Categories
College Basketball

Just make March Madness opening round a national holiday

Those of you who have jobs — too bad. But at least this year you won’t have to sneak out to watch the opening round of the NCAA tourney. CBS sports is offering free online viewing of the games. Good news for you. Bad news for your employer.

A consulting firm is estimating that the availability of games on the internet could cost employers nearly $4 Billion due to lost productivity. I’m not sure that being able to watch games only changes anything. The first few rounds have everyone in the office reloading web pages to see how their brackets are turning out anyway. For me, productivity during the tourney was nil anyway.

Man, I just got very excited thinking about the tournament this year. The buzzer beaters and upsets make me emotionally….erect. Hooo boy! It’s only a few weeks away folks!

[Pittsburgh Live]: Employers cry foul over Internet ‘Madness

Categories
General Sports

Odds and Ends for Thursday March 2 2006: Breakfast of Champions

No, not a martini. Joey Cheek and Apolo Ohno are going to be on a Wheaties box. Bode Miller is going to be on the Colon Blow box.

[USA Today]: Members of the Pittsburgh Steelers were evacuated from a movie theater Wednesday night after of a bomb threat interrupted a private screening of a new DVD of last month’s Super Bowl victory, police said.

[ChicagoSports]: Lawrence Philips to stand trial for trying to run over three people with his car.

[Philly.com]: Jimmy Rollins has a shoe fetish.

[London Free Press]: More gay sports hazing. This time a swim team.

Categories
NFL General

NFL Labor talks break down



There is no way you’re
getting
50% of this football, Gene

I’m not sure if it’s posturing by Gene Upshaw but he left New York and returned to Washington because talks were “hopelessly deadlocked”. Although the current CBA doesn’t expire until the end of 2007, if there is no extension reached, it means that there is no cap for 2007. Sounds pretty good for the players right? Well, yes and no.

Because 2006 is the last year of the cap, it means that teams won’t be able to get relief by moving cap dollars to 2007 because they don’t know what is going to happen in 2007. So there could be a lot of players on the waiver wire by Thursday when teams have to be under the $95M cap. If your team is up against the cap, you’ll be crying. If your team has plenty of cap room, start looking into decent hotel accomodations in South Florida.

Finally, once you let the uncapped year out of the bag, there’s no way the NFLPA is going to go back to having one. And that means after 2007, there could be a lockout. I can’t believe that the NFL and NFLPA have gotten so greedy that they might find a way to kill this cash cow.

I wonder if I should get my Philadelphia Soul jersey now or later.

[AP]: NFL labor talks break off on eve of free agency

Categories
Cincinnati Reds

“””””Million-dollar nigger”””” uniform is up for auction”



Just what I wanted

I’m sure Cincinnati fans look back at Marge Schott with fond memories so why not get some of the baseball memorabilia from that era?

The auction is being conducted by Cowan’s Auctions Inc and there are about 450 lots of mostly Reds items, including uniforms of Pete Rose and Eric Davis.
I mean, don’t let it bother you that Schott called Eric Davis and Dave Parker “million-dollar niggers” or that she owned a Nazi armband. Also, just because she didn’t want her players to wear earrings because only “fruits wear earrings” doesn’t mean you fruits shouldn’t buy the memorabilia. And if you’re Jewish, well, how can you resist buying from the collection of someone who said Hitler “was good in the beginning, but went too far”?

Thank you Cowan Auctions, we really needed to be reminded of the Marge Schott era.

[Bizjournals.com]: Schott baseball memorabilia auction set for March

Categories
NFL General

Go for it on 4th down

Remember when Dick Vermeil and Jon Gruden showed some stones this year and went for game winners this year? Turns out they not only did the ballsy thing, they made the statistically correct call.

A study by David Romer at Berkeley found that coaches were too conservative and “choosing to go for a first down or a touchdown would up the odds of winning by 3 percent.”

Romer did some complex math involving 700 NFL games and found that whenever the chance of a touchdown is statistically 18 percent, coaches should go for it. Of course, Vince Young didn’t need some high-falutin guy from Berkeley to tell him this. He knows you gotta scramble for a touchdown.

[MSNBC]: Scientist debunks football strategy

Categories
Boxing

Trash talk that matters



Lost in translation:
Oscar, you have pretty eyes

How many times did Joey Porter tackle Jerramy Stevens in the Super Bowl? Yeah, I couldn’t find any either. All that trash talking was so ridiculous and manufactured that it would have been the biggest farce of the Super Bowl if the officials hadn’t stepped in and made sure they were the jokes. (Well, let’s not go down that road again before Seahawks fans get angry.)

