Good Guy At Sports

News Flash - Gregg Easterbrook Massages the Truth to Make a Point

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 01:52:00 +0000

Haven't posted in 9 months....yeah why not.

I don't read much about Sports on the Internet these days. But I usually blow through TMQ for about 10 minutes a week. Here's the thing about Gregg - if you aren't very knowledgeable about his subject, and you don't pay much attention while you're reading it - and you don't research what he says....he sounds brilliant. But, as usual, his smugly made point completely falls apart when you actually pay attention or research the subject.

This paragraph caught my eye from the latest TMQ:

Groupon Issues Coupons for Its Own IPO: Groupon just had a successful IPO, raising $805 million. Eleven months ago, the same company turned down a $6 billion purchase by Google. Had Groupon accepted the Google proposal, its early investors and founding management would have $6 billion; instead, following the IPO they are holding a much smaller sum.

The IPO was only for approximately 6% of the company's shares. True, they are holding less cash - but they are holding $805 million in cash, and equity in a company now worth approximately $15 billion. So if Google wants to buy Groupon NOW? They'd have to pony up probably $16+ billion to buy everyone out.

Does that sound like they made a bad decision? It does if you ignore the fact that he's comparing 6% of the stock to 100% of the stock without quantifying the difference.

True, they also still hold equity,

94%!

and could wind up ahead in the long run.

"could" - if the stock goes down 50%.....they still wind up ahead.

Or they may end up way behind: Your columnist noted 11 months ago that Groupon someday may wish it had accepted the Google offer.

"May" "May" .......what the fuck is your point? This is meaningless non-analysis to mislead your readers into thinking you're smarter than some really smart people.

At any rate, rather than getting $6 billion in 2011, Groupon insiders got $805 million. Groupon issued discount coupons for itself, offering 87 percent off!

No! They didn't! They held out and the value of the company more than doubled!

Check my archives for more Easterbrook commentary.

Someone hates (or loves?) Pau Gasol

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 03:53:00 +0000

Someone recently posted a comment to one of my posts, which led me back to this site, and checking in on who is visiting, etc. The search results that lead someone to a website are often fucked up, but I thought these were funny.

Pau Gasol is a pussy - Sounds like someone hates Pau Gasol!
Pau Gasol Nude - Sounds like a Pau Gasol fan!
Pau Gasol good guy - Sounds like someone is rooting for Pau Gasol!
Pau Gasol has a vagina - this could go either way?!
Paul Gasol is a wimp - What? Have you seen him pound his chest!

Anyway....

Forbes' Most Overpaid List Continues to be F'd Up

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:31:00 +0000

Forbes recently published it's list of the most overpaid actors of 2009.

I wrote a much longer post on this last year so I'll keep it short and in easy to follow, bullet point observations.

- The way Forbes computes this list makes no sense. They essentially divide the movie's income by the stars pay and compute a rate of return. It's slightly more involved than that. Again, read my post from last year.

- Even if you choose to ignore the dozens of factors that contribute to a movie's success (I don't know, script, director, marketing, the subject matter, budget, etc.) - which obviously make the list moot to begin with, the list doesn't make sense.

- Why doesn't it make sense? Simple. The formula works on multiples, not on whole dollar amounts. If you paid George Clooney $100 million and his movie net $200 million - his multiple is "2". If you pay a lesser actor $5 million and their movie nets $25 million, the multiple is "5". This would land the lesser actor on "bargain" list and Forbes would brand Clooney as overpaid. The simple problem....Clooney's movie made a lot more money for the studio.

Every year Forbes publishes this list, and every year they get a fair amount of attention for it (it lands on a number of other web sites).

The entire methodology behind the list doesn't make sense.

This is what I ended with last year: "If you pay Jennifer Love Hewitt $5 million and Angelina Jolie $15 million, the Jolie movie’s gross income doesn’t need to be triple Hewitt’s to justify the cost, it just needs to be $10,000,001 higher. Forbes would require Jolie to generate three times the income, and that makes no sense. There’s no variable costs tied to Jolie that would justify that extra profit burden on her."

It's a shame Forbes, a respected finance publication, botches this. I e-mailed Dorothy Pomerantz last year but she did not respond.

Gregg Easterbrook Decided to Write Another Column This Week

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:19:00 +0000

Seriously, here it is. This guy is relentless. Every week, he writes thousands of words. I can barely squeeze out an unfunny, half-assed blog post. BUT – I bang out some quality work at my real job. So fuck you, Gregg Easterbrook.

The Crabtree Curse continues. San Francisco was 3-1, with its only defeat a fluky last-play loss; then the 49ers signed Michael Crabtree, and are 0-3 since. All that work Mike Singletary did building team spirit on the Niners went out the window when management decided a player could jerk the team around all he wanted and still get a $17 million reward.

Is the takeaway here that San Francisco, with their shitty quarterback, was going to beat arguably the best team in football, the undefeated Colts, if they did not sign Michael Crabtree a few weeks ago?

Is that what you’re telling me?

If that’s what you’re telling me, that’s fine. I just want to be clear. A clearly inferior team lost to a clearly superior team because of how they dealt with a draft pick almost a month ago?

Is that it, really? It’s that simple?

Stats of the Week No. 5: Jim Caldwell and Josh McDaniels, who had never been head coaches at any level before becoming NFL head coaches this season, are a combined 13-1.

