I Think We've Seen This Before

Cincinnati 27, Virginia Tech 24, in what was essentially a home game for Tech.

In other news, the ACC Commissioner's office is preparing a statement reasserting the superiority of the ACC as a football league, along with a membership invitation for Cincy.

Roger Goodell, Hero

Roger Goodell, relaxing at home after a hard day at work

The funniest thing to come out of the replacement ref fiasco has not been any of the on-field stuff, hilarious as that has been. It has not been the overblown bloviating by the chattering classes, nor the hysterical overreactions on Twitter (some of which veered off into deeply ugly, hateful bullshit). No, it’s been those noted labor economists at places like ESPN trying to spin this thing so that Roger Goodell comes out of it as some kind of hero, or, failing that, a victim.

Look, anyone who thinks the lockout was about anything other than Goodell trying to punish the refs for standing up to him is delusional. The money involved is, in the grand scheme of things, minimal. Dan Snyder pisses away more than that trying to bully Washington free papers in a given weekend. No, this was about power and control, and nobody in the NFL has more of either than Roger Goodell. The guy is Sauron, the all-seeing eye dispatching Nazgul to swoop down and fine players unexpectedly for inappropriate towel lengths. You’re going to tell me that in the face of a labor dispute that threatens to undermine both the product the NFL puts on the field and, more importantly, its relationship with Vegas (anyone who doesn’t think the rise of the NFL isn’t directly attributable to a combo of gambling and fantasy sports is delusional), Roger Goodell was suddenly impotent, waiting on the command of those same owners he bullies and fines to cut a deal equivalent to a single game’s concessions take?

Please.

It was a power play. And for once, Goodell lost. Everything else is just spin.

Referee-related observations

Inspired by my esteemed colleague's post below...
I
Have you noticed how the post-whistle scrums have gotten longer, as players realize that the refs don't really control the game?  They can keep shoving and jawing for a few extra seconds and nobody's going to do anything.  What happens if, this weekend, when the Broncos and Raiders play, Richard Seymour shoves Orlando Franklin into Peyton Manning after a play ends?
The NFL's owners should be protecting their investments, not arguing over pocket change.
II
Stop watching.  Seriously.
American football is a lot of fun. It's a great sport. It's fun to play. High school football is enormous fun to watch. But the apparatus around collegiate and professional football has become absurd. 11 minutes of action packed into 3.5 hours of beer commercials.
They're going to keep doing the same shit so long as we all keep watching. We keep watching, and Coors pays NBC to pay the NFL to keep doing the same shit. Imagine what a few percent drop in viewership will do to everyone involved.
III
The NFL still has an antitrust exemption. One might ask one's representatives to ask the league's owners why they are jeopardizing the health and safety of their employees so flagrantly.

Really, all this complaining about the NFL proves only that they continue to have a hold on our collective attention and imagination.  We could do worse things than to walk away.

No More Foobaw For...Someone

Pertinent fact 1: This whole dispute with the NFL refs  could be solved for roughly half of what Tarvaris Jackson is making to back up a guy from Harvard.
Pertinent opinion 1: The fact that it has not is due solely to the fact that Roger Goodell wants to show the miserable peasants who's boss. Saying that the refs suddenly don't get the pension plan they'd been promised for years because he doesn't get one only works as an argument if all of those refs were also making north of $10M a year. I'll give you a hint. They're not.
Pertinent fact 2: Refereeing NFL games is really hard to do well.
Pertinent opinion 2: For all of the mythology about the simple elegance of football, the NFL rulebook is a horrific mishmash of weird rules, special cases, and just plain strangeness about the thickness of an L. Ron Hubbard novel. Mastering its contents as part of a part-time job would be extremely difficult. Trying to then use that knowledge while having to pursue world-class athletes (and nose tackles) up and down the field whilst being screamed at and intimidated by dictatorial nutbar headcoaches and two small armies of human goliaths (and kickers), all of whom literally have millions riding on the outcome of the season and who are used to having their every whim catered to, is nigh impossible. There was no way they could ever have slid in flawlessly to replace teams of professionals who have been doing this for years, who have the league's backing, and who have earned the respect of the guys they'd be refereeing. The replacement refs, on the other hand, have been thrown into the deep end by a league that will clearly abandon them as soon as they're no longer needed, and the players and coaches know it. To be blunt, it's a miracle there haven't been more catastrophes, and I challenge any of the armchair Ed Hochulis out there to do any better under these insane circumstances. Here's a hint - you won't.
Pertinent fact 3: The NFL thinks they can run sub-standard product out there and you'll watch anyway BECAUSE IT'S FOOBAW.
Pertinent opinion 3: Available evidence suggests they're right. Remember how, during the lockout of the players, everyone was all "Oh, this will destroy trust in the game" and "the fans will take years to come back" and "Tony Romo sucks"? The second the lockout ended, bam, butts were in seats, fantasy leagues were full, and you were hooked again. Never mind that it did affect the product on the field - ask any Eagles fan about trying to break in new schemes and coordinators without benefit of a real offseason or training camp - for the worse. It Was Foobaw. And so, when this thing wraps up, when Goodell extracts some token concession from the refs and pays them their promised pension, all the folks who have sworn up and down that they're tired of the league showing contempt for them, that they're tired of getting substandard product, that they've had it and they're not coming back....they'll be back. Instantly.
Pertinent fact 4: The racist chuckleheads tweeting horrific things in Golden Tate's direction because of that last play need to go get bent.
Pertinent opinion 4: Immediately.

