Grimm. Guys that got Madden and Summerall so drunk at the five o clock club one time, that Tom Landry would not let them do any pre-interviews with the Cowboys. Great football players, playing for a great organization, celebrated by great fans. Hail to the Skins! God I can't wait for September 12th.

Is The World Cup Over Yet?

Its over now right, the soccer thing? There hasn't been a whole lot going on in DC lately. The Caps drafted more Russians. (What is funny is that this too increases OV's status as MVP of the league. McPhee said they draft so many Russians that are gambles for other teams to sign because of the Great 8. They look at his successes here and his ability to retain his "Russian-ness" back home and sign with the Caps. Kuznetsov was talented enough to be picked 10 to 15 slots higher and the Caps were looking to move up to pick him then, but instead fell to the DC Red anyways. The Caps have no such issues with OV on the team. Even when he isn't on the ice he is still better than the rest.) But I digress.


There isn't too much to say about the Redskins right now; The Jammal Brown trade was great, and I would put him at left tackle and wait a year to put Williams there. The LT will be facing guys who went to at least two Pro Bowls in 10 games this year. I heard a rumor Vince Jackson may be headed here; I wouldn't give more than a third or fourth round draft pick, but it would be nice to have a deep threat like that. And the Nats look terrible. Riggleman has made a slew of mistakes recently, and his fixation with Nyjer Morgan needs to be resolved. Either the guy need to start getting on base and look as bright as when we got him last year, or he needs to sit for a while. I don't think the guy will be ruined by some time on the pine, and someone needs to get on base so Zim, Dunn, and the Hammer have someone to drive home. Ian Desmond might as well change his name to Ean right now, but he is a rookie and will be a cornerstone here for at least half a decade. I can't say the same about Morgan while he works things out.



And then there was all this soccer. I don't get it. I've honestly tried, but all it really does is make me sympathize with the rare person you come along who says they don't like sports. Its dumbfounding to hear someone say that, but if all sports look like soccer to this anomaly of a person I understand. I would root for a guy in a belching contest if the guy had on a USA t-shirt, but ow that the US is knocked out, at least we won't have to hear about it again for four years. I am not going to critique soccer, but if I were I'd of course go after the refs, which mirror the totalitarianism rampant in some of the countries in the tournament, the flopping, which looks like Crosby on grass, and the love of ties and breaking even. I did not even go after the low scoring, because that isn't why America hates it. A hypothetical 2-1 Nolan Ryan-Sandy Koufax matchup would give ESPN some of its highest ratings ever. Tickets to a 1985 Bears versus 2000 Ravens game would fetch thousands of dollars. There is nothing more intense than a 1-1 playoff game in the NHL (because there is an overtime and no ties if it stays that way for a little bit.)


Americans did with sports what they do to everything else; make it better. Baseball is our Declaration of Independence. We looked at cricket and we did not like it. There were probably high taxes involved, so we went out and invented a game that has not needed to be fixed in 150 years. No matter how big and fast athletes become, the bases are always 90 feet apart, the pitching mound a tad over 60, and the sun always sets behind home plate. Football brings together our conflicting ideals of togetherness and individuality together. We as Americans do things together, but we also celebrate great individual achievements as well. Football encapsulates the politically incorrect notion of Manifest Destiny, where the whole concept of the game is to make gains to bring the promised land to all. And failure is never tolerated. (In the CFL, you get a point for punting and a missed field goal. Its called a rouge, look it up. We don't put up with that kind of stuff here.)



And hockey is the perfect example of our adaptation in making things better. Ice skating is tolerable in grade school when you do it because its a good way to meet girls and try to steal a kiss. But what if we hit each other every once in a while, put goals in so there is some purpose to the whole thing, and if someone is acting a little out of line, they have to fight? Skill takes over and it is almost too fast to watch on television, and the toughest guys in the world all flock to play it. When the NHL Americanized it even more to appeal to non-traditional hockey markets in Nashville, Florida, and Phoenix at the turn of the millennium, they took out the ties. A challenge that is embraced head-on involving exceptional individuals who work as a unit to promote a noble cause is as American as it gets in my world. soccer fans will say that those who don't like it are uncultured and don't understand the "great gentleman's game." My head can take the game in fine, but my soul falls asleep every time.