This is the part where Gregg should point out that he frequently criticizes NFL teams for hiring coaches with no head coaching experience at any level.

He did not point that out.

Maybe coach Tony Sparano, who continued wearing ultra-dark sunglasses even after the sun declined behind the stadium wall, couldn't see the scoreboard correctly.

This guy is fucking fascinated with what people wear in what conditions. I wonder what it’s like to be with Gregg 5 minutes after the sun has gone down and you still have your sunglasses on or if you’re overly dressed for an unseasonably warm November afternoon.

My guess: non-stop ridicule.

Sweet 'N' Sour Play No. 1: Place-kicker Josh Brown of St. Louis threw a 36-yard touchdown pass to Daniel Fells on a fake field goal attempt, then kicked the extra point; that was sweet. The two situations in which a fake field goal attempt are likely are fourth-and-short, or a long attempt that would probably miss anyway. Les Mouflons lined up for what would have been a 53-yard kick. Yet Detroit fell for the fake. Also, Detroit had no one back deep to return a potential short kick -- if there had been a deep man, he might have stopped the touchdown. The Lions' falling for an obvious trick was sour.

Well obviously it was a trick. Obviously. Obvious trick. 53 fucking yards? No one ever tries kicks from that far. When I’m an NFL coach, and the other team sets up for a 53 yard field goal attempt, I’m going with a dime package every time. I will stand on the sidelines and yell to the other coach… “nice try jackass, I’m all over your shit!” You’re not fooling me. Josh Brown is 9-14 lifetime over 50 yards indoors? Fuck you, you’re not fooling me. Fake field goal coming. Every time. Obviously.

Gregg then goes of on one of many NCAA hoops sidebars.

And it inculcates an attitude that all that matters is showing off for the NBA draft, not achieving anything lasting. Think of the Ohio State team that lost the NCAA men's championship game in 2007, or the Memphis team that lost the following year. Either team, if together a while, might have become really memorable -- Ohio State had Greg Oden and Mike Conley Jr., Memphis had Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts. Since three of those four were freshmen, if they'd all stuck around in college longer and stayed eligible, those teams might have improved and become truly great a year or two down the road. Instead, everybody split early for the pros. It's said that in the locker room after Memphis botched the final two minutes of what would have been a national championship, Rose cried inconsolably. He'll make lots of money in the pros, but will he ever be involved in anything worth crying about?

Derek Rose also cried uncontrollably when his mother bought him the “clean” version of Nelly’s Country Grammar for Christmas in 1999. So that immediately is more important than any moment in his life when he didn't cry. I only rank things by number of tears shed, regardless of the maturity of the person.

If Chicago gets to the NBA finals this year and have it locked up in the final minutes of game 7, and then piss it away, my money is on Rose caring more about that than the NCAA final. Ed O'Bannon and Miles Simon led their teams to NCAA Championships. The NBA is the man's game, and it matters more.

I’m not sure what Easterbrook’s point is the last couple weeks regarding the interplay between college hoops and the NBA. We get it; you want college players to stay in college longer and the NBA to somehow require them to. You have many stupid anecdotes to support this.

If the Packers hold the Vikings to a field goal, they face a manageable eight-point deficit; if the Vikings get a touchdown, the game is over. As six Green Bay defenders crossed the line at the snap, TMQ said aloud, "Minnesota wins." And yea, verily, it came to pass, in this case, a touchdown pass.

Do you think he really said (aloud) “Minnesota wins”? Really? How often does he do this and end up wrong? I bet it drives his son nuts. Also, this is just a partial view of this paragraph. Bottomofthebarrel (see links) pointed out something else retarded about it.

“Yea, verily, it came to pass” has to be the most annoying phrase that I've ever read.

In Court, Confess; in Sports, Do Not Confess: Marcus Trufant of the Green Men Group was called for pass interference three times as Dallas pounded Seattle. On the third occasion, as he collided with a receiver, Trufant threw his hands up in the "I didn't do anything" gesture -- and only then did the nearby zebra reach for his flag. Never make the "I didn't do anything" gesture! It only alerts officials that you did, in fact, do something.

Let me get this straight. AS HE COLLIDED with the receiver, he began motioning that he didn’t do “anything”. ONLY THEN did the official throw a flag. Was the official going to throw the flag before he collided? What the hell are you talking about?

Also, clearly not making the "I didn't do anything" gesture wasn't helping either, since it was his third flag.

The Cardinals are quietly struggling: Dating back to the Super Bowl, they are on a 4-4 stretch. One reason is lack of discipline. Cards cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie has nine interceptions in his past 19 starts, the kind of stat announcers praise, but he gambles constantly and gets torched. Carolina ran a simple hitch and go to Steve Smith -- Smith took one step backward as if to catch a hitch, then shot down the field. Rodgers-Cromartie so totally bought on the hitch action, gambling for an interception, that he was barely in the picture as Smith caught a 50-yard touchdown pass. The game started at 2:15 p.m. local time, a time no football player's body clock is set to.

Can you just pause on the “body clock” note?

They play Monday nights, Thursday nights, Sunday Nights, Saturday afternoon, Sunday early, afternoon, Sunday nights, etc. They play in different time zones. But woah woah….NO football player's body clock is set to this 2:15 nonsense! Another stupid, contrived observation/point.

As seven defenders crossed the line at the snap, yours truly said aloud, "Miami wins." And yea, verily, it came to pass.