Speaking of Cardinals...

The World's Dumbest Bird, aka "Rex Hudler", is still at it. Five months later and he's still slamming his face against every window in our house...and our shed...and our live-in-nephew's car...he can, apparently to defeat the magical cardinal who lives inside his reflection.

Quoth the wife: "How does that bird not have brain damage?"
Quoth me: "How do we know he doesn't?"

Why I'm Rooting For the Cardinals (Sort Of)

I am of two minds on the second NL Wild Card spot.

On one hand, I'm a Phillies fan, and I'd love to see them steal it. A season that's largely been pissed away due to injuries, curious playing time decisions (Hey, whaddaya know? If you leave John Mayberry alone, he hits!), bullpen meltdowns, and too many inexplicable meltdowns against the Houston Astros could still provide a happy ending. And, with this year's cockamamie playoff system, any time you can run a Cole Hamels and a Cliff Lee out there, you've got a puncher's chance.
And yet, on the other side, there's the Cardinals. Lord knows, I should be rooting fervently against them. the luckiest WS champions of recent years - seriously, who did Tony LaRussa sacrifice to Thor to get those fortuitously timed rainouts last year - they angered my formerly-Cardinals-loving wife by not hiring Jose Oquendo as their new manager. (Seriously. They announced the Matheny hiring and she announced they were dead to her. Hope of Jose was all that kept her going through the LaRussa years.)
But at the same time, part of me wants them to win. Why? Not for any love of Lances Berkman or Lynn. Not because I think "the best baseball fans in America" deserve more affirmation. No, it's for one simple reason: For years, LaRussa wallowed in the "genius" label, for certain values of "genius" that include "having one of the greatest players in history anchor your lineup and several gazillions sunk into your pitching staff". If a first year manager...with no prior managerial experience...can win with that same roster MINUS Albert Pujols, well, maybe that takes a little bit of that self-applied shine off that genius label.
It's petty, I know. But with the Phillies 4 games back with 10 to go, it's about all I've got.

