It's so, I don't know, passe to bash the WWL, but come on. Lately ESPN has been going a bit overboard with the gossip-posing-as-headlines schtick, and today is no exception. The "headlines":
I get the feeling Mike Singletary is going to be a Bill Belichick style coach. I don't mean success-wise (I'll be thrilled if he has one-half the success Belichick has had in New England) but in that there are going to be guys who can't stand him and won't work for or with him, while there are going to be coaches and players who will walk through fire for him. Did you notice Scott Linehan is going to coordinate the Lions offense? According to the Chronicle,
Those close to Linehan say he was not comfortable with Singletary and did not like either of the quarterbacks on the roster, Shaun Hill and Alex Smith.
In the immortal words of Larry David, "Fuuck him!"
The Niners' offensive coordinator search looks bad at this point. At last count the team had brought in seven candidates, offering the job to one, Linehan. It looks like a bumbling jumblefuck of a search with Singletary interviewing anyone with anything close to resembling an offensive approach. But I find myself having faith in the John Galt-ness of Mike Singletary. You can come live is his objectivist utopia, but you sure as shit better get why you're there. If you don't want to be there, it's because you don't get it. Those who scoff and laugh may look good now, but time will find them wishing they'd been on board from the beginning.
Holy shit! Ana-Lucia! Ana-Lufuckingcia. My mind is being fucked. I knew it as soon as you could tell it was a woman cop getting out of the car. Dammit that's exciting. I already feel like I need to watch these two episodes more than three times to get everything that's gone on.
There are seriously an unfollowable number of storylines going on. And who the fuck is this Neil character? Thank God he gets a flaming arrow in the chest. Ben has something going, as does Sayid and Jack and Hurley and Locke and Charlotte and Jim the boom mic operator. Cripes. Yet, I remain faithful to the Temple of Lindelof and recognize that at some point, I'm going to want to poop my pants in mindfuckiness happy joy.
Grade: B-
Aaahhh, there's too much going on. Who's where and when and then Desmond makes an appearance? Shit, I was satisfied with the Desmond and Penny storyline's conclusion at the end of last season, and now their inclusion seems muddled. Sawyer's fatter than he used to be. Locke is the constant? Seriously, there are eighteen seperate stories happening within the hour! I need more time. I need time to decompress and sit on this for a night.
Yeah, there will still be some out there groaning that the best team in the NFC is not going to be playing two Sundays from now. Geez, last Sunday after Philly beat New York to get into the NFC Championship Game, some were upset that two 9-win teams had made it, certain the game was going to be a bummer of a shitfest of a mistake-filled blah. These weren't the two best teams in the NFC and no playoff outcome - and all usually pertinent BCS arguments be damned - was going to change that. There was the usual snarky, groupthinky douchitude orbiting the blogosphere regarding the Cardinals and the NFC West and big losses to the Jets and Patriots, and the how, oh how, were we supposed to enjoy this NFC Championship tilt when these two obviously, painfully flawed teams were involved?
And then the game was great. Kurt Warner looked like the Hall of Famer that some are now certain he has become. The Cards tried to show they could win a game running nothing but trick plays and Philly made the last thirty minutes edge-of-your-seat worthy. And now the team no one took seriously is going to the Super Bowl where they will try to continue their aerial barrage. Yay, I say. If my team (Niners) can't get there, it might as well be the team they almost took care of on one Monday night not too long ago. My guess is that the Steelers defense will shut down Warner and the leap-ball offense. But for all of you who acted like the hot girl at the prom, dissmissing the nerdy-ish kid with the sweet dance moves who you'd maybe noticed once or twice but never took seriously, eat it.
Well no, probably not. But at least it looks like the government's perjury case against him isn't as much of a slam dunk as we've been lead to believe.
On two fronts, Bonds is looking at developments that may help repair the tarnishing of his name, a little. According to a Yahoo! Sports report, at the time of Bonds' alleged ingestion (?) of the cream and the clear, neither were considered illegal by the Justice Department. Secondly, and somewhat more juicily, questions abound regarding the effectiveness of taking said drugs and achieving enhanced muscle growth.
So what does this mean? Who knows. According to the report,
“And that’s the problem that we’ve run into with THG and which Dr. Catlin testified to the grand jury, is that there’s never been any studies to show whether or not THG does, in fact, enhance muscle growth.”
So...what? What Bonds took may not have actually lead to muscle growth? I don't know. But what if it turns out to be true that THG does nothing? Where does the steadfastly Bonds-took-steroids-and-we-have-proof contingent go then? Probably, reasonably, believing that Bonds took steroids, just not the ones we assumed. The thing is, we're not talking about androstenedione. We're talking about a substance with far more questions regarding its effectiveness.From With Leather: "Barry Zito More Tainted Than Ever."
