“BELLY FLOP!!!”
But the Colts were more experienced!!!
If you listened to most experts going into the Super Bowl you’ll have heard over and over again how the Colts had an edge because “they’d been there before.” I hope that ridiculous argument can now be put to bed where it belongs along with it’s brethren like, “He’s a clutch player” or “Momentum is huge” or “There is no such thing as a trained Gerbil.” Just ask Richard Gere about the Gerbil thing.
Moving along, the Super Bowl featured the Colts, who had won the Super Bowl in 2005 and had most of the same team intact, and the Saints who had perennially sucked since their inception. The Saints had 1 player that had ever won a Super Bowl on their whole team, yet it was the Saints that came away with the win. The same thing happened when the Giants beat the Pats in 2007 and when the Pats beat the Rams in 2001. Experience is just experience, it has no factor at all in the outcome of a game.
Many people regard Peyton Manning as possibly the greatest QB ever, a claim I will always fight against, and tonight he showed what little experience means when he threw the INT that sealed his teams fate, and then called a Time Out which took away his team’s momentum and took away their last real chance at a comeback on their last drive. Manning’s counterpart, Drew Brees, had never been to a Super Bowl, yet was masterful for the entire game and was a very deserving MVP.
The Colts were the more experienced team, Manning was the more experienced QB, yet it was the Saints and Brees that won. That is the great thing about sports, you never know what is going to happen in any given game. That is why it is ridiculous for “experts” to say a certain team the edge in a game just because they’ve done it before.
I wonder what was said before the 1st Championship game ever played when no one had experience in the big game? I’d be willing to bet it was just a breakdown of the talent on the field and a breakdown of the possible game plans. That is what Journalists should talk about. All this talk about momentum and who plays well in big games is a joke. Neither the Colts nor the Saints had any momentum going into the playoffs, yet they ended up in the Super Bowl. That is because every game in the Post Season is something brand new and history means nothing.
If you don’t believe me that’s ok, just ask the Colts.
You’re in the Pro Bowl? Seriously?
I’m pretty sure that was the conversation Vince Young had with his mom yesterday when he was named to the NFL Pro Bowl. It’s no secret that the Football Pro Bowl is the least interesting All Star game of the major sports. That’s even including Hockey. The reason is because the real stars rarely play in the game. It’s the who’s who of Football B and C listers.
Hopefully Vince Young’s addition to the team will bring some changes for next year. Young only started 10 of his team’s 16 games, not because of injury, but because he sucked like a vacuum in the past few seasons so he was a 2nd stringer this year. Young and David Garrard, a fellow Pro Bowl QB for the AFC, were the 6th and 7th options out of 16 for the QB jobs. You’ll have to forgive me for my lack of excitement over that. These guys in the Pro Bowl is like saying a C student should be on the Honor Roll.
Two other big things make the Pro Bowl a total bore compared to other sports. 1. There are no skills competitions…. and 2. It’s at the end of the season when everyone only cares about the Super Bowl. Baseball has the Home Run Derby which is in a lot of ways a bigger deal than the actual All Star Game, and the Hall of Fame game which showcases young talent. Basketball is even better with a 3 point shooting competition, Slam Dunk Competition, and my personal favorite, the Rookies Vs Sophomores All Star Game.
Both Baseball and Basketball make a point to show off their skills and showcase the young talent of the present and future. Football only gives you the Pro Bowl game with a bunch of rejects who don’t deserve the name Pro Bowler.
The reason the Pro Bowl is at the end of the Football season is because everyone is afraid of injuries in a meaningless game. While that is understandable, on the flip side every other sport takes that risk including Hockey, which is a far more dangerous sport. Southerners have more teeth than Hockey players.
Injuries are not unique to Football, but what is unique about Football is that they are trying to prevent injuries from happening Completely. You could say that’s not such a bad thing, but it’s gotten to the point where no one can just play football anymore. If the guys that ran Football took over Baseball they’d outlaw any inside pitches so no one could get hit and outlaw any type of collisions on the bases. Wouldn’t that be fun? Um… NO.
I believe there are 3 ways for the Pro Bowl to be better. 1. Make the game happen in week 9 of the season, right in the middle. It’d even give an extra week for a lot of people to heal their injuries. Realistically though that’s not going to happen, so the next 2 options become the key. 2. Introduce skills competitions similar to Baseball and Football. In fact that needs to happen regardless of whether or not they change the date of the game. 3. Move it back to the week after the Super Bowl again because then the 2 Super Bowl teams would be represented like they should be.
Football has become a ghost of the game it used to be thanks to it’s obsession with injury prevention. But Football did not become popular by having guys running around freely on offense while the defense just watches helplessly. And God forbid if a guy actually gets hit hard because there will be a Flag on the ground for something. He hit too high, he hit too low, he hit me period! WAH!!! Get into Billiards if you don’t want contact. Grow a pair and put Pro Bowlers back in the Pro Bowl, not Kathy Griffin and the D list.
Next Stop… Mediocrity… again
The San Francisco Giants are so poorly run that one could argue they are a Government run operation. They over pay for unproductive players like it’s the cool thing to do. They stunt their growth at every possible turn because they are afraid of the unknown. Why draft a person that could hit 30 home runs when you can sign a guy that you just know will hit 10? That is the philosophy they live by. Never take chances, always surrender.
