You Call That a Sport?!

In honor of... well, nothing, I have decided that the content of this article will consist of the oddities and strange quirks regarding the various sports that seems to question their sport hood all together. I do this because the NFL had no good matchups to write about (Dallas/New York, Cincy/Carolina, Philly/Tampa Bay notwithstanding... okay so I'm a bit sick of football, that's all), the MLB has no good matchups to write about (no, the World Series really doesn’t count), the NBA has not started its season yet, and no one ever cared about hockey. So what else is there to do but make fun of things.

Football: How can football dare to pretend at sportingness when the quarterbacks are not allowed to be touched. Just imagine if the *other* sports didn’t allow the person with the ball to be touched. No one could ever take a charge when Dwayne Wade drives the basket because—ummm, okay, so the NBA sort of has this rule also. But come on, in football, the whole point is tackling the other guy. The fact that QBs are treated as delicately as ticking time bombs strapped to baby carriages holding quintuplets throws mud in the face of the NFL’s “sportiness”.

Besides, football players are all wimps anyway. They are always complaining about “time of possession”, and getting tired, and “wearing the defense out”. Well excuse me, but if the best athletes the NFL has to offer can’t go hard for ten minutes over the course of a game (everyone knows the actual playing time in an NFL game is somewhere around seventeen minutes) then what the heck is this league doing pretending to be a sport? Shame on you, pro football.

Baseball: Well it might seem like I am picking on baseball a bit here, but there are just so many reasons baseball clings to sporthood by the skin of its teeth. I love baseball, but it doesn’t require athleticism, endurance, or, most of the time, attention. (The best players usually possess such qualities, but the fact remains that the game does not require such qualities to compete)
1) Think about what an outfielder does. 99% of the time he is out there, he is doing absolutely nothing. Until "standing there" becomes an "athletic" activity, this is pretty hard to defend.
2) Or, how does it call itself a sport while allowing a guy to sit on his butt the entire time, only taking a few swings every three innings? I mean... I don’t hate the DH, but it does detract from the “sport” aspect of baseball.
3) Most damning are those stupid in-game interviews. How can it be a sport if the freaking managers are babbling with bird-brained commentators the entire time?
4) Last but not least, how can anything which David Wells is able to excel in call itself a sport?

Basketball: How can any league which allows embarrassing conspiratorial debacles like last year’s finals call itself a sport. The Mavericks were better, played better, showed everyone just how much better they were, and yet the Heat won because the league wanted them to win. They had no teamwork, no chemistry,and nothing involving the coordination of fifteen people into a team. They had Dwayne Wade, though. And when a team has a guy shooting a thousand free throws a game... how can you lose? *I* could outscore the Mavericks if I got as many free throws as Dwayne Wade did. Seriously. There were several “fouls” called when he drove the lane despite the fact that the replays showed no one ever touched him. The league went the way of the Heat because the Heat has stars, and the Mavericks do not.
How can it call itself a sport when a team willing to work together not only has to deal with the opposing team, but also with the morons in gray shirts calling stupid fouls for the league’s stars, simply because they are stars? Shame shame shame.

Hockey: Now here is a freaking sport! The guys have to skate and handle a puck at the same time? They beat each other up, get thrown in penalty boxes—
Well shoot. Nobody watches hockey anyway? How could that be. Surely it couldn’t be because they never score and even when they do you can’t tell because the puck is practically invisible. Oh, that is the problem? Hmm. I suppose they could change the color of the puck or something. That didn’t work? Well, how about this. They get rid of the ice, the goals, the goalies, the pads, the sticks, the puck, but keep the gloves.
Then, you would have boxing. And of course, boxing is only a slightly less violent version of gladiators fighting in coliseums.
Just proves that the Romans really did invent everything worth doing.

*Massive Disclaimer: I tend to insult things I like and not those I dislike. Before anyone gets any heinous notions in their head, I will dispel them: I am not a hockey fan, have never been a hockey fan, and until they invent a camera that attaches to the puck, will never be a hockey fan.

Potential: I once wrote a paper on how frustrating it is to see massive potential wasted. The Falcons are running clinic on how to do just that. Can you imagine Michael Jordan playing basketball as a center? How about Babe Ruth as a pinch-runner? Can you see Lance Armstrong as a sprinter? Michael Vick is being wasted.

