NFL Network: Top 10 Runs of Regular-Season 2007

Behind the Fro: The Roy Hibbert Story

here's a great behind-the-scenes look at Hibbert and the Hoyas from Dan Steinberg and the DC Sports Bog [Hibbert's Fro, and Presidential Politics]:

"Fifteen years down the line, after Jon and myself's careers are done in the NBA, hopefully I can his running mate. I'll be his vice president when he runs for president. I think he'll probably do it; he'll take care of the South, I'll take care of the North. He's from Alabama, he'll get the Southern votes and I'll take care of the swing states."

Hibbert was asked why Wallace got to be at the top of the ticket; " he's more charming, I think," the big man said, before deciding that Hoyas' enforcer Tyler Crawford would be their secretary of defense.

"I'm not agreeing to that," Wallace said of the presidential race. "I don't know what Roy's talking about."

In any case, Thompson was eventually asked whether he'd support a Wallace-Hibbert ticket.

"Not any time soon," he said. "Let's see what they do in the 20 years."

Chris Berman: Creepy Old Man

EDIT: youtube has taken down all the videos, but you can still see them HERE

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this really has to be seen to be believed:



this of course follows the amazing clip broken last week on deadspin:



[from sportsbybrooks via deadspin]

Timing the National Anthem

this piece by SI's Dr. Z is hilarious ... here's an intro:

I time the national anthem before every football game. And every other sporting event. Actually, I time it every time I hear it. If you ask me why, then you'll be like some other people in the press box who have annoyed me through the years with that question. It's so obvious that I don't feel compelled to give them any answer at all, much less a sensible one.

"Say, why do you do that?"

"I do it because I do it, that's why I do it."

"What are you, nuts or something?" a fellow reporter remarked not too long ago. That's right, "Or something." That sums me up perfectly. I'm an Or Something. Which might explain why not too many people want to sit next to me in the press box. Which is fine with me.

The Year After Effect

I've always wondered how pitchers from the pre-war era (or modern-day japan) could pitch complete games every three days and rack up enormous innings-pitched counts, while today's pitchers are these delicate lilies who need truck-sized ice packs after getting through two-thirds of an inning

tom verducci has a great piece on SI.com explaining how to bring along young pitchers and his self-coined "year after effect" [click here]:

Why can't they throw 200 innings? Simply put, they're not conditioned for it yet. It's like training for a marathon. You need to build stamina incrementally. The unofficial industry standard is that no young pitcher should throw more than 30 more innings than he did the previous season. It's a general rule of thumb, and one I've been tracking for about a decade. When teams violate the incremental safeguard, it's amazing how often they pay for it.

Leeds Arsenal fan zone

this announcer is great ... fantastic stuff, i can't believe this actually goes on for 3 full minutes (you may want to stop after the first 30 seconds or so)

thanks deadspin

Friday Night Fights

check out both these knockouts from last night, pretty nasty:



thanks to deadspin

BREAKING NEWS: Lloyd Carr Is Still Alive

broadcaster line of the day:

chris fowler: "lloyd is still alive"

in response to this rambling pile of crap that came out of (who else) lee corso's mouth:

"when businessmen die, they leave money; when coaches die, we leave pieces of ourselves, legacies, every kid we've touched, that's what he [retiring Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr] has done"

Alabama + Football = Les Miserables?!

quick ---

word association: alabama football

i'm sure the first word that crops up in your mind is "showtunes," right?

so i'm watching the alabama / lsu game and i just heard the alabama band play the downtrodden proletariat anthem "look down" from les miserables

absolutely hilarious

Nick Saban: Traitor

i dislike like the tigers, the tide, and the dolphins, but i think it's hilarious to hear nick saban whine about being dubbed a traitor by lsu fans ... nick saban long ago officially gave up any right to ever complain about his treatment at the hands of fans of his former teams

... and this is a pretty funny story

Jeff Green's NBA Debut

i recorded hoya superhero jeff green's debut with the sonics tonight, and i'm impressed with what i saw ... here's his final line:

BENCH	MIN	FGM-A	3PM-A	FTM-A	OREB	DREB	REB	AST	STL	BLK	TO	PF	PTS
Jeff Green, F	19	1-2	0-0	3-7	0	2	2	0	1	1	2	1	5

just like at georgetown, green's line really doesn't tell the story of his night ... on his first play of the night he had a nasty block of carmelo, and he had at least one more (uncredited) block, one of which on fellow hoya AI that started a sick fast-break ending with a monster slam by wilcox ... green looked very solid on the defensive end and a little out-of-sorts in the quick-strike seattle offense ... play-by-play man mike tirico couldn't stop talking about green, it almost got embarrassing at points

i'm so happy that jeff landed in this situation ... kevin durant draws all the attention, and jeff can hang out in the background and play his quieter game ... he's going to be a fantastic "glue" player, ala the red sox's jason varitek