Thoughts-
Matt Vasgersian is awful. Hot-air blowing douche. It seems there is a generation of sportscasters (Joe Buck, Brenneman, Vasgersian) who believe more is more. When a moment would best be left without the interruption of blowhardies, they instead try to superfluously inject excitement, judgment or drama. God dammit, shut the hell up.
Fox is awful. I'm not interested in long visuals of Colt McCoy's girlfriend in the stands. I'm hearing a verbal blowjob given to McCoy all game by Vasgersian and Tim Ryan, so why do I need to see the girl who's going to be giving him a real one after the game? Stop showing pictures of the girlfriend/Mom/Dad/sister/brother/high school coach/anyone not directly involved with the game but some connection to a player.
Mack Brown is a fat fuck. The Texas that was fawned over all year by the sports media should have beaten the shit out of Ohio State.
I've never been a Ron Santo fan. It has little to do with his efforts as a player and everything to do with homerism in baseball beginning and ending with him and his beloved Cubbies. I know, the guy has diabetes. He's missing parts of his body. He had a good career. Not great, but good. Not a Hall of Fame career. In Santo's mind, it was great though, clearly meriting HOF induction. After being denied by the Veterans' Committee, again, Santo spoke out against the process (really, their failure to elect him):
"It's a travesty,'' Santo said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. ''When I saw nobody got in again, I go, 'Whoa, this is wrong.' They can't keep going the way they're going. They've got to put a [different] committee out there.''
''Getting in or not getting in is not going to change my life at all. I'm going to be me, and that's it," Santo said, according to the Sun-Times. "But I feel I deserve this. I put up Hall of Fame numbers during the greatest era of baseball for pitchers, and I played with diabetes. Only diabetics can know what I went through. It would have just been satisfying [to be elected].''
This is wrong on more than one level. Let's be clear that Santo has no concern for who else should have gotten in. His focus is squarely on Ron Santo. And why the idea that someone has to get into the Hall every year? Failing to do that is a "travesty"? Fucking talk about dilluted. Apparently no one has been elected to the Hall by the VC in eight years. That's eight years of borderline-to-undeserving players making it in if the Santo Doctrine is adopted, and way less significance with each induction. Baseball's Hall is already an all-inclusive joke, especially next to football's, and anything that can be done to diminish the rate of admission, is a positive.
My biggest issue with Santo's argument though is the diabetes angle. "I put up Hall of Fame numbers during the greatest era of baseball for pitchers, and I played with diabetes. Only diabetics can know what I went through." Ugh. Really? Because you put up less than HOF numbers, and did it with diabetes, you deserve to be in? I have a disease. It's called not being good enough. I did a lot within the abilities allowed by my disease, and by God despite being a barely functional .200 hitter in college, I deserve to be recognized. Fuck, seriously. Maybe, probably, Santo belongs in the National Diabetics Hall of Fame, but simply competing while affected by a disease, disability or other, I don't know, malady does not mean you're evaluated by a different set of standards.
It was sloppy at the end, but it appeared more so due to the hooooorible officiating crew who decided early in the second half to throw a flag on every play regardless of whether or not a penalty had been committed. Jesus, did you see the tipped pass/pass interference call? There was no p.i. because the ball was tipped - even though the ball wasn't within three feet of a defender's hand - and when the play was to be reviewed, they decided that there hadn't been any interference anyway. W. T. F.?
Okay though, I liked the way they played. Shaun Hill is not awesome, but he's not a constant panic-attack like J.T. O'Sullivan - the poor man's Jeff Garcia, who is the poor man's quarterback. The play calling at the end was abysmal, but whatever. At least they were in a position to fuck up the game in the last two minutes rather than having pissed the whole thing away in the first two. They looked ready to run through a brick wall, which hasn't been the case with a Niner team since Tom Rathman was knocking the shit out of guys.
Almost universally around the sports world this morning, Arizona looked bad against a team they should have destroyed. Douchebaggery and thoughtlessness, I say. Warner was a stud. Both teams were flying all over the field. Aside from the officials attempts to turn the last three minutes into an NBA game, it was as exciting a finish as any this season.
If ever there were reason for fans to celebrate a moral victory, it's this one. I'd rather watch this version of the 2008 Niners lay it on the line playing last night's brand of football and lose every game close than watch the Nolan-lead version do what they were doing and fall into one or two wins. Plus those losses mean a better draft pick...to blow on another system QB.
Jay Glazer of FOX Sports, he of the routinely beating everyone to the scoop, reports that Brett Favre has spoken to more than one team about the Packers' play-calling tendencies. Not only has he spoken to them, Favre has initiated the communication. It seems there's no rule against such actions, but what does it tell us about Favre as a man? I mean, I guess we already know he's a total douche. My first thought is that he's either trying to make himself look that much better by making the Packers on-field play seem that much worse, or he's trying to punish the team for not groveling and letting him call the shots. Either way, these are the actions of an insecure child. I've always felt like Favre has been overly active in how he is portrayed by the media, but this is out there. This is slimy.
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