10/14/06 rants

10/14/06
Catching Up

Dozens of sports stories have been creeping by as I fumed about the Yankees ridiculous early departure from the playoffs. So to make up for my lack of minor rants last time around, I will now catch you up on everything you need to know through an all-minor-rant article.

Drew Fails: Drew Bledsoe failed miserably in his attempts to, ya know, throw the football last Sunday. Though clearly the purpose of the game of football is to get the funky-bouncing pigskin into Terrell Owens’ hands, Drew could not do it. It almost seemed like he was trying to win the game instead of giving T.O. the ball. I mean, he clearly under threw T.O. on deep routes, was obviously somehow responsible for T.O.’s drops when crossing the middle of the field, and come on people—13 throws in Owens’ direction is not nearly enough. It isn’t like Terry Glenn needed any balls thrown his way. Who has ever heard of him? Did he single-handedly destroy two franchises? No? Well then clearly he does not have the Power of Terrell Owens.

Joe Stays: Smart Yankee fans throughout the country scream in pain and disgust.

Baseball: Apparently, there is still baseball to be played. Who knew? Who cares, either? The Mets should run through the Cardinals, someone will win in the A.L., and the A.L. team will win the World Series because that is what A.L. teams do. I have no rooting interest, really. No one else does either. If you aren’t from Oakland, Detroit or St. Louis—or maybe the ten people in NY who root for the Mets—you don’t care. When the Yankees are in the playoffs, everybody cares, love them or hate them. Oh well. MLB’s loss.

Corey Lidle: You can’t say much about this. It is tragic. From a somewhat morbid, Yankee fanatic point of view, there is only one question: why didn’t he invite Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright, Hideki Matsui and Joe Torre to ride with him? Shame.

Get This Man An Education: I’m not going to name names (though I suppose that sentence is a bit contradictory...), but a certain sports writer whose last name rhymes with “myth”, and who used to be a relatively regular sight on Around the Horn...

Stinks.

If you want a clinic in how *not* to write an article, read his articles. They are bad. You have to wonder how the guy got the job. Really. He isn’t a bad guy. On Around the Horn, where his super-informal and ultra unoriginal babbling belongs, he is a solid contributor. On ESPN.com, where the ability to write is somewhat useful, he just brings the whole site down.

Herm and Lovie: You know, I hate it when people bring race into everything. It doesn’t really need to be there. The NBA, NFL and MLB all have far more than the percentage of the population when it comes to diversity. And often, issues propounded as racial by the Stuart Scotts of the world have A) nothing at all to do with the color of your skin or B) it swings both ways. Take two black coaches in the NFL, for example. Lovie Smith and Herman Edwards coach the Bears and Chiefs, respectively. Lovie Smith was, for a long time, an underrated coordinator who finally landed a head coaching gig in Chicago. Herman Edwards has been, for a long time, one of the most overrated coaches in the league. Now if Lovie was being shunned due to his African roots, Herman was being grabbed due to those same roots. Or, if we could just admit that some African-American coaches are misjudged for reasons *other* than their color, we can dispense with the whole business.

Lovie Smith is now proving just how good he is. Herman Edwards is proving just how bad he is. He wrecked the Jets and is now doing the same to the KC Chiefs. He is bad. Lovie is good. Has nothing to do with what you see when you look in the mirror.

Leinart: Though the Cardinals lost last week, rookie quarterback Matt Lienart played extremely well in his first NFL start, showing why he was termed the “NFL-ready” QB during this most recent draft. I ached and pleaded and hoped against hope that the Titans would take Leinart and not Vince Young with the third pick in June. But no, they had to go with the “athletic” QB. The NFL’s obsession with mobile quarterbacks is unbelievable. Running QBs do not win. Let us look at the past Super Bowl winners:

Ben Roethlisberger
Tom Brady
Tom Brady
Brad Johsnon
Tom Brady
Trent Dilfer
Kurt Warner
John Elway
John Elway
Brett Favre

And the list could go on. Besides the preponderance of Bradys and Elways, the thing one should notice is that none of those QBs run very often. The closest a running QB ever came to winning a Super Bowl was Steve McNair’s 1 yard shy job in 2000, and McNair was, not surprisingly, morphing into the passer he would become for the next five years. Why do teams still go after running QBs? Running QBs don’t win. Accurate, smart passers win. Sounds a lot like Matt Lienart. Too bad for his sake that even accurate, smart QBs can’t win in Arizona. Heck, even 6’5”, 230 lb, laser-rocket armed quarterbacks could never win in Arizona.

Really though. Think about running QBs versus passing ones. Donovan McNabb was the most overrated QB in the league when he ran all of the time. Now that he throws the ball, he is dang good. Steve McNair was okay when he ran often, but he became a co-MVP when he started throwing the ball. You don’t want a cement-feet QB like Bledsoe, but a guy with mobility should use it to escape the rush and throw, not to escape the rush and run. All of the numbers back me up on that one, including Ws.

NBA: The National Basketball Association opened its exhibition schedule lately... internationally. I suppose it makes sense, since everyone in the NBA is now foreign, but still, should we re-name this league the IBA? Seriously. Let’s forget this whole shenanigan where players form other countries play on our teams while pretending it is still a “National” Basketball Association. Just make the thing international. Or maybe not. Just banning all international players would be better. Except Canadians. That way we can still see behind the back, over the shoulder, through the legs, off the backboard passes right into the waiting hands of a Phoenix player getting ready to dunk.

This Means...: Joey Harrington has replaced Daunte Culpepper as the Miami Dolphins QB, ostensibly due to Culpepper’s “injury”. If by “injury”, one means pathetic and awful playing, sure, Daunte is injured. The fact is, the Dolphins just want an excuse as to why they are playing so badly, and they have now invented an effective one. I would not care so much except that this means whenever Culpepper comes back again, everyone will be expecting him to play well again, and they will act surprised when he fails again. Until the Dolphins trade for Randy Moss, Daunte will be a below average QB.

What a Game: The Steelers Play the Chiefs this week. Dangit. Two horribly overrated teams playing is always a bad thing, because whichever team wins is suddenly proclaimed fantastic by the football pundits. If Pittsburgh wins, they are “back on track”, and if KC wins, they are “on their way”. Sure, they would have a winning record, but Kansas City beat the Cardinals. Every team should beat the Cardinals. If Pittsburgh defeats the Chiefs this week—which they might—it won’t be much of a victory. Beating a Herman Edwards coached team is like beating a glacier down a hill. Or something like that.

Japan Has it Right: In the Japanese baseball playoffs, the team with the best record gets a bye, while the second and third place teams duke it out for the chance to challenge the best team. Now I have for a long time been a proponent of some type of rule such as this, but Japan, in its unbelievably progressive baseball wisdom, takes it even farther. The team with the best record is spotted a game against the winner of the other series! It is a race to three victories, with the best team being given one to start with. Now that is the type of genius that the MLB needs to adopt. Of course, they won’t, because Bud Selig is an idiot (Steroids? What are steroids?), but that’s okay.

Is This Legal?: The Denver Broncos are favored to beat the Oakland Raiders by 15 points this weekend. That is a huge disparity. If the spread is 10 points, it is huge. 15 is gigantic. Well, okay, you say, the Raiders are bad. But do you know just how bad they are? The Broncos average 12 points a game.