Lord Almighty, There's Violence In Foobawl

Jay Cutler vs. J'Marcus Webb: A Recreation

Football, it must be noted, is a manly sport played by manly men (and also by kickers). It involves putting impossibly burly men in suits of space-aged armor and having them running into each other repeatedly with the impact of 30-MPH car accidents. (That time in high school when you accidentally crunched half your Saturn's front end into a pretzel by bumping into a telephone pole while standing on your brake? Yeah, imagine that hitting the guys on your favorite team every time they open the way for a three-yard draw play. ) We cheer on reports of fistfights in training camp, choosing to believe it means our favorite players are "feisty" or "leaders" or something. We are trained to cheer on guys who have "non-stop motors", who don't take plays off, who play for 60 minutes (as opposed to the actual 11 or so minutes of action that most football games actually comprise). In short, we demand our football heroes go hard, go hard nonstop, and then come back and ask for more.
Except, of course, when they do. Last week, two things happened. One, Chicago Bears quarterback and walking edge case Jay Cutler got frustrated with the play of his offensive line - justifiable, really, as they had managed to do a credible impression of a group of matadors in the face of the Green Bay rush - and shoved one of his linemen. Meanwhile, new Tampa Bay coach Greg "Rutgers Forever" Schiano sent his defense full bore after the New York Giants on a kneeldown play as time ran out, hoping to incite a fumble.
Both instances, naturally, evoked howls of outrage, not to mention a great deal of pearl-clutching and fainting couch-reclining on the part of the NFL's chattering class. You don't do that sort of thing, commentators said again and again. You don't put your hands on your teammate. You don't try on the last play if your opponent is in Victory formation. It simply isn't done!
All of which, of course, puts the lie to all the self-serving myths the NFL likes to serve up like bratwurst. Look, any Eagles fan can tell you there's plenty of reason to go after the Giants on the last play. You'd be amazed at how often it works. Yammering about how the Giants weren't prepared for it just means Giants coach Tom Coughlin should have been paying better attention; the notion that players were endangered conveniently overlooks the fact that these guys are in danger on every single play. Yes, it's not the usual response to Victory formation, but since the normal response is a guaranteed loss, you can't necessarily blame Schiano for trying something different. And really, it's the something different that's the issue. For all that the highlight reels love to praise innovation and talk up the game's cerebral strategy, the truth of the matter is that playcalling's barely evolved since Bill Walsh's day. By all means, be clever - just do it in a way that we feel comfortable with.
As for the Cutler nonsense, it's even sillier. Cutler's maybe half the size of the lineman he shoved. He did no lasting damage, he didn't hit him at speed, and he didn't, break his teammate's face the way beloved All-Star WR Steve Smith did. He shoved the guy, which maybe shows a little poor judgement, but that's about it. And yet, the way sports talk radio blew up, you'd think he'd gone full Tony Jaa.
Seriously. Let's look at it again. Cutler. Shoved. Him. That's it. And in a sport where the shovee is expected to slam into a couple of 350-pound meathemoths on every single play, a shove from Jay Cutler is about as noteworthy as a new Maroon 5 single. And yet the Mike Golics of the world went full "Ehrmegerd" on the story, chewing it over for days when other things - like, say, actual games - happened.
By season's end, nobody will remember either of these too well. The narrative of the Unlikable Jay Cutler was written long ago; he'll get sandbagged by the press for failing to walk on the waters of Lake Michigan.  This thing is likely to get added to the dubious evidence pile, but that's as far as it goes; anyone who'll dredge it up is someone who's already decided that Cutler's a weiner. The Tampa Bay thing will get hauled out every time Coughlin and Schiano meet again, which is to say, probably never. But for those who pay attention, the disconnect between what the league celebrates and how it reacts when those "virtues" actually hit the field is immense.

Lessons From College Football, Week 2

Dear Missouri:

If you look around the conference and you don't see Kansas, you are Kansas.

Little-Known Secondary Rules For Dez Bryant

The big ones - no strip clubs, the curfew, the bodyguard - have already been reported. But what most folks don't know is that there's a whole slew of secondary rules the estimable Mr. Bryant has to follow as well. At great personal risk, not to mention prolonged exposure to Ed Werder's mustache, we've obtained a partial list of those conditions. They include:

"Fluttershy, you run a post route"

• Not permitted to participate in illicit street racing with Vin Diesel
• Banned from attending IMAX showings of The Dark Knight Rises; must only see it in regular theaters
• Required to remove sing-along video of "Call Me Maybe" from YouTube
• Not allowed to serenade members of his 3-man security detail with "And I Will Always Love You"
• Required to block on at least one out of every three running plays.
• Not permitted to rub Tony Kornheiser's head or Michael Wilbon's belly "for luck" before games any longer
• Must write a lengthy review of the latest episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic by no later than Thursday, every week
• No longer allowed to use the Chocolate Wonderfall at Golden Corral
• Mandatory sessions visiting Mrs. Ethel Goldstein at a local nursing home every Tuesday, wherein she will announce that he's "a nice boy, but she's very disappointed he didn't become a dentist"
• Must return Chris Berman's toupee the next time he sees him, and stop calling it "baby Tribble"
• Required to blame Tony Romo for team's inevitable late-season collapse

Big Deal

The Dodgers get:
Former All-Star 1B Adrian Gonzalez, a SoCal guy who could single-handedly double the production they get out of that spot
Former All-Star and World Series hero Josh Beckett, who looks primed to get a boost by returning to the NL
Former All-Star OF Carl Crawford, who was a lousy fit in Fenway's tiny left field, and who should do much better in the wide-open spaces of the NL West, once he recovers from Tommy John surgery
Infielder Nick Punto, who is Nick Punto, and was once part of a trade for Eric Milton
$11M in cash to help deal with the $260M in salary obligations they just took on, or, as some folks call it, "piss in the ocean".

