Owners vs. Players- I was a little disappointed this week that ESPN didn’t try some sort April Fools joke about the lockout but then again knowing the current situation I don’t think anyone would believe them. Side note, this was the weakest April Fools I’ve ever been around what happened to all the pranks people? This may sound hypocritical considering that I took part in zero pranks but my pranks always fail due to me giving it away by laughing. Side note off of a side note, way back in sixth grade there was a rumor among my fellow little league playing mates that the way to get the best pitcher in our league off of his game was to smile at him when you went up to the plate, no this wasn’t an April Fools day joke either we actually tried this. I realize this has nothing to with the NFL dealing with the very real possibility of not playing a season next year but I’d rather stick to awful sports stories of my youth over depressing news of NFL owner’s greed. Since there is still nothing going on in terms of negotiations I will continue my break down of Madden cover tournament because this at least gives me hope that we will have some sort of season next year.
As many predicted the city of Seattle has once again come away winless as the Seahawks representative the 12th man was eliminated by 49ers linebacker Patrick Willis. This basically was a bye for Willis as I’m not even sure that Seahawks fans could get excited about seeing themselves on the cover of a video game. Shocking everyone was the news that all defensive linemen and offensive linemen had been eliminated after round one of voting. Secretly I’m convinced that if an offensive lineman actually had a chance at winning EA Sports would sabotage the voting so that they didn’t have to deal with a fat white guy on the cover of one of their top selling video games. You can’t tell me that there wouldn’t be a drop in sales figures; I’m convinced if there was an offensive lineman on the cover of Madden sales would drop. I also can’t help but notice that all two white running backs in the NFL, I know I’m missing Toby Gerhart but he hasn’t existed since he annihilated the Ducks two years ago, have advanced to round two. This is an amazing development but there is still no word as to whether the white running back species will be taken off the endangered species list. This puts the endangered species committee in a tough spot because they are still reeling from Jason Seahorn’s retirement, which made the white cornerback officially extinct so who knows how they will respond in this situation. Moving on with the sweet sixteen breakdowns, Jesus, sorry Tim Tebow, fell to Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles in what has to go down as the biggest upset so far. Danny Woodhead, yes he actually was the Patriots representative, advanced to round two behind the votes of all under sized Americans. Continuing with cover controversy, PETA has already announced their displeasure with Mike Vick being the representative for the Eagles. I’m already having nightmares about walking into Best Buy to buy Madden next summer as a PETA led anti-Michael Vick protest goes on in the parking lot. This has already caused me to lose countles hours of sleep and will only get worse as Madden gets closer to coming out.
I’m not sure what took me so long to come up with this but if there isn’t an NFL season next year what needs to happen is each team has to name a Madden representative, no the Seahawks can’t name the 12th man, to play out their schedule against each other teams Madden representative for the Super Bowl. I mean this makes perfect sense right if we can’t have football with elite athletes the best we can do is have virtual football with elite athletes right? Every team and its chosen representative would play there given sixteen game schedules and as in the regular season the division winners and wild card winners would advance to the playoffs. Somewhere in Ohio all Cleveland Browns fans are jumping up and down because this would give the Browns there best chance at a Super Bowl. Making this even better is the fact that these matchups will be live televised and uncensored which means that you can listen to world class trash talking. If you haven’t sat courtside or close to courtside at an NBA game the best part is hearing the talking (trash talking) of the players. Yes, I can tell you that its true that Kevin Garnett does actually swear 1.8 billion times per game. Listening to him play against the Blazers when he was on the Timberwolves often left me wondering if he had a vocabulary outside of profanity. These games also left me wondering if one time Blazer great Travis Outlaw could actually form coherent sentences. Moving on the bottom line is that sitting courtside is a good way to stunt or ruin a young kids vocabulary. Each weekly matchup would be played at stadiums on the jumbotron, obviously Jerry Jones built his monster jumbotron with the knowledge that the Cowboys would have an enormous home field advantage in this video game season. The other upside of this idea is ESPN would finally stop airing Madden Bus, I’m actually a little shocked at how this was an actual idea. Does anyone actually want to watch TV about other playing video games? The NFL draft will obviously drastically change due to this video game season and in a surprising turn of events yours truly is now the top prospect due to my superior Madden playing abilities.