It is not that soccer is bad, it just does not have any of these aspects. While there is clearly a higher degree of talent, the game does not change that much from when the players are ten to when they are pros. You can not say the same for baseball, football, and hockey. I don't understand why it is a "gentleman's game" when people get killed around these matches. I don't understand why you would continue to play soccer as a kid other than to prevent getting hurt and not have to face a pressure situation like a three-point shot, full count, or perfect pass spiraling toward your hands. I don't understand vu-vu-zillas. I don't understand why 14 million Americans watching the US-Ghana game was a big deal. 34 million watched the US-Canada match in February with a whole lot more going on, and hockey is still a fourth-tier sport here, but hockey fans don't go nuts about it.


I was going to go on and on, but Matt Taibbi said it so much better than I can in his article that I will post at the end. I hope soccer fans will continue to enjoy their game, just leave us alone about it. With a plate full of American sports that satisfy the soul from youth until death, soccer is just the elevator music that Americans push through on the way to the rock concert. Someone must appreciate it, but it gets pretty annoying when someone turns it up.




http://www.mensjournal.com/taibbi-world-cup

Stay Classy Philly

Congrats to OV for winning the Ted Lindsay, as voted by the players. That is the most prestigious and coveted award, so naturally OV won. I hate some of the opposing players sometimes, but when they play by the code and are honest it shows what hockey is all about. It must take a lot to get knocked around by the OV all year and still stand up to say he he is clearly the best for the third year in a row. Three in a row is the third time ever that that has ever happened, and the first since Gretzky. One thing Gretzky never did was make the all-pro team for the first five years of his career but that's okay, no one has but OV. Congrats to the class of the league OV, and congrats to the players for showing some class in voting for him.


It would be great if the media showed some class and gave him the Hart as well, but Sedin had a great year so good for him. OV lost by a weighted point system of 894 to 834. Mysteriously, OV was not voted MVP by the writers by a difference of six first place votes. (20 votes were hype votes wasted on Crosby.) It does not make sense unless OV was left off of those lone 6 ballots completely, losing the first place vote count 46-40. This isn't a dimpled chad situation; there is a clear explanation for this. It is our fine Pennsylvania neighbors again, only this time it was not Pittsburgh, but Philly, where fans intentionally vomit on children, let four year olds swill beer on camera, boo Santa, and never win anything.


Mike Vogel reported on dumpnchase.com live at the awards in Vegas that he witnessed the Philly writers saying that none of them had Mike Green in their top five for the Norris, which he placed second for again. (Despite the fact that since 1994 the only defenders that have been passed over for the Norris as point leaders are Green and ex-Cap Gonchar.) They clearly were in collusion to keep Green out; do you think they may have had something to do with OV not winning the Hart despite showing again that he is clearly the best in the league? That answer is obvious. I have said for a while that there is already bias against OV and the rest of the Caps by anyone with a touch of power in the NHL. He clearly did not need the perpetually classless in Philly to tip the balance even more. Furthermore, Boudreau's team finished 10th in the Jack Adams voting, which also took place before the playoffs even started. Who were the other guys voted ahead of the coach with the best record in the league? There was the chicanery of the Pitt series last year, the OV suspensions out of nowhere during the regular season, the rock salt sabotage in Montreal during the playoffs, and now the skewed voting by the biased media. Its been a frustrating year for the Caps. At least Neuvrith and Hershey won the Calder again; that was something the NHL, cheaters and the media could not take away.


Theodore won the Masterson, which even the heartless had to vote for after the year he had on and off the ice. He will be missed and we will be left to wonder if the Caps could have overcome their sabotaged skates if he was put back in net during the Montreal series. I think it is smart bringing Neuvirth up. Nabokov was released by the Sharks, but there is not any point in wasting cap space on a goalie when the Caps need a free agent defenseman like Michalek from Phoenix to really get to where they want to be. I have no doubt the Caps cruise to the playoffs again with Varlamov and Neuvrith splitting the net; the rest of the team is too talented. A guy like Michalek is a stay at home d-man who always finds a way in front of shots, and a big name goalie is becoming less and less of a commodity in the playoffs. Guys like Miller and Brodeur got nowhere this year; guys like Halak and Niemi seem to come out of nowhere to be the hot goalie.


