If You Ain't Cheating, You Ain't Winning

Baseball has the 1919 World Series, the steroids era, and about fifty other things that prove this. The NBA has Tim Donaghy. College football has FSU. But the NHL may be coming further and further into the fold of this black pox that has fallen across sports. We have seen the controversy from ref Stephane Auger, as well as the bad call on Bradley. We have seen the Mike Green suspension that Dan Steinberg pointed out was due to faulty Canadaian camera angles as I posted previously. We have seen that Mike Green is not on the Canadian Olympic team despite leading the league in defense goals, assists and points despite his three game suspension and a few injuries. The argument might be that he is an offensive defenseman, but he is second in the league in +/- behind just Schultz, so that argument is faulty.

There is an obvious Canadian bias against the Caps as shown on the NBC broadcast of the Pens-Caps game the other night. All the Canadian announcers, who are just as lovely as listening to Troy Aikman and Joe Buck during a Skins game, are skewed as well. Crosby scores and you hear from McGuire with "you don't teach this in hockey school, this is only something you can get from above." So Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, whoever you believe in taught Crosby how to play hockey, that is really good for the Pens. Ovechkin plays a game where he wills his team to win, and you hear their star "hits to hurt." How about Hat Trick, and putting a camera a little closer on Crosby while they sweep up the caps, because I really think he may have been crying this time because his teammates were telling him not to go complain about the length of time it took to get all of the hats off the ice again. There is something awry, has been for a while, and it needs to get addressed. Look, no one liked Russia until Reagan was done with them, but that does not mean the Caps should not get to play a fair game or series against the Canadian darlings. The fact that OV singlehandedly lifted our boys to victory over the refs and a good team is a testament to the greatest player in the game.

The NFL has had its cheating as well, most noteably Spygate, where the Pats should have to hand their Lombardis back much like last year's players names should have their names sanded off of the Cup for their video cheating scandal. Now I want to preface this carefully. It is not because I am bitter that both my predictions for both of Sunday's games were wrong. I certainly hope the rest I made are absolutely correct, but did something seem wrong at the end of the game? You have the most clutch (and greatest player and I won't back down from that) of all time who completely falters at a time he normally is at his best. If you could take two players from the Colts and add them to the Skins I hope you would say Manning and Wayne. They both grew up in New Orleans. I have no proof, but something is fishy. Congrats to the Saints, like I said before, if my team couldn't do it I hoped they would. I don't have a press pass, but if I find of any cheating or throwing of games it will be worse than the day I found out there was no Santa Claus. Right now it is like I am staying up all night Christmas Eve, but I don't hear any reindeer on the roof.