The Red Sox get:
Sub-par 1B James Loney
Pitching prospects Rubby De La Rosa and Allen Webster
Infield sorta-prospect Ivan DeJesus, Jr. As someone who watched Ivan DeJesus, Sr. for many years, I'm not bullish
OF not-really-a-prospect-any-more Jerry Sands, who looks to be a AAAA-style tweener.


What the Sox really get out of this, though, has very little to do with the players who came back. They dumped hundreds of millions off payroll, recognizing that this team wasn't going to win as it was constructed, and they might as well come in fourth for $70M as for $170M. They cleared the decks of just about all of the last regime's big-ticket free agent purchases (and Nick Punto), making it clear that this is Ben Cherington's team now, and nobody - regardless of contract - was safe. They off-loaded the guys who supposedly led the mutiny against divisive manager Bobby Valentine - with the way the Red Sox seem to excel at mudslinging their own people on their way out of town, we'll never know the truth, but at least the optics are good - and made a strong effort to make the team "likeable" again. I'm not sure you can run an ad campaign on "We traded the jerks who wrote mean texts about the manager!" outside of middle school, but what the hey. Give them points for trying. They did all these things and got all of these intangible goods out of the deal, except...

...there is no way to spin this. The trade made the team worse, both in the short term and potentially for the next couple of years. A-Gon may not have been the Ruthian uber-masher the team envisioned when plucking him from the wide-open pastures of San Diego, but he still produced a hell of a lot more than James Loney ever will. Webster and De La Rosa aren't ready to contribute. Sands and DeJesus don't seem terribly likely to produce much of anything.  The team as it had been constructed was flawed, and subtracting a big bat from the middle of the order isn't going to help. Nor does this year's free agent market look likely to provide a quick turnaround. The best bat - Josh Hamilton - comes with all sorts of questions about durability. The second-best bat is Michael Bourn. All those zillion-dollar deals cleared off the payroll don't mean anything if there's nowhere else to spend the money.

And so, it remains to be seen how Boston's really going to react to the deal once they figure out what it means day-to-day. Sully from the Cape (long time listener, first time caller) may be crowing to Dale and Holley on WEEI about how they finally got rid of the guys who were screwing the Sox up, but give him a season of no-hope noncontention, and he just might change his tune. Loudly.

There's a strong sense that at least part of this deal was done to provide a sop to a fan base that found the team "unlikeable" because of all of its shenanigans. It remains to be seen what the team will do when its fan base says the Red Sox are unlikeable because they're losing.

The Steroid User Narrative, Or, Why We'll Conveniently Forget About Bartolo Colon As Soon As Possible

The new face - and chins - of steroids in baseball

Can't wait to see how the Bartolo Colon suspension affects the narrative of the jacked up, totally ripped,   mega-noggined steroid abuser. Seriously, Colon's the sort of guy who looks more likely to test positive for P-I-E than P-E-D, and who presumably took his synthetic testosterone after it was batter dipped, deep fried, and wrapped in bacon. When you think "steroid user", you think Barry Bonds' giant dome and ripped physique, and conveniently forget that that Bonds' workout regimen was so legendarily brutal that it broke freak-of-nature Gary Sheffield. You don't think "guy who looks like he stars on Man vs. Food Nation"; you think one hit of steroids is like Popeye sucking down a six pack of spinach and Hulking out immediately.
But then again, that's always been the case. The bulk of steroids guys busted in baseball haven't been uber-athletes. They've been fringe guys trying to hang on, end-of-the-bullpen arms and scrappy middle infielders looking for a way to hang on to another year of major league service time. Think back to the Mitchell Report. How many of those guys had you even heard of?
But the public perception of steroid users is set in stone, at least for the moment. It's all about the record-breakers and the superstars, because it's a lot more fun to tear down a guy who's famous than it is to put the final kibosh on the dreams of a guy who's been cut six times and is desperately trying to hang on in Durham or Indianapolis or Scranton. And so the narrative won't change, which means that honest debate on the issue - which is sorely lacking - will continue to remain an impossibility.