The guy throws a beautiful ball. I mean, not just any kind of beautiful, but over-bearing beautiful. "The most beautiful I have ever seen in my life" beautiful. Not only that, but it is effortless. The guy just flicks his wrist and the ball streaks fifty yards on a near flat trajectory. Sure, he doesn’t have the most touch on the ball, but who cares. He can throw any dang pass you want him to, but he is stuck in one of those “west coast” offenses, otherwise known as “offenses for QBs who can’t throw”.

Michael Vick can freaking throw, and he is being wasted. No QB in the league is more suited to throwing deep balls than him. He can buy all the time in the world with his legs, and the ball will be 60 yards down the field in .3 seconds. Now, granted, they have terrible receivers, but geez, you need to at least try this. Let him throw. He can.

And get him a freaking receiver. Trade for Randy Moss. You will never, ever, ever lose a game if you have Randy Moss, Michael Vick, and a good coach on the same team. Oh the potential. Oh the waste. I understand Randy Moss might not be feasible due to pesky financial reasons, but... get somebody. The most outlandishly good QB of all time is floundering in a bad system, with bad receivers, and we don’t get to see the most potent dual threat of all time. You know why play-action works? Because for a split second, the linebackers and defensive backs think there might be a run. With Vick, there can always be a run. Just imagine that potential juxtaposed with some deep throws.

Oh the frustration. And I don’t even care about the Falcons. It is simply greatness being pooped upon. Yes, I ended that sentence with a preposition. No, I do not care. Vick’ potential has scrambled my brains.

Another major disclaimer: This is not an overreaction to a single game. I have said this for the last five years. Or however long Vick has played... My brain is still scrambled from trying to calculate the number of undefeated seasons a team with Vick, Moss, and Bill Belichick would have.

Another Disclaimer: I don't think they should try the whole "pocket passer" thing, either. I think he should still run. That is the point. How can anyone defend a team where the guy with the ball is Deion Sanders, Gale Sayers and Brett Favre all rolled into one? At the moment, the Falcons are only utilizing about 35% of Vick's capability.


What a Lull: No NBA yet. MLB is over. No Tennis. Heck, no soccer or golf to mock. All we have is football, and I keep talking about football.

Or at least, I will, until next edition, where I fix the Yankees in five simple steps. In the meantime:

So *this* is why the Yankees lost...: Two words: Kenny Rogers. Yes, I know I said baseball is over, and it practically is. But even the most boring and anticlimactic series since... ever... deserves mention when Kenny Rogers, the bona fide worst starter in postseason history, stands on the verge of a postseason record for scoreless innings pitched. Yet in reality, this simply proves to us once again how gullible sports fans are. No one even hinted at the idea that he might, I don’t know, have been doing something shady. After all, this is totally reasonable pitching from him, given his past postseason performances. And he obviously would never cheat, right? I mean, he has never been accused of it before, and no one ever complained about his general attitude, right? I mean even the camera-men exhort his great manners.

Obviously, had he not been cheating (not that I'm saying he was...), the Yankees would have won game 3. Eh. I don’t know. Torre still would have found a way to blow it.

Oh So Odd: College Football on Saturday re-opened the oddest question in sports. A team got down 38-3, and then won. I watched the first and last drive of Notre Dame’s offense. That was all I needed to see, because apparently, in between, they were not able to simply walk down the field at will. And the reasons for this are... ostensibly the same reasons James Blake can win one set 6-0 and lose the next 0-6. Then again, it is college football. People have drop kicked field goals of off fair catches in college. This isn’t *that* weird...

Doomed to talk about NFL: Eli was awesome, 62 yarders are sweet, was there a more boring close and relevant game in history than Carolina/Cincy, the Raiders are better than the Cardinals which means the Cardinals are really bad but we already knew that, you laughed when I had Jacksonville so low on my Power Rankings but who is laughing now (the Texans, to answer my own questions), the Chargers don’t seem so good anymore, the Colts seem the same as always, the Redskins still stink, and Heroes is not as good as Sunday Night Football, great job screwing up my Sunday night, NBC.