NBA- The Cleveland Cavaliers actually upset their fans by beating the Miami Heat which hurt their chances of snagging the number one pick in the upcoming draft. This isn’t true as I’m quite sure the general feeling in Cleveland is that beating LeBron is greater than actually winning a title. I’m really not sure how the Heat can justify this loss but at least they can say that the Lakers also lost to the Cavaliers as well. The funny part of this whole matchup was LeBron saying that he wanted his number retired in Cleveland; does this guy have no common sense or what? Did LeBron not see the hundreds of videos of fans burning jerseys with his name on it? I’m happy that LeBron lost but I’m also glad to say that he escaped Cleveland both times without anything happening to him. The first time he played there I legitimately thought that someone was going to either throw something at him or jump on the court and charge him. Unfortunately for betting people LeBron surviving Cleveland ruined prop bets of player most likely to be killed by opposing fans. LeBron was the overwhelming leader in this category and the only player that actually came close was Chris Bosh due to his defection from Toronto. Bosh would have actually challenged LeBron for the player most likely to be killed by opposing fans if not for the simple fact that no one cares about basketball in Toronto. Side note, tell me how this isn’t a fair trade for both sides Toronto ships the Raptors and Blue Jays, to Seattle and Portland respectively, while the US sends back ten NHL teams that draw no fans. Ok maybe ten NHL teams is a little extreme, but the NHL in the US isn’t really working out as evidenced by the fact that Major League Soccer just passed it as the fourth most viewed sport in the US. Anytime soccer in the US is beating you its time to wave the white flag. This is also where the NFL should take note that lockouts aren’t very good for keeping fans (yes this logic is as obvious is as simple as it seems). The unfortunate side effect of this trade is that the Seattle sports market place would actually pass Cleveland as the city with the worst professional sports teams. Briefly back to my hypothetical prop betting Carmelo Anthony in Denver had the highest odds of being killed by his own fans while playing.
We are still unfortunately a little over two weeks away from the playoffs in the NBA so that means that there is virtually no compelling basketball to be played in the future as teams start resting up for the playoffs. For instance earlier this week the Spurs sat Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, Tim Duncan, and Antonio McDyess against the Blazers to insure against future injuries. The sad thing is that the Spurs still almost won this game. All teams engage in this sort of practice down the final stretch except it seems that Blazer coach Nate McMillan never got the memo about this. Against the Mavericks on Sunday the Blazers were comfortably ahead with just over four minutes remaining when the Mavericks pulled all their starters metaphorically waving the white flag on the game. McMillan countered this by keeping his starters in until there was just under the one minute left in the game. I try not to rag on coaches but this was just stupid why risk injury when the other team has already given up on the game? Plus this is the Blazers were talking about here; funny things have been known to happen regarding injuries. I can already see what’s going to happen in one of the games at the end of the season (call me Nostradamus), the Blazers will be leading the Golden State Warriors by 25 with two minutes left in the fourth on Tuesday night when LaMarcus Aldridge tears his hamstring jogging up the court. Its basically going to be the Boobie Miles, best sports name of all time, situation in Friday Night Lights (movie version). Of course instead of being upset about how Aldridge got injured I’ll be excited about how smart I just made myself look to you guys in predicting this injury. Best stat line of the week goes to Jared Jeffries of the Knicks registering a plus 25 rating while the only stats he accumulated were two rebounds. Jeffries will be now affectionately called the player that makes everyone believe they could play in the NBA.
MLB- Baseball season has finally begun and the Mariners have already surpassed last seasons run total by registering 12 runs in their first three games. If you actually watched any of these games Seattle should have really only scored about six runs but the Athletics defense gift-wrapped the Mariners six more. Good news for the Mariners is that King Felix didn’t disappoint with a complete game victory in his first outing. The MLB season is less than a week under way but what is going on in Tampa Bay? Getting swept by the Orioles and only scoring three runs by doing so is awful and something that only the Mariners would seem capable of doing. Its extremely early but Tampa Bay doesn’t have much margin of error in the AL East and the news that star third baseman Evan Longoria is headed to the DL makes opening weekend a complete failure for the Rays. I would say more about the MLB but I’m going to pace myself on the MLB section considering that each team has at least 158 games left on their regular season schedule.
NCCA Basketball- Just as everyone predicted it’s the Butler Bulldogs versus the Connecticut Huskies for the NCAA championship on Monday night. I don’t have much to say about the semifinal games but the one thing that kind of bothers me is why does every team in this tournament feel like they have to take a three for their last shot when their only down two? I love this kind of aggressive thinking when I’m playing NBA 2K11 but the reality is that contested three pointers in real life don’t work nearly as well as contested three pointers in real life. Kentucky losing to Connecticut was the perfect example of this as Kentucky had the final possession of the game when they were down two and instead of making an aggressive move to the basket they settled for swinging the ball around the perimeter until finally they ended up throwing up a contested three pointer. Of course if this shot goes in John Calipari inevitably would be hailed as a legend for his ability to draw up such a phenomenal play. I’m convinced that Calipari has found the perfect way to survive as a coach, recruit one and done players every year. Obviously these one and done players have elite talent but if they struggle it’s their fault because their too immature/inexperienced but if they succeed Calipari gets all the credit for being an elite recruiter and player developer. If you think about it it’s perfect, he wins either way. Think about it the only time Calipari really failed was when he was the coach of the New Jersey Nets, the NBA is all about player development compared to college where its much more about recruiting athletes. I’m not trying to take away from Calipari, I think he's a pretty good coach, but I would have been intrigued to see how Calipari would be faring if he ended up with the Chicago Bulls job this past summer.
