Super Bowl 49 Coaching Breakdown

With Super Bowl Sunday fast approaching, it's important to get your scouting down right so you can know who's who at the big game.

Not the players, of course - we've long since passed the point where players were anything but the mechanistic imposers of their godlike coaches' will and schemes. Or so, at least, said coaches' agents will tell you, especially at contract renegotiation time. 

But with that in mind, here's your handy-dandy comparison/contrast of the two Super Bowl coaches:

The Super Bowl Grift And Its Wider Applications

The dirty secret is out.

The mayor of Glendale, AZ - home to a football game you may have heard about this weekend - has gone on record as saying that hosting the Super Bowl is going to cost his city money.

This is, of course, anathema to the NFL and its mindless boosters. Look at all the money that will be spent, they howl. Look at all the exposure. They've already started pillorying the poor guy for daring to question the NFL's narrative. 

On Why My Dad Hates Pete Rose

Note: Not his actual signature

So here's the part of the story I didn't tell the other day. I'd shied away from it because it makes someone look bad, and the point of yesterday's piece was to try to maybe make folks feel a little better, but once Dad pulled the string on this one, it was full steam ahead.

To wit: Pete Rose was a jerk back in 1981, too.

On Handwriting Worse Than Mine: Monte Irvin and the Uses of Nostalgia

So I'm looking at an old American Cancer Society event program that my folks got for me, back when they were officers in the New York chapter. The program is from an old banquet where they celebrated various sports figures, and my dad got various of the attendees to autograph it for me. There's five or so signatures in there, along with a couple of inspirational messages from figures that eleven year old me probably wasn't in any position to appreciate. But that didn't matter; my folks got it for me, and I've kept it and treasured it for thirty-plus years.

10 Things Social Pressure Is Forcing Me To Think About That Patriots Ball Thingie

Because if you're going to opine on something sportsish this week, it has to be the shriveled balls of New England.

1. The compulsive need to "name" the "scandal" with something cute like Deflategate or Ballghazi is a stunning indictment of the mainstream sports media's inability to produce anything above lowest common denominator hurr-hurr-hurr material. That being said, I look forward to the day when Bill Belichick is caught rigging the turnstiles at Gillette Stadium and the resultant furor is labeled "Gategate".

Why All Your Complaining About The Max Scherzer Contract Is Wrong

Former Detroit Tiger and possible Best Pitcher On The Planet Not Named Kershaw Max Scherzer signed a 7 year deal with the Nationals over the weekend with a reported dollar value of $210M. This has produced the usual freaking out from all quarters, all of which is conspicuously absent when an NFL player signs a big deal and all of which is complete hooey. To wit:

Cheatery and 3 Minute Drills

Thoughts on Division Championship Sunday

1. In New England, "taking the air out of the ball" is no longer just a metaphor. If it is confirmed that the Patriots deliberately deflated game balls, that puts the league in an interesting position vis-a-vis who actually should be playing in the Super Bowl. (Word is the Pats will be penalized draft picks. Clearly, the penalty here is insufficient deterrent.) Alternately, it also puts certain members of the Patriots' support staff in imminent danger from individuals with the middle name "the" who wagered large amounts of money on Indy's ability to cover the spread.

The Pitch Clock Is A Terrible Idea, Because The Hell With Subtlety

Meet MLB's New Pitch Clock. Yes, They're Starting It In The Minors. 
Why Do You Ask?

I will keep this simple.

Baseball does not need a pitch clock to speed up play.

This is not because baseball does not need to speed up its pace a bit.

Denver Kremlinology

There are two narratives for what's going on in Bronco-land right now. 

One is that the 39 year old quarterback who was blowing the doors off the league early in the season got hurt but didn't come off the field. He spent the last 5 weeks of the season and the playoff round playing on a quad with less structural integrity than Paul Broun's understanding of The Origin of the Species, and for a precision passer like Manning that's death.

11 Deep Thoughts From the National Championship Game

A few thoughts and revelations from last night's first-ever "national championship" college football game:

1. If Ohio State can win a national championship behind its third string QB, no coach in America will ever be allowed to use injuries as an excuse for a rough season ever again.

The Fix Is Enh

One of the most interesting memes in sports fandom is "the game is fixed". It also manifests as "the refs decide who wins", "the team with the most money always wins", and "Roger Goodell wanted the Cowboys to win". You saw it popping up ten seconds after the weirdly reversed pass interference call in the Cowboys-Lions game, just as you saw it popping up back in that Super Bowl a few years ago when some truly horripilating refereeing cost the Seahawks the game.

On the Camellia Bowl

Friend of the blog Aaron Terry just got his first bit of sports blogging published, a take on the venue for the Camellia Bowl.

Check it out here.

(and yes, Camellia has two "L"s. Who knew?)

Ten Things I Think About the Baseball Hall of Fame Results

1. Congratulations to John Smoltz, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, and Craig Biggio on their induction into the Hall of Fame. Celebrating their election, not fist-shaking impotent rage over who did or didn't vote for whom and why, is the thing to take away from yesterday's results.
2. Having four candidates go in without losing anyone with a reasonable case for induction off the bottom of the ballot (I'm looking at you, Gary Sheffield) is a good thing, as it means that next year's relatively thin crop of new candidates could allow some more worthies to make it in. And by worthies, I mean "Tim Raines". But I digress.

Apologies

Sorry for the slower pace of content recently. I've been focusing on the Kickstarter I'm principle creative on, specifically the 20th Anniversary Edition of the tabletop RPG Wraith: The Oblivion. Check it out here if you're so inclined - it's ghosterrific.

And your regularly schedule geshrying will return tomorrow after the KS wraps up.

Bowl Cut

Here is all you need to know about bowl season:

A team being coached by an interim coach after the head coach was fired but before the new head coach got out of his current gig came back from 25 points down in the 4th quarter to beat a team whose coach had quit to take another job, and which was being coached by an interim coach while the new head coach, who had just coached another bowl game 20 miles away, watched from the stands.