Please stop doing this.

Gregg Easterbrook Seems Much Smarter When He’s Talking about Stuff I Know Nothing About

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:25:00 +0000

Easterbrook starts out this week's column with a long-winded opinion that play calling doesn’t matter in the NFL. This makes zero sense when combined with his thousands of words each season where he criticizes the play calling of coaches for having cost their teams victories.

In the cult of football, surely few things are more overrated than play calling. Much football commentary, from high school stands to the NFL in prime time, boils down to: "If they ran they should have passed, and if they passed they should have run." Other commentary boils down to: "If it worked, it was a good call, if it failed, it was a bad call," though the call is only one of many factors in a football play. Good calls are better than bad calls -- this column exerts considerable effort documenting the difference.

My take on Sherman Lewis' play calling Monday night? When he ran, he should have passed -- when he passed, he should have run.

I guess that’s a joke.

Yeah, I think it’s much more useful to say that a play succeeded or failed because of the way the cheerleaders are dressed, the coaches are dressed, based on some random anecdote that has nothing to do with the play, the impact of football gods, curses and how the front office deals with free agents (see next paragraph). I think it's laughable that Easterbrook is condemning poor football analysis as just being about second guessing.

When Michael Crabtree finally signed with the 49ers, TMQ warned of a Crabtree Curse -- Mike Singletary had spent a year in San Francisco instilling the message that nobody is bigger than the team, and suddenly it seemed you could jerk the 49ers around all you wanted and get $17 million guaranteed as your reward. Before the signing, the 49ers were 3-1; since the signing, they are 0-2, and have been outscored 69-31. Beware the Crabtree Curse!

So signing Michael Crabtree sent a message to the 49ers defense and that’s why they’ve given up 69 points in the last 2 games. Okay, fruitcake.

Kickoff temperature in Pittsburgh on Sunday was 52 degrees -- so why did Brett Favre wear a woolen ski cap to the postgame news conference? TMQ has noted that while Favre once shrugged at inclement Green Bay weather, now the aging quarterback's performance declines sharply when it's cold. If 52 degrees now makes him reach for a ski cap, good luck to the Vikings when they play at Chicago on Dec. 28.

What is with the fascination with clothing? Seriously? This isn’t interesting or relevant. OMG I knew the Patriots were going to win when I saw Peyton Manning wearing gloves and a hat when he got off the team bus in Foxborough!

Christmas Creep: James McShane of Cincinnati reports, "I attend Xavier University. On October 20th, the university put up Christmas lights. It was 70 degrees out!" Peter Weiss of Green Bay writes that on Oct. 21, "As I returned to the office from lunch, I noticed workers hanging Christmas decorations from the lampposts in downtown Green Bay."

So places that get pretty cold in the winter aren’t waiting until its fucking freezing out before hanging up Christmas lights.

Scandalous!

This week’s column is littered with NBA facts and opinions. One of the subjects Easterbrook dives into is the age restriction for incoming players.

There's no "right" to be a 19-year-old doctor or airline pilot, and no "right" to play in the NBA. The league is a private enterprise that sets its internal rules, and a 20-years minimum would very much be in the interest of the NBA. Allowing players to jump into the league at 19 lowers quality of play; older players are both physically more mature, and have more polished games.

I’m not disagreeing with this, as a whole. Requiring players to attend multiple years of college would, in theory, weed out players better for the draft and better prepare most players for the NBA….freaks like Lebron James and Dwight Howard aside.

The current "one and done" exception -- one year of college, then declare for the pros -- means players who might have become well-known college stars, and arrived in the NBA with high public standing, instead are barely known at the college level, then enter the pros as unknowns with little promotional potential.

My view on this is….who cares? Why do I care if a player (and Easterbrook has some examples) declares for the draft when he’s not ready and suffers the consequences. Easterbrook’s examples of players who may have benefited from a year or two of college ignores a simple fact; it’s their own fault (even if the kid has a stereotypical greedy agent telling him to sign, it's his fault). It also ignores the fact that if they are as good as Easterbrook suggests, they would have made it in the NBA, just as plenty of other players who didn’t play college have. Lastly, it ignores the simply truth that plenty of high school stars go to college and fizzle out (either in college or as soon as they hit the pros), just like his examples did in the pros, because they weren’t good enough to dominate on the next level. There isn't a 100% success rate in any challenging profession on this planet.

When the age limit was 18 for a while, quality of NBA play notably declined, and the fans aren't fools -- ratings and ticket sales fell. Since the 19-year standard took effect in 2005, quality of play has improved; so have ratings and the gate.

Here is where I have a problem. This is just blind, lazy, bullshit speculation passed of as a key supporting fact. I have a number of observations here.

1.) Easterbrook doesn’t watch a lot of basketball (or he hates it, and he does....who would hate something but watch it anyway, that's like hating a columnist but reading his column for 45 minutes every week....let's move on), he’s talking out of his ass for the convenience of his general point when he says “the quality of NBA play notably declined”.

2.) Even if the quality of play “notably declined”, you’re making a leap to blame that on the players who came straight out of high school to the pros, especially when so many of them (Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Dwight Howard, Tracy McGrady, Amare Stoudamire, Kevin Garnett, Al Jefferson, Rashard Lewis, Jermaine O’Neal, etc.) were contributing a high level of play during that time.

3.) He also noted that ticket sales had fallen and then had risen again. This is the attendance from ’03-’04 through ’07-’08.