Tell Clemens-a We're Going To The Mattresses

Roger Clemens has lumbered out of retirement and joined an independent league team, the effervescently named Sugar Land Skeeters. (Presumably, the team owners looked at the shocking merchandising success of the Savannah Sand Gnats and said "We want some of that", which tells you exactly what we're dealing with here.)
Of course, it seems highly unlikely that Clemens is going to be satisfied to compete at this level. Various baseball outlets noted that the Houston Astros, one of Clemens' former teams, had scouts watching him beSkeet himself, and let's face it, it's not like the Astros have anything to lose this year by turning the ball over to a 50 year old suspected PED user whose strikeout fixation was probably a severe hindrance to any of his kids getting laid in college. (Kody? Kory? Koby? Kacy? Thank God they didn't stop at 3).
Now, if it were Curt Schilling making the comeback, I'd understand it: Curt kinda needs the cash after heroically flushing $75M Rhode Island tax dollars down the mighty Woonasquatucket River. But Roger? What's his angle?
I can think of one. Getting onto the Astros' roster, even for a day, resets the countdown on his Hall of Fame election. Five more years means five more years of separation from Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds on the ballot. It means five more years for the electorate to come to grips with what the hell PEDs actually mean, and five more years to forgive/forget/shrug their shoulders.
And five more years for writers to decide that they didn't know what the hell they were talking about when it came to PEDs, and to vote Roger in on the first ballot. Because his ego will let him wait five years after making a comeback, but it won't let him wait a couple of years on the ballot to be let in.

Worshipping at the Altar of the Scrappy White Guy

So the narrative goes like this:

Star player doesn't give 100% on a particular play.
Local sports talk radio calls him out for not hustling.
Idiot calls in, carefully identifies himself as Not A Racist, and then demands to know why Star player, who is often African-American, can't hustle like Scrappy Infielder Guy, who is always white.
Someone says "Hey, dude, that's kinda racist."
Chest-thumping about how not racist saying the white dude tries harder than the black dude is invariably ensues.

Seriously. I have never heard anyone say "Why can't Jim Thome hustle like Joe Thurston?" Because, for all that I adore the awesomeness that is Thome, the guy's built like Bluto and for the sake of his hammys, doesn't always bust those tiny little gams of his up the line on routine grounders. Joe Thurston, on the other hand, never seemed to be going less that nine million miles an hour, even on a swinging bunt that would do everything but crawl into the pitcher's glove and beg to be petted. Or how about Jose Oquendo? Or Hector Luna? Or Michael Martinez? Or Jose Altuve, or Josh Harrison, or....well, there's a whole lot of scrappy out there that's not named David Eckstein. Honest. Watch a few games. You'll see.
So, first time caller, long time listener, do me a favor. Next time you call in to bitch about a guy not hustling, see if you can find an example of scrappiness to compare him to who isn't at least six shades paler than he is. If you can't, then hold off on the "I IS TOTALLY NOT RACIST BUT THE BLACK /HISPANIC GUY DOESN'T HUSTLE AND THE WHITE GUY TOTALLY DOES" bullcrap until you can, and then think about what you're saying.
Okay?
Thanks.

Bryce Harper, Political Narrative

Hey, you remember back when Bryce Harper was the embodiment of all that was good, right, and apparently politically conservative in the world, and Jason Heyward was the symbol of everything that was lazy and evil and liberal and stuff?

Heyward: 21 HR, 64 RBI, 17 SB, .842 OPS
Harper: 12 HR, 37 RBI, 13 SB, .741 OPS*, 1 case of telling kids to be "sexy"

Yeah. Me neither.

And this, boys and girls, is why you don't try to cram political narratives hamfistedly into one night's worth of Sportscenter highlights.



*None of this is intended as any sort of value or talent judgment on Mr. Harper, who is handling the athletic and social pressures of being in the big leagues before his 21st birthday with grace, aplomb and skill. More power to him, and all that. He's a great ballplayer and, by  most accounts, a pretty decent guy. He's just not a lame political metaphor, and neither is his opposite number on the Braves.

And Melky Cabrera is the End of Civilization

For all the amusement Melky Cabrera's clown-car antics may provide, using his special flavor of idiocy as a launching point for endless "baseball's not serious about steroids" screeds is exactly the sort of simple-minded concern trolling you'd expect from ESPN radio. These are the same geniuses who defended Brian Cushing to the death, after all, because he played football, and apparently no one who plays football would ever have interest in getting bigger, stronger, faster, or more muscular - unlike baseball players.
In a sense, baseball can't win with these bozos. If the drug testing program doesn't catch anyone, it's ineffective. If it does catch someone, then it's evidence that the program isn't working. The narrative is set and all that's left is to fill in the blanks.