Back to the teams that are actually playing in this game, Butler actually might have been a villain for the first time in the past two years in dispatching of this years Cinderella, VCU. I’m not sure about everyone else but watching the VCU vs. Butler game I couldn’t figure out whom to root for at all, a rare but welcome problem for me. I think that the Butler vs. UCONN matchup will be a great game and in the end I think that the Huskies will be the one to take home the championship. Side note, how many people before the year thought that it would be the UCONN men’s team not the UCONN women’s team in the championship game? Both Butler and UCONN are led by their guards, Butler’s Shelvin Mack and UCONN’s Kemba Walker, but I think that the difference in this game will be the play of each teams supporting cast. For Butler this means that Matt Howard will have to have a great game and for UCONN freshman Jeremy Lamb and Shabazz Napier must continue their strong tournament run. Jeremy Lamb is a Tracy McGrady clone, I don’t think he's smiled all tournament and always has a far off look in his eyes but he can definitely ball. Really I think this game might be the ultimate test of the age-old experience (Butler last years runner up) vs. inexperience (UCONN no tournament last year) question. For the record I don’t really buy into this whole experience plays a role in everything but it is kind of hard to find a team in recent history that has won it all while being led by freshman/rookies. UCONN 66 Butler 61, for the record Butler will hit a half court shot as time expires to end the game (yes there is irony in that last sentence).
The Week Moving Forward-
Owners vs. Players- I will continue my pursuit of making a virtual Madden season happen, have to give Browns fans some hope, as the owners and players still remain way too far apart when it comes to compromising. After months of research I’ve finally come to the conclusion that the only winners of this whole lockout thing are drug dealers. Due to their being a lockout I don’t think there is drug testing anymore you can connect the dots from here. Hopefully there aren’t any more serious injuries to any players like Chad Pennington, who tore his ACL playing pickup basketball. I’m not sure if any other player had a rougher end to their career than Pennington who couldn’t catch a break when it came to injuries, put it this way Pennington deserves to be on the Blazers. The first thing that I thought of when I heard about Pennington was Aaron Boone tearing his ACL playing basketball during the offseason and promptly getting cut by the Yankees. For those that don’t remember Boone actually led the Yankees to the World Series that year by hitting a walk off home run in the AL Championship series and the Yankees responded by cutting him that offseason after Boone tore his ACL. The Yankees can’t really come out as bad guys in all of this because Boone actually had a clause that prevented him from playing pickup basketball in the offseason so the Yankees were able to void his contract with no cost. Of course the Yankees turned Boone’s ACL injury into Alex Rodriguez as their third baseman so it’s not like they missed Boone at all. Am I the only one that wished A-Rod went to the Red Sox that offseason instead of the Yankees? As you can see by the above paragraph there’s nothing to look forward to this week in the NFL.
NBA- This is the week that tanking will go into full effect as teams strive to lose their last five games so they can get better odds for the number one pick. The sad thing about this whole tanking phenomenon is that the NBA draft lottery almost never plays out to how it’s supposed to play out so the whole tanking thing is often for nothing. Don’t worry fans the bottom ten teams in the league will still engage in tanking so get ready to watch your favorite team throw out a starting lineup you’ve never heard of. This week and next is basically the equivalent of dead week in college, i.e. nothing to get excited about. Next week the playoff preview and season awards will be given out, I promise I won’t tank this.
MLB- Were less than a week into the season and I’m already ready for October. This past weekend/this coming week might be the best stretch of sports in the year but the fact is that after the NBA playoffs end (don’t worry it stretches on for like two months) sports sucks because all that’s left is the MLB. I’m too lazy to make a golf section of this but one of my roommates; two of our friends, and myself did our annual Masters draft. Basic format each of us pays 10$ to pick three golfers, snake drafting, and the lowest combined score of our team wins all the money. Last year was an unmitigated disaster for me as two of my golfers missed the cut causing me to lose by over thirty strokes but I got the first pick this year so maybe things will be different. I’m not sure why we do this because none of us care about golf but its always pretty funny because as a group we probably couldn’t name twelve golfers so we all end up with our computers in front of us looking at the world ranking. My squad is as follows, with my observations on them in parenthesis, Lee Westwood (#2 in the world), Dustin Johnson (choke artist), and unfortunately I can’t tell you my third member because I’ve already forgotten but bottom line is that I can sense (hope) that this will be my year. The best part of this whole deal is that my other two roommates decided to pick two of our squads each and the loser (who has the highest combined score) has to grow a mustache for a month. Basically this week is the only week that golf will matter the whole year.
NCAA Basketball- What happens in Connecticut once basketball season ends? Do they hibernate until next basketball season?
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