That was all supposed to change this year. 2010 was the year the Giants would unleash Uber Prospect, Buster Posey, on the Baseball world. But then the Giants thought, “Oh Crap. He’s young and we don’t like young players.” So the Giants re-signed Bengie Molina to a 1 year contract because Posey just wasn’t ready according to the Giants.
Bengie Molina is an out machine who swings at everything thrown by any pitcher. He’s so bad he’s swung at pickoff throws to first base and low flying birds. Perhaps there is a communication issue, because he must believe that drawing walks is against the rules in baseball because he simply refuses to do it. He’s also slower than a Frenchman going into battle. Yet somehow he’ll be the Giants starting catcher for the 4th consecutive year because he is a Proven Mediocrity, and that is what Giants’ management is comfortable with.
This offseason the Giants also signed Aubrey Huff and Mark Derosa, 2 other mediocre ballplayers who are on the wrong side of 30 and coming off pretty bad seasons. The Giants are like rebels in 1 respect, they don’t believe athletes decline in their 30’s. “Statistics Be Damned” is their motto in that regard. To the rest of the Baseball world, ballplayers peak in their age 27-31 seasons. The Giants simply refuse to play people below the age of 30 because they do not trust youth, Pablo Sandoval being the 1 exception to that rule.
The real issue is that the Giants are trying to convince themselves and fans that the offensive “Upgrades” in Huff and Derosa will make them a playoff team this year after they got so close last year with a terrible lineup and great pitching. Well guess what Giants? The pitching will regress this year because statistically Matt Cain pitched over his head last year, Barry Zito is still mediocre and loves teddy bears, Jonathan Sanchez is still unreliable, and the #5 starter is going to be a crap shoot as usual. There is also no way the bullpen will keep up it’s numbers either.
As for the offense, well they will still be below average because there is still only 1 good hitter on the team. With the addition of Huff the Giants now have a total of 1 player that is willing to draw a walk and they also have 1 player (Sandoval) who will hit for a high average. So everyone is in store for another year of an offense that doesn’t get on base and doesn’t hit for power. Sarcastic Yay. When you factor in the likelihood that the pitching numbers will regress, you have a combo that should create a worse team than the one that played last season and missed the playoffs.
New year, a few new players, same crappy management, same crappy results. Welcome to another season of Giants Baseball!!!
Who Hired These Guys?
The first 2 weeks of Playoff football have been miserable featuring 6 blowouts, 2 close games and an endless amount of mind numbing commentary from the so-called experts. How on earth do these people keep their jobs? I sometimes mute the TV and just watch the game because the alternative leads you to a few of the following wonderful nuggets from this last weekend….
In the pregame show of the Jets-Chargers game Phil Simms said the key to the game for the Jets was to “Fear all the Chargers Options.” Well there’s a hell of a gameplan. So if Simms was the coach he would address his guys at practice and before the game telling them, “Fear the Chargers.” Um thanks coach. How is that analyzing anything? Simms had all week to come up with something interesting to say and that’s what he came up with. Just fear them. Since the Jets won does that mean that they played scared the whole game? Way to go Phil.
Next was a great incident in the Dallas-Minnesota game where Tony Romo fumbled a snap and Troy Aikman went on for over a minute about how one of the Vikings linemen got in and disrupted the play forcing the fumble. Troy, who had more than a few concussions in his day, obviously has an active imagination because it was clear to everyone else that Romo just dropped the ball and no one was close to him. Perhaps Troy had dozed off and the crowd woke him up so he had to say something.
I can’t totally blame Troy for that though. If I had to sit in a booth for 3 hours listening to Joe Buck talk my mind would wander too. Buck is possibly the worst commentator in the universe. He drones on about nothing, he has no inflection in his voice and he never gets excited. Seriously Joe, pop a viagra before the next big game and see what happens. Joe’s ideal woman would have to be a blowup doll because it’s lifeless and he can do all the talking.
The system of finding commentators is broken. The only reason Joe Buck has a job is because his dad was a famous commentator. The only reason Simms and Aikman have jobs is because they were famous quarterbacks. But that does not mean that they should be commentating sports games. To play sports you need to have talent, why should commentating on sports be different?
Always remember, a little Lube goes a long way.
All He needs is a Mustache to Twirl…
Either way NFL fans were screwed. We’d either get another week of BS about how the Cowboys are finally going to win a Super Bowl with the wanna be star Tony Romo, or we’d get another week of BS about football’s ultimate Villain, Brett Favre.
Maybe I’d like him more if he spelled his name right, seriously it should be Farve. Maybe I’d like him more if he didn’t play the martyr in Green Bay after he created the whole retirement situation a few years ago. Maybe I’d like him more if he wasn’t such an attention demanding diva.
But when you break it down there isn’t a more selfish person playing in the NFL today. The only reason the media loves him so much is because he gives the media something to do in the offseason with his yearly Hamlet act. “To Be or Not To Be…” of course he’s coming back! He just wants more attention!!
The Favre/Media love affair is more disgusting than your average Donkey Show. Today the Vikings were up 27-3 with 1:55 to play in the game but Favre wasn’t done. He had to throw just 1 more touchdown pass to make it 34-3 because obviously the game was too close for comfort. Naturally though, all people talked about is how that’s his career high for TD passes in a playoff game. If it was the Patriots, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady would be getting roasted right now.
Favre doesn’t care about his fans, he won’t listen to his coaches as evidenced when he wouldn’t allow his head coach to bench him a few weeks ago, and all he does care about is Brett Favre.
Someone get this man Mustache and a bald cat named Bigglesworth, he’s taken care of the rest.