03-'04 - 20,272,195
04-'05 - 21,296,497
05-'06 - 21,595,804
06-'07 - 21,841,480
07-'08 - 21,395,576

Notice the sharp trends here? Neither do I. The reality is there appears to be marginal movement from year to year. Again, owing any of this to high school NBA players is silly. It’s a strain on your common sense and a lie to imply that you can tell anything about the rule by looking at these numbers. But Easterbrook thinks he can just take any two purported facts (or opinions, even) and say without hesitation that fact 1 caused fact 2. That’s why I can’t stand him.

4.) On to ratings. These are the average regular season ratings for the network (ABC) games.

2003 - 2.6
2004 - 2.4
2005 - 2.2
2006 - 2.2

Does that tell you anything about the impact of the age restriction? Me neither. If NBA teams don’t think players are ready, don’t draft them. The reason why they are so appealing to draft is because so many of them have succeeded.

NBA Officials Check Passports Before Calling Traveling: TMQ has long contended that football rules are too complex; also, the NFL refuses to reveal its officiating manual, which explains such things as how a zebra determines what counts as pass interference. The NBA by contrast recently put its rulebook online, complete with multimedia examples of what is and isn't legal. Great idea -- do the same, NFL. In the new rulebook, I did find this interesting definition:

TRAVELING. If the player with the ball walks off the court and out of the arena, hails a cab, goes to the airport, and buys an airline ticket, at the point that he boards the plane, he shall be whistled for "traveling."

Wait a minute…that IS traveling! Like normal people do! :) LOL! :)

Easterbrook then randomly goes after Stephon Marbury.

But if a player wants the privilege of performing in the NBA, he must perform by its standards. Finally someone, in this case D'Antoni, made that clear. On the day Marbury signed with defending champion Boston, the Celtics were 47-12 (.797). Boston immediately lost to Detroit on national television, and for the remainder of the season went 23-15 (.605) and was bounced from the playoffs. Sure, the injury to Kevin Garnett was a huge factor, but Garnett was out well before Marbury arrived.

Um, no. The Celtics season was not derailed by Stephon Marbury. It was curtailed by Kevin Garnett’s injury and a regression to the mean. Garnett had missed a total of 7 games during the year before Marbury joined the team. The reality is the Celtics started 27-2 and were never going to keep up that pace. That fact, along with Garnett’s injury, is what is driving the disparity in the records above.
Stop taking nuggets of information and making crazy cause and effect assertions around them.

Hey This Rumor I Made Up is Wrong

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:06:00 +0000

Greg Easterbrook starts this week by devoting over 2,200 words to dispel the hot rumor that scoring is actually up in the NFL and NCAA. I have not heard this rumor about the NFL. I don’t pay 5 minutes of attention all season to the NCAA.

Now, let’s follow up on the running theme that Easterbrook only sporadically talks about coaches being more manly men versus “fraidy cat” (his words) based on fourth down attempts. As Gregg already had a 2,200 word opening, he didn’t have to make up a trend to comment on. However, he would have had a legitimate point as this week there were only 26 fourth down attempts, but far the lowest this season (.93 per team game versus 1.32 last week – a 30% decline). In week 2 it increased 0% over week 1, which warranted an intro from Easterbrook about an increase in attempts. In week 4 it increased 1% over week 3 and made the intro as implying that there was a big increase. In week 3 it increased 24% over week 2 and that warranted a comment because Easterbrook thought that his week 2 “manly men” pronouncement was premature, even though teams went for it more in week 3. So he had it backwards. His inconsistency, and the shoddy wording of this paragraph, has probably confused the shit out of you. Let’s move on.

NFL news, is there a Crabtree Curse? San Francisco broke out of the gate 3-1, in part because management's no-compromise attitude toward holdout diva Michael Crabtree sent the message that nobody is bigger than the team. Then last week, suddenly Crabtree is granted $16 million guaranteed even though he skipped training camp, doesn't know the playbook, and spent the first month of the season relaxing on the couch. Suddenly the message sent is that you can jerk the 49ers around and get away with it. Immediately San Francisco lost to Atlanta 45-10 at home.

Yes, 100% of the reason they lost to the Saints is because the players ceased viewing the organization as a "no-nonsense – nobody is bigger than the team” organization.

What a fucking fruitcake.

In other football news, is Cincinnati this year's Team of Destiny? I advise you not to get up for a beer during the final minute of any Bengals game. I strongly advise you not to defy TMQ's law, Cold Coach = Victory. On a 30-degree day at Denver, Bill Belichick came out in a heavy winter parka plus woolen ski hat, with tassel; Josh McDaniels wore a hoodie with a baseball cap. At kickoff, seeing how they were attired, TMQ said, "This game's over." And yea, verily, it came to pass.

Fruitcake.

What to make of the Flaming Thumbtacks' collapse? Since the moment Tennessee took the field in the playoffs holding home-field advantage throughout the postseason, Tennessee has lost six straight. The loss of Albert Haynesworth cannot be the explanation, as his new team is struggling.

Wow. Is that a stupid thing to say. Wow.

Holy shit. Wow.

The loss of a key defensive player to a bad team can’t the explanation, because that key defensive player is now playing on a bad team! Wouldn’t the comparison be the Titans with Haynesworth’s productivity last year versus his replacement’s performance this year, to figure out if the loss of Haynesworth has had an impact?