My Thoughts on ESPN

like most people who actually give this topic some semblance of thought, i am endlessly annoyed by espn's entire philosophy.

the latest article by espn's ombuds(woman?) and former nytimes editor le anne schreiber crystallized a lot of my frustrations towards espn:

... [F]actuality has been devalued in 24/7 sports media. If you look at the proportion of airtime and cyberspace devoted to reporting fact versus delivering opinion on ESPN, ESPN.com and ESPN Radio, it is clear that the main function of sports news is to serve as the molehill on which mountains of opinion are built. We don't have news cycles anymore. We have opinion cycles.

espn will show a 15-second highlight reel of an ACTUAL GAME, then engage in a 5-minute debate over whether alex rodriguez will opt out of his contract ... do you remember those weeks where you'd tune into "nfl live" and see 90% of every show devoted to staking out t.o.'s house?

espn comes up with one of these "cycles" just about every week or two, but the worst ones in recent memory were:

mcnabb v. t.o.!
mcnabb's a racist!
joe torre is quitting!
bill belichick's "spygate"!
notre dame and/or michigan hasn't won a game yet!
kobe bryant's "rape"!
duke lacrosse "rape"!

not only does espn focus on these largely meaningless and sensational fixations, but they rarely actually report any, you know, real FACTS about these "stories" ... the most annoying moment of every one of these "debates" is when one of the bloviating talking heads throws his hands up and says "i wish we didn't have to talk about this!"

you know what? you don't have to talk about this crap!! just shut up and play the clips! instead of talking out of your ass for 60 seconds, how about you actually play a clip from an actual game, and then tell us how the play developed or why this stretch of the game was important to its outcome

instead of sticking slavishly to an agenda of pimping certain popular teams or particular "storylines" you developed at the beginning of the season, how about you spend time talking about what's ACTUALLY HAPPENING on the field ... does anyone know that the cleveland browns have one of the best offenses in the nfl this year? of course not! why should they?! it's not like espn would actually take time from discussing why mangenius is 1-35 or how the saints might turn it around real soon

not to get too far afield (shit, this is about 2000 words already, who cares), but many "real sports fans" rip on fantasy sports players because they "don't care who wins the games" ... but people who want to succeed in good fantasy sports leagues are forced to follow actual trends, even if they don't exactly fit into a ready-made storyline

the absolute worst sport for this kind of "stick to the storyline" agenda is baseball, where, outside of a few conscientious journalists on baseball tonight, it's almost impossible to hear about the actual ebbs and flows of a season ... espn creates a storyline, filled with large market teams, and dutifully reports on their wins or losses ... if the pirates get hot for a two-week stretch, or the fourth starter for the twins has a better month than schilling, you'd barely hear a word

you know who i really blame for this mess? the idiot drooling sports dude (yes, i mean men) who only likes hearing about names he already knows and could really care less about what's actually, you know, happening ... it's a comparable demographic to the housewives (yes, i mean women) who watch the morning talk shows and get all worked up into a tizzy about the latest cute white girl to go missing in south dakota while their health care and civil liberties are stripped away

in a perfect market, we might actually have competitors to the beast, but with the monopoly espn holds on the national sports media and sets the sports agenda in this country, it's nearly impossible for other voices to gain real traction ... espn has no viable competitors on television, national radio, or big, comprehensive sports websites, so with this lock-down they can just keep slurping up the lowest-common-denominator viewer with the drivel they put on the air

as you can see, i get a little fired up about this.

one sports tv show that does it right is inside the nfl on hbo ... it features long highlight reels carefully constructed by nfl films and (relatively) thoughtful commentary led by bob costas ... espn's nfl matchup is another informative, sober show (what a surprise, it's also affiliated with nfl films) that largely avoids most of the crap i talked about in this post

i'll end this diatribe with a great quote from schreiber's column:

My concern, though, is less for Gundy or Belichick than for viewers and readers who grow fat on the fast food of opinion while starving for reported fact. "ESPN used to be a place where sports news was reported," wrote one of the many readers who complained about the two Easterbrook articles on Belichick. "Now it's just a factory for controversy. I guess in that way it's just a microcosm of America media in general, but that does not make it any less distasteful."

on that note, back to monday night football on espn!

Verne Lundquist is ON today

veteran sportscaster (and keith jackson wannabe) verne lundquist has been on fire while broadcasting the world's largest outdoor cocktail party this afternoon.

in the span of five minutes verne made a witty reference to tim russert's ridiculous hand-drawn statistics and to the classic "boom goes the dynamite" clip ... this sly bastard always holds himself out as the old out-of-touch guy, but then he slips in little gems like this

well done, verne, well done