STFU, Steroids Edition

Here's a thought:
If you work for a sports talk radio station, or a sports-themed television network, that takes advertising revenue for supplements designed to reverse the dreaded "Low T", then you don't get to say jack about steroids, Melky Cabrera, or any other damn thing related to chemical enhancement. If your salary's getting paid in part by ads for drugs to make middle-aged guys whose ding-dongs can't serve as tire jacks any more feel like they're 23 again and you still feel the need to moralize about other people taking the exact same stuff your employer is selling, then you need to take a look in the mirror and shut the hell up.
Because by normalizing that crap, by wallowing in hypocrisy, by feeding an audience that demands that kind of physical impossibility, you're as much a part of the problem as Victor Conte ever was.

Frickin' Laser Beams

No, there weren't sharks or even ill-tempered sea bass at Estadio Azteca last night (I accidentally referred to it as "Rey Azteca," which is the name of our favorite local Mexican restaurant, because I am a philistine).  But someone there had some frickin' laser beams.

Last night the US Men's National Soccer Team played the Mexican National Team in Mexico City. There's plenty of footage of US goalkeeper Tim Howard having lasers shined onto his face and chest throughout the match.  Fortunately drunks have a hard time keeping a pencil-thin beam aimed at the eyeball of a moving target a quarter-mile away, or Howard might have left Mexico blind.

Amazingly -- for the first time in forty years -- the US team beat Mexico last night at Estadio Azteca.  This was a major triumph for the US program, especially given their recent descent in the FIFA power rankings (we were 36th going into last night, compared to Mexico at #17).

But, seriously here, I'd like to understand why the referee didn't put a halt to the match, or charge Mexico with fouls or cards, in response to Mexican fans' attempts to distract or blind the US goalkeeper.  This can't possibly be acceptable.

Is That Dwight Howard's Theme Music?

If you think about it, it's really easy to understand why Bill Simmons' two favorite sports - using the term loosely in one case - are basketball and wrestling. No other sport offers the sorts of heel turns, off the turnbuckle insanity, chest-thumping speechifying, and slamming of people in the back of the head with figurative folding chairs that the NBA does, and the recent Dwight Howard four-way orgy is the best proof of it yet. Howard himself did his best heel turn, alternating between declaring his allegiance to the Magic and demanding to be traded to the team of his choice (Brooklyn, because presumably he's got a titanic fixed-gear bike, an iPod full of Lana Del Rey MP3s, and a closet full of corduroy in earth tones). And in the end, he got what he wanted - a trade to a contending team, the chance to make max money in a place with more star power than Orlando, the chance to test free agency, and a year to take advantage of a lineup that could probably finish second in the Olympics to nab that championship that's done so much for LBJ's reputation. He might as well have donned spandex tights and a luchador mask for his post-trade press conference.
You generally don't get this in other sports. Try it in baseball and you get buried by the fans and media, as Ryan Dempster can now attest. Try it in football and you're a wide receiver, which means either you're productive and they put up with you, or you're not any more and they cut you, and even Bill Belichick has a strict limit on the number of reclamation jobs he can undertake in a single year. Try it in hockey and you lose teeth, because the hockey core fanbase has an even more Norman Rockwell-ized view of a what a player owes his team than baseball, and they still hate Keith Primeau here in Carolina.
But basketball is where the stars' egos come out to play, and it's so Simmonsy it's perfect.
Me, as a rough approximation of a Sixer fan, I'm interested in seeing if the Bynum-shaped gamble pays off. I'm sorry to see Andre Iguodala go; he always put more on the court than you saw in the box score. He'll be a great fit in Denver. The Sixers have at least made themselves interesting. And Orlando...has a lot of picks they can potentially bundle in trades.
But really, none of that matters. What matters is that Dwight Howard grabbed the mike, then grabbed the folding chair, then grabbed the belt. And as the Hulkster will tell you, heel turns pay.

If You...

...believe that the Olympics are part of an Illuminati ritual to crown Prince William as King of the West by way of the blood sacrifice of the Aurora shootings...
...think that the most discussion-worthy thing about Gabby Douglas was either her hair or her leotard, and not her stunning performance...
...are offended by how Serena Williams celebrated her gold medal despite not having any idea what the crip walk might or might not be...
...got your knickers in a twist because you thought the greatest swimmer in the history of athletics didn't train hard enough for your liking...
...actually care enough to take sides in the insane argument over whether this USA men's basketball team could beat the original Dream Team...
...or are convinced that the Olympics will be the staging ground for a false flag attack that will usher in a US strike on Iran...

....then you are a goddamned idiot.

Thank you.

The sports commentariat

I heard guys this morning on sports talk radio evincing surprise! and shock! that Andy Reid would be coaching tonight.

My question is: are these guys just stupid?

But I guess that's my question every time I turn on sports talk radio.