What if Haynesworth had remained a Titan but died in the offseason? Would you say…."well the death of Haynesworth isn’t the explanation. He’s a dead guy. He can’t even move. If they put him out there he would do absolutely nothing positively for the team. It would be 11 versus 10. So that’s not the reason.”

Congratulations Gregg Easterbrook, you are guilty of the stupidest thing a columnist wrote about the NFL this week.

Sarah Palin has an instant book out next month, and in keeping with the Unified Field Theory of Creep, it's already on bestseller lists though no volumes actually have been shipped from the warehouse.

You can sell books that haven’t shipped. This isn’t some cute thing you noticed.

It’s not on a list of most widely read books, just most purchased.

Single Worst Play of the Season -- So Far: San Francisco trailing 35-10, Dre' Bly of the Squared Sevens intercepted a pass and saw green in front of him. Bly started showboating for the home crowd at his own 40, then was caught from behind by Roddy White -- one of the league's fastest players, the sort of thing Bly is paid to know -- and fumbled. Atlanta ball. Showboating when you are about to score the winning points, as Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie did for Arizona, is bad enough. Showboating on your own 40 and when your team is down by 25 points is inexcusable. Dre' Bly, you are guilty of the single worst play of the season -- so far.

Yeah I actually agree with this.

Here is the clip.

TMQ - Denver Won Because They Couldn't Convert a 4th Down

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 23:37:00 +0000

TMQ - Week 4. That's the intro.

In other football news, going for it on fourth down continues to rise in NFL popularity: Chicago, Cincinnati, Miami, Minnesota, New England, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Washington were among the teams that converted key fourth-down attempts this week when they could have kicked, and then went on to victory.

In week 2, he was all happy because teams were going for it more. In week 3, he spoke vaguely of a regression and teams going for it less. Using the crude measure of 4th down attempts per team per game, this is how it’s trending so far this season:

Week 1: 1.06
Week 2: 1.06 (When Gregg said there was a sudden burst of manhood, presumably over the week 1 total?)
Week 3: 1.31 (When Gregg said he was premature in week 3, even though it actually increased a lot)
Week 3: 1.32 (Virtually the same as week 3)

I am confused.

Of course, going for it doesn't always work; Denver was stuffed on a fourth-and-1 try, though the "challenging players to win" mindset that going for it on fourth down instills seemed to help the Broncos down the stretch.

Well obviously.

The Broncos probably don’t win that game if that 4th and 1 isn’t stuffed. Even when I’m wrong I’m 100% right. When I’m 100% right I’m 1,000% right. I am the smartest man alive. Verily. Cheerbabes. Flaming Thumbtacks and Jersey A/B!

Fortune Favors the Bold! No. 2: After the Redskins failed on fourth-down tries -- when they could have kicked -- in three straight games, Jim "Dan Snyder Hasn't Fired Me Quite Just Yet" Zorn still went for it on fourth-and-2 from the City of Tampa 36. For your faith you will be rewarded, spoke the football gods! Conversion, touchdown on the drive, Washington avoids losing to the winless Bucs, and Zorn's job is safe another week.

Okay. You got me. I take it all back. Football gods clearly exist and this is uncontestable proof that going for it on fourth down is always the right answer. The Redskins, like many other teams this year, have gone for it on fourth in a few different games, and they won in weeks 2 and 4. I have no idea what this means or proves or how it is the least bit interesting. They went for it on fourth in the second game, apparently, and failed, but they won the game. Gregg would say “alas, ye gods rewardeth the (stupid nickname) for showing such bravery and, yea, verily their faith was rewarded with a win! I like girls!!” But if you go for it and fail and lose, as they did in week 3, well shit that’s just part of the equation for winning in week 4. Make sense? I’m confused.

Single Worst Play of the Season -- So Far: Talk, talk, talk -- they sure can talk in Dallas. But when the pressure's on, they jog, jog, jog. Not only did multiple Cowboys defenders miss Brandon Marshall on the 51-yard zigzag scamper that won the game with two minutes remaining at Denver, other Cowboys didn't even try to chase the runner. Marshall cut back across the field twice; if more Cowboys had hustled to chase the play, Marshall would have run out of room. Linebacker Bradie James switched from running to jogging when Marshall was still at the Dallas 10. Dallas Cowboys, you are guilty of the single worst play of the season -- so far.

Here is the play. Great run. There are 7 cowboys chasing him. What does Easterbrook want? Sure, there were missed tackles, as there often are on runs like this, but that was just an amazing run. Brady James is number 56 and he is chasing Marshall for much of the play. He does let up a little early, but he was not catching Marshall anyway. There are players who stop giving chase when they have no chance on every play.

Yeah, pretty boring.

Check it Out I Found this Hidden Gregg Easterbrook Column

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:18:00 +0000

Before I get to TMQ, can someone help me out with something. This is from Scoop Jackson's column about the Michael Crabtree holdout:

But in truth, he does have recourse. Despite reports that the Jets may be interested in talking with Crabtree, there's still a backup plan: re-enter the draft next year and hope to get picked higher than he did this year. Yet this tactic is something that could and probably would affect his entire career, not just his rookie season. (It's the same move that agent Charles Tucker tried with the Milwaukee Bucks and Glenn Robinson in 1994, a move that haunted Robinson throughout his career. Just something to think about.)