Niemi was the second rookie in six years to win the Cup. In order, the last six goalies with the Cup were Niemi, Fleury, Osgood, Giguere, Ward (the other rookie,) and Khabibulin. The one thing they all had in common is that none played over 62 games during those seasons. (In contrast to Brodeur, 77 games, Nabokov, 71, Bryzgalov, 69, Miller, 69 for the top four goalies this year without even counting the Olympics.) The lesser-played were rested and got hot at the right time. Neuvrith has gotten hot at the right time two years in a row at the highest level the Caps have let him play. Having a stay at home defenseman coupled with the best defenseman in the league should certainly help him make it three. So will the three time reigning MVP if all his playoff goals count next year.

Celebrate a Legit Cup

Big wins again for the Nattos, sweeping the Pittsburgh just like the Caps this year. Clearly the better teamed prevailed in both instances. I also wanted to congratulate the Blackhawks for winning the Cup, it was nice to see a team earn it this year instead of having it given to them like the year previous. Philly fans did not disappoint, booing the Cup as it was hoisted by the Hawks and repeatedly giving the finger, but that is par for the course there. Toews was a gentleman, celebrating with his teammates and then leading them over to shake hands with the Flyers quickly, instead of classlessly leaving them out on the ice awkwardly like last year's "winning" captain did. I was jealous as a Caps fan, of course all year I expected that to be us with the trophy. Unfortunately, we were cheated for the second year in a row. First with the take back of Ovechkin's game 7 goal, we all knew about that. But one other story was swept under the rug by the NHL that not a lot of people have heard of. The Canadiens were cheating. Essentially they were putting down rock salt on the ramp leading up to the bench, warping the opposing team's skates. I don't believe for a minute that they were not doing this all along to beat even more talented and fleeter of foot teams than the Flyers like the Caps and yes even the Pens. Here is one of the links that Gary Bettman and his cronies did not want you to see from nhlsnipers.com. I still think the Canadiens put forth a great effort and the Caps let them hang around for too long, but we were not cheated as badly as we were in the '09 playoffs.

Look I know I pick on Crosby a lot, and quite frankly it is because I hate him. He is a whiner, the antithesis of a great player like Gretzky, Howe, Orr, Ovechkin and Lemieux. He has not won anything, but acts like he is one of the best because the Cup was handed to him last year as a PR stunt. Last night's coverage only solidified my view of the hockey media trumpeting their over-hyped Canadian. No, surprisingly, Crosby's name was never brought up, but Toews was over and over again. There was not a whole lot of mention of Patrick Kane, who scored the game winner. (Strasburg was on the Top Ten on Letterman tonight, and one of the "little known things about Strasburg was that he scored the game winner for the Blackhawks last night.) It was literally a joke. Kane, a fine American like all Buffalonians, was largely ignored in favor of the Canadian Toews, who to his credit played fantastically in the playoffs. He also was the MVP of the Canadian team in the Olympics, but largely went ignored the Canadian hierarchy in favor of Crosby, who while dormant most of the tournament, was lucky enough to chip in the final goal. Why? Because that is what the Canadian-controlled hype machine wants you to believe unless you actually follow hockey and know the details.

So for the last time on this blog, I will spell out how the Caps, while obviously cheated in the 2010 playoffs, were absolutely robbed in the 2009 playoffs. Then I will promise to put this to rest until the next Penguin fan tells me that they have won three Cups. The fact that Crosby's name is on there with Lemieux's, essentially besmirching it should be enough for them to be quite. I will also put it to rest as long as "pundits" stop putting Crosby anywhere in the same breath as Ovechkin who is the clearly the better player anywhere outside of the hype vacuum that Bettman and folks have created for him. Just because Wilbon saw a Pacquiao fight does not mean he is a boxing expert. So for the last time, to sum it up, here we go.............

