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.