A. Glenn Robinson was the number 1 pick. I don't think he had any designs on holding out to be re-drafted at the zero slot in 1995.
B. The hold out did not "haunt" Glenn Robinson throughout his entire career. That's made-up bullshit.

Now to the T&A loving badboy Gregg Easterbrook!

In other football news, perhaps Tuesday Morning Quarterback was premature in declaring last week that courage was breaking out across the NFL. (examples of coaches not going for it). So when courage might have saved the day, an NFL coach was hyper-conservative, desperate to avoid responsibility; when it made absolutely no difference what he did because the game was lost, the coach went for it. See other examples of NFL coaching timidity below.

That's funny, because just last week I declared that your declaration was probably just a lazy lead-in to your column, since teams went for it on fourth down at the same level as week 1 and not at a level that was too anomalous with previous seasons. In week 3 teams had 42 fourth down attempts. This is versus 34 in both weeks 1 and 2. Now, I understand that Easterbrook is not just talking about the quantity of attempts, but the scenarios in which the attempts were made (when the game was up for grabs versus when the game was essentially lost). However, I have to think that over 3 weeks, behaviors haven't changed that much - especially from week 1 to week 2 and from week 2 to week 3.

Sweet 'N' Sour Play No. 2: Note 3: (play recap...). San Diego versus Miami -- why wasn't this game played on a beach with the cheerleaders in bikinis?

Because the TMQ likes girls in bikinis, right! T&A man! Right on! He's just like us, only he likes to write 1,000 words about "cosmic thoughts"! Shut up.

Hidden Play of the Week No. 1: Hidden plays are ones that never make highlight reels, but stop or sustain drives. Highlight reels are showing Carson Palmer's last-snap-of-the-game touchdown pass to Andre Caldwell, enabling Cincinnati to defeat defending champion Pittsburgh. (Cincinnati also was in trips at the goal line, and Pittsburgh didn't jam either.) Twice on that winning drive, the Trick-or-Treats faced fourth down -- fourth-and-2 and fourth-and-10. Palmer completed conversion passes both times, helped by solid pass-blocking. These hidden plays made the game winner possible.

All highlights I saw of the game showed these 4th down conversions. This would be the opposite of “never making highlight reels”.

Yeah it's not much, but I had to fly through this week's column.

Gregg Easterbrook Lies About AIG Lies

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:04:00 +0000

This week’s TMQ had 2 paragraphs I felt like commenting on. In the first, he talks about the outbreak of courage in the NFL this weekend because of the increase in teams going for it on 4th down.

Has courage broken out in the NFL? This weekend, team after team went for it on fourth down, eschewing fraidy-cat kicks…..(deleted: a bunch of examples)…..Overall in Week 2, there were 34 fourth-down conversion attempts -- some in desperation time when coaches had no choice, but most when kicking was a reasonable option.

Why this sudden burst of manhood?

The answer: because of cheer babes and football gods!

The real answer: There wasn’t, really. There were 34 fourth-down conversion attempts in week 1 too. This works out to 1.06 fourth down attempts per team per game. This is up from the 2008 season, which saw .96 fourth down attempts per team per game. I’m not trying to minimize this difference (10%), but it doesn’t strike me as huge and it probably won’t hold. Multiplying that out, it means that, on average, each team will attempt just under 17 fourth down attempts this season versus just over 15 last season. The way Easterbrook led off his column I expected it to be 20-40% higher.

So there is a slight increase over last year (as noted above). However, if you look at 2007, there were 1.04 fourth down attempts per team per game. This is virtually the same as 1.06. In 2006, it was .92. There actually was a much more significant increase from 2006 to 2007 than there has been in the small 2 week sample so far in 2009, when Gregg is applauding teams for being more manly men. In 2007 he was doing his usual (mostly correct) schtick of hammering the teams for being “fraidy cats” for punting too often.

Conclusion: Nothing to see here (yet)… keep moving. He probably just needed something to lead the column with.

The other piece I’m going to pick on is Gregg calling out the former interim CEO of AIG for essentially being misleading and dishonest. See, Liddy was asked by our government to come in to run AIG for a while to help maintain our economic system, which AIG had become an immense and important part of by insuring a large portfolio of subprime loans and basically propping up Wall Street for a couple of years. Ed Liddy was not the CEO of AIG when it helped to crash our financial system, but Easterbrook won’t clarify that for you. Ed Liddy was requested by our Government to be the CEO of AIG to help stabilize the company (and therefore the economy). Here’s what Easterbrook had to say:

Meanwhile, previous AIG CEO Edward Liddy repeatedly said he was working "for $1 a year." He asserted this on "60 Minutes" and in sworn congressional testimony, and was broadly praised for his dollar-a-year service. Now it turns out he was lying.

This is incredibly petty. Liddy did not say he was “working for $1 a year”. He was making a $1 per year salary. He wasn’t lying. Easterbrook says “now it turns out” like this is any big secret being uncovered or this is even recent news. Here is the Proxy statement filed with the SEC on June 5th. Scroll down to 2008 compensation. There it is. Nothing hidden.

AIG quietly said Liddy received $38,368 for a New York apartment, $47,578 for personal airline flights, $31,348 for car services and $180,431 "to cover tax obligations” " In what sense are these not income?