First off, the Penguin's television productions were witholding camera angles from replay officials that did not favor the Pens for a long time. They were only caught red-handed once, and yes people were fired, but if you did not believe it was used several times before that instance then you probably believe the Patriots only filmed the Jets that one time during Spygate. Secondly, you have to understand the TV contract that the NHL has with NBC. For all other major sports television in America, networks bid X amount of dollars to broadcast games and then get all of the commercial revenue from said broadcasts, as well as an opportunity to plug their own programming. For example, ESPN paid a billion dollars to broadcast Monday Night Football and a Super Bowl every four years, and they make all the money off of the ads within those games for the duration of the contract. With the NHL, NBC has paid nothing for the right to broadcast those games. The NHL gets half of the advertising revenue after NBC has recouped their production costs.

While the Caps-Pens '09 series was going on, the NHL and NBC were negotiating this contract. The Caps had the best young team and player in the league and were and are a great TV draw. The NHL has pitted Crosby versus Ovechkin since they both entered the league, and to this day they still draw the highest ratings in the league when they play each other. Unfortunately for the league in the midst of these negotiations, the Caps were leading the series 2-0 and were on the cusp of making the series unwatchable to the average fan and pundit, and negating any such hyped "rivalry" between the two players. No other major network would negotiate with the NHL at the time, and the NHL had to find a way to show that hockey could still be sold on TV. And that is why the already shoddy officiating turned downright atrocious in Game 3 and continued for the rest of the series. It was the only way the hapless Pens could keep up. In fact one of Montreals' papers The Globe and Mail wrote an article on the attempted extension between the NHL and NBC during the playoffs, and was not even acknowledged until a month after the playoffs ended. Why would the NHL sweep that story under the rug for so long?

Maybe because they did not want people to form a connection between the Caps getting whistled for looking at a Pen, and the Pens not being whistled for things like this. Plays like this occurred all series but this was the most damning. That is the Pittsburgh broadcast; the very people who were caught cheating for the Pens could not bite their tongues when it came to the interference on Boyd Gordon. So instead of the Caps killing off a power play, essentially demoralizing the Pens and going on one of their own deadly power plays to win, the game was given to the Pens. The cheating Penguins announcers pointed it out, the equivalent of Bellichek instructing the refs to ignore the tuck rule, Brady really fumbled. However, all four refs on the ice missed it. Maybe they were tired; it was the second of back to back games on May 8th and 9th, which was only done to accommodate the Penguin's schedule per league orders. Back to back playoff games almost never happens in the NHL otherwise.

We all know the end result. The Caps lost the series in a game 7 that never should have been played while most of the team suffered from illness. As a footnote, the Pens beat the Hurricanes in four, dominating them much the way the Caps have and would have if given their rightful opportunity. The Pen went down 2-0 in the series to the Red Wings as well, and would have been crushed if rule 47.22, otherwise known as the instigator penalty, was enforced instead allowing the Pen's best player Malkin to play in Game 3 of the Cup Finals. Logic goes to show that the Pens were beat by the Caps, and if they were better than them they would have beat Detroit as well after handling a Carolina team that hasn't been a problem in DC in a long time.

Bettman and Crosby got what they wanted. The NHL was not relegated to Versus only, they got their contract with NBC as viewership across the country went up 42% in '09. All the Caps ever wanted was a fair shake. So I will put this to rest finally, a year after the stolen Cup that never was. Now that it has been wrested from Pittsburgh hopefully someone will sandblast Crosby and his cronies' names right off of the great trophy. Consider the issue closed until someone tries to say Crosby won a Cup or is in the same ballpark as Ovechkin or even Toews in both skill and honor. Then you can have a chuckle to yourself about their hockey ineptitude or even point them to this post if you want to show them how wrong they are. I've been blogging about it for a year, and if they insist it is another raving, biased blog, tell them to pick up The Fix is In by Brian Tuohy that came out this year. Its a book listed on Amazon, you can hold it in your hands, and it has the '09 Penguins as the biggest fix in NHL history just behind the Gretzky trade from Edmonton to LA. Its not another blog conspiracy. As a hockey fan, not a hype fan, I am just glad a legitimate team won the Cup to start off the 2010s. It is a shame that 2 years went by in the decade of '00, the Lost Decade, without a deserving team to claim it.