The reason I bring it up is that boxing is about the only sport where you can actually back up your trash talking with meaningful hits. Ricardo Mayorga and Oscar De La Hoya got into it during a press conference.

Mayorga fired the first salvo:

This clown sitting here to my right has disrespected me. He keeps saying that he’s going to be fighting in September or October, like he’s fighting a nobody in May.

I’m the champion. You’ve got to recognize that. My strongest hand is my right hand. You see his eye? I’m going to detach his retina.

De La Hoya responded by calling him an old woman and telling Mayorga multiple times that he was going to knick him out.

I really wish this had happened during the Shani Davis – Chad Hedrick news conference. Or perhaps Johnny Weir and any other ice skater.

[AP]: De La Hoya, Mayorga trade verbal shots

Categories
NBA General

Team USA Basketball roster leaked

Here is the list of basketball players who were invited to join Team USA’s training camp over the summer.  The list isn’t supposed to be public until Sunday but ESPN already got the goods. This is probably the first good bit of investigative reporting that ESPN has done since 1996.

Carmelo Anthony, Denver Antawn Jamison, Washington
Gilbert Arenas, Washington Joe Johnson, Atlanta
Shane Battier, Memphis Rashard Lewis, Seattle
Chauncey Billups, Detroit Shawn Marion, Phoenix
Chris Bosh, Toronto Brad Miller, Sacramento
Bruce Bowen, San Antonio Chris Paul, NO/Okla. City
Elton Brand, L.A. Clippers Paul Pierce, Boston
Kobe Bryant, L.A. Lakers Michael Redd, Milwaukee
Dwight Howard, Orlando Luke Ridnour, Seattle
Josh Howard, Dallas Amare Stoudemire, Phoenix
LeBron James, Cleveland Dwyane Wade, Miami

Note the absence of Allen Iverson even though he stated he wanted to play for Team USA and that it would be an honor.  Considering that Iverson was the only pro who gave a damn at the last Olympics, this is a curious move by Jerry Colangelo.  I hope  someone has to back out and they ask Iverson to join so that he can tell them to shove it.

Categories
General Sports

Odds and Ends for Wed March 1 2006: environment of hostility

NBA refs think they have it tough and are complaining that they are being increasingly subjected to verbal abuse and even physical bumping. The executive director of the NBA Referees Association called it “an environment of hostility”. We might want to listen to him before NBA refs go nuts and start killing players and coaches.

[USA Today]: ‘Environment of hostility’ festering between NBA players, refs?

[WWE]: This is a joke right?

[Newsday]: NBC will make $60M to $70M in profit from Olympics

[Yay Sports]: Nike just doesn’t get this blogging stuff

Categories
San Francisco Giants

Barry Bonds is an ugly woman



Maybe Corey Clark hit it

You won’t hear us say this often, but, kudos to Barry Bonds. After a cantankerous and alienating off-season, Barry decided to be one of the boys and participate in a rookie hazing event dressed as Paula Abdul.

That’s gotta be the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen. There are drag queens in San Francisco that couldn’t look this bad if they tried. And trust me, they try.

Now the cynical among you may say that Bonds is only doing it to promote his new reality show on ESPN. You might be right but “Giants Idol” might go a long way towards building chemistry. We’ll be on alert to whether there is indeed a “new Bonds”. Remember, TO convinced us he wasn’t a nutcase, and you know how that turned out.

[SFGate]:
“Idolic” Day at Giants camp: Bonds IS Paula Abdul

Categories
NFL General

Vince Young vs David Beckham: Who is dumber



I am smart. S-M-R-T. Smart!

Can someone please set up a celebrity Jeopardy match with Vince Young, David Beckham, and Miss Howard Stern? I’d absolutely pay to see this. The winner would have a score of -5000.

Everyone is beginning to agree that VY’s wonderlic test was, in fact, not scored incorrectly but the story was just a coverup by the NFL because of how piss poor Young’s score of 6 was. Think about it this way, if you just went down the list and checked off the same answer for all 50 questions, you would probably get at least 10 right. It wouldn’t surprise me if Vince Young was illiterate.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, David Beckham admits he can’t even do his 6 year old’s homework and that he has to let Posh spice do it.

I think it was maths, actually. It’s done totally differently to what I was teached when I was at school, and you know, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t do this’.

Because you know, in the last 25 years, they’ve changed the rules of mathematics according to Radiohead principles: 2+2 always = 5.

[Yahoo]: Beckham: I can’t do six-year-old son’s homework