How did they quietly say this? Should they have issued a press release about some perquisites that frankly are quite small in the context of a CEO’s compensation package? What would you have done, if you were running AIG? They did not say he had no expenses paid, they said he had a $1 salary. I'll tell you in which sense those payments are not income. The entire purpose of the above expenses was to make sure that Liddy, in working for $1, was not actually paying to work for AIG. Since his home is not in New York, that required an apartment and transportation home. This is unfair and misleading, how?

You work at a job in order to be able to pay for your housing and transportation. You must earn income to pay your taxes; nobody pays them for you. If AIG was paying for Liddy's housing, personal travel and taxes, then he wasn't earning $1 a year.

He was earning a $1 salary. The expenses were paid for so that he wasn’t paying to work for AIG (at the government’s request, by the way).

Yet he lied through his teeth about this and got away with it.

This is an entirely inaccurate, misleading way to represent the situation, more so in any way than Liddy’s compensation package was a lie.

That's the core lesson of corporate scandals -- the CEOs tell lies, pocket cash and never pay any penalty.

What cash did he pocket? He had use of an apartment, a plane and some money went to federal, state and local governments. He did not live in New York, but was asked to run AIG. Was he supposed to call a realtor up and go apartment hunting or was he supposed to get busy running the company?

What does this encourage? More CEO lying. Liddy also received stock options. AIG has never said how many; suppose it was 200,000, the number just granted Benmosche.

Yeah, that seems fair, let’s just speculate that he received 200,000 stock options even though you have no evidence of that and then criticize him for it! I have been unable to find a record of Liddy receiving stock options (only positive statements to the contrary) and Easterbrook linked nothing to support this claim. If anyone has proof of this, please forward to me. I’m genuinely curious.

When Liddy went to AIG, its share price was hovering around $5; if that's the strike price, 200,000 shares would be worth about $7 million right now. Plus AIG quietly said Liddy may receive a bonus payable in 2010. The man who was widely praised for claiming to work for $1 may end up with a king's ransom in his pockets, all pilfered from the average taxpayers. Why have the media dropped this story?

This is very shady. If Liddy had been given 200,000 options upon arriving at AIG (which is what Easterbrook is implying/making up, because he’s using the beginning stock price as the strike price), then that would certainly be in the proxy I linked above. This is the number of Options that Liddy received upon joining AIG in September 2008: 0. Zero fucking options. Yes, but IF HE HAD THEN HE WOULD HAVE MADE A LOT OF MONEY! That's awesomely interesting. Except he didn't. If I had a 19 inch cock I'd be a porn star. Also interesting and made up. Fun, right?

This is from the proxy: “Mr. Liddy volunteered to receive only $1 in salary. He has received no cash incentive compensation and no equity-based compensation. It was expected that Mr. Liddy ultimately would be compensated through an equity grant. However, Mr. Liddy declined to move forward on work toward that arrangement as AIG addressed the immediate challenges facing it.”

This is directly in conflict with what Easterbrook said above. Is Easterbrook lying? At a minimum, his fictitious $7 million gain that he’s criticizing Liddy is wrong. Maybe Liddy did receive stock options, but name a cite and use those numbers in computing a gain to rail him on.

Here’s what they said about his tax obligations: “AIG also made additional payments to offset any tax obligation Mr. Liddy incurred in accordance with the preceding arrangements to avoid his effectively having to pay to work at AIG. AIG does not believe that any of the amounts described in this paragraph represents an actual compensation benefit for Mr. Liddy.”

Let’s say that you live in Florida. The government asks you to spend 9 months helping to build affordable low-income housing in Wisconsin. They provide a few trips home and an apartment in Wisconsin. Since you are still paying rent/mortgage in Florida, is that not reasonable? Is that really “income”? Easterbrook would call you a lying thief if you didn't call it income.

In the very same Bloomberg article that Easterbrook links to, it says this: "Liddy declined to accept equity grants for compensation, AIG said, canceling what was to be the largest component of his pay under an arrangement disclosed on Nov. 25.” But that didn’t stop Easterbrook from somehow computing a $7 million option gain for Mr. Liddy and calling him a liar for this $7 million gain.

Easterbrook is being more dishonest here than AIG or Ed Liddy.

Gregg Easterbrook Will Not Believe Your Crazy Comic Book Stories!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:47:00 +0000

I read this week’s TMQ and had three separate paragraphs to comment on. Yeah, that’s all the introduction you’re getting, I’m busy.

"Wall-E" was a terrific flick, the finest Hollywood romance in years, despite starring two mute robots; "The Dark Knight" was a terrible film. People felt "The Dark Knight" had to be praised owing to the death of Heath Ledger; that movie was terrible.

Really, just because Heath Ledger died? Do you really think the Dark Knight made over 7 trillion dollars at the Box Office because people said “hey let’s go see that movie that stars that guy who died recently”? Do you really think guys like Roger Ebert are swayed by this? I don’t. That guy can be pretty vicious when he thinks a movie sucks.

The big chase scene at its center made absolutely no sense -- no matter what street the van turned down, the Joker's tractor-trailer truck was already on that street and approaching from the opposite direction. Huh?

It wasn’t approaching in the opposite direction, it was running parallel. If the Joker was approaching in the opposite direction, he would have just flown right by the van. So huh…to you!!!! See how I turned that around?

The Joker made no sense. How did he know where everyone in Gotham City was at every moment?

He didn’t, why do you say he did? Do you really know how much time was elapsing in this movie? Everyone…..every moment? It’s easy to discard something as stupid when you make up “facts” about it.

How did he enter guarded buildings without being detected?

As I noted in my post last year about this same goddamn subject, he’s a fucking criminal mastermind. In Gregg Easterbrook’s version of Batman, when the joker and his henchmen break into the bank at the beginning, they are immediately swarmed and taken down by the 66 year old security guard Cliff and his 18 year old assistant (who would be Cliff’s grandson, Jason…on his first day). Cliff would go on to get a $500 bonus from the bank and a plaque from the Mayor. The rest of the movie is mainly just Bruce Wayne shagging random NFL cheerleaders and watching Star Trek re-runs and pulling his hair out when NFL teams punt on 4th and 3 from the opponent’s 45 when the average NFL play yields 4.85 yards so they are guaranteed a first down. Also, Harvey Dent would be a raging anti-semite.

How did he command an army of super-competent ultra-loyal henchmen, including engineers and surgeons, despite having no money and boasting of murdering his own assistants for amusement?

Who says he had no money? How are any of those super villains in any movies with armies of henchman able to command them? Who are the engineers and surgeons (I may just be forgetting)? WHO FUCKING CARES? It’s a comic book movie, turn your brain off for two hours and watch the pretty explosions. How did Hitler command hundreds of thousands of people? With fear? Well that's my answer. The Joker did it with fear.

And that scene of gibberish pseudo-philosophizing about society by the Joker, puh-leeze.

Seriously, what scene is this?

I don’t remember the Joker philosophizing about society in any grandiose way, he just said he likes to cause mayhem and see what happens. Good god you must be a miserable fuck to watch a movie with.

Moving on, let’s talk about apologies and false analogies.

Serena Williams was fined $10,000 for cursing out and threatening to harm a line judge in the U.S. Open. It's not just that in the Masterpiece Theater environment of tennis, the hushed crowd can hear a player curse; threatening another person with physical harm is in most states a crime akin to simple battery, such as throwing a punch. Williams, who is wealthy, was assessed a minor fine -- yet LeGarrette Blount of Oregon loses his entire senior season for throwing a punch. Blount's punch was wrong and punishment was required, but taking away his senior season -- in high school and college football, the senior season is the most important season by far -- for losing his cool in the heat of the moment is excessive punishment.

It's been a while since I took Criminal Justice, but I don't believe throwing and landing a punch is “simple battery”. What LeGarrette Blount did was assault and battery. Simple battery would have been knocking the other player’s helmet out of his hand or something. What Serena Williams did was assault, only because she raised her racket and motioned towards the line judge in a threatening way (pointing at her)…even though everyone who saw it knew the Williams would not actually physically do anything to the line judge. What Serena Williams did was not battery, because she never actually touched the line judge (or even "simple battery"). Taking a cheap shot punch at another player from an angle where you are hidden is not analogous to yelling at someone. He lost his entire season not for “simple battery” caused by throwing a punch. He assaulted a player with the intent of doing him great physical harm. Note: I’m not a lawyer, so don’t all 8 of you e-mail me lawery stuff. You get my point.

I don’t disagree with Easterbrook’s larger point in the paragraph above, which is that Blount’s punishment is very severe, perhaps overly so. But his analogy here is not very good. Here’s where it gets worse.

What Blount did is not hugely different from what Williams did. Yet she is slapped on the wrist while he is severely punished.

I have a problem with this. This is the youtube video of Serena Williams. She lost her cool and yelled at a line judge. She motioned towards her. She said bad things. But the line judge was not, for one second, in true physical danger. This is the US open. There are 10’s of thousands of people there, and the match is televised. The actually likelihood of Serena Williams doing something to physically harm the line judge is zero point zero per cent. People yell at officials/refs/umpires/line judges all the time. To analogize it to punching someone from the side is insane.

This is the youtube video of LeGarrette Blount blindsiding Byron Hout. If he hits Hout in the temple with that punch, who knows what happens? Blount is a big strong guy, and he didn’t just “lose his cool”, he put another person’s livelihood at risk. This is not in the same universe as an athlete cursing out an official. There was no real threat of physical harm, and everyone knows this.

Let’s turn this around. Let’s say that Serena Williams had punched the line judge when the judge had her head turned and LeGarrette Blount has said “I will kill you” and pointed at another player. Would you still think these things are not hugely different?

Plus, whatever happened to the value of the apology? Blount apologized to Byron Hout, the player he struck, and Hout graciously accepted.

So if Hout doesn’t accept, then the apology is not as valued. This is stupid logic. What he does is minimized if he apologizes for it….IF….the apology is accepted!

Life is full of screw-ups. The apology, if accepted, lets us go forward without nursing grudges. Rep. Joe Wilson was incredibly rude to President Barack Obama last week. Wilson apologized; Obama accepted. The matter should now be closed. Blount's apology was genuine, and ought to count for a lot.

No, the matter is not closed. There’s still the little matter of a player punching another player. THE LAST THING WE NEED TO TEACH PEOPLE WHO CAN’T CONTROL THEMSELVES IS THAT YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT AND FACE A MUCH MORE LENIENT POLICY IF YOU APOLOGIZE. Blount learns no lesson if he’s given a small penalty simply because he apologized.

Football spectators, TV fans and boosters are hypocritical to demand violent contact during games, then theatrically call for extreme punishment of a player whose heat-of-battle emotions had not cooled a mere two minutes after the contest ended.

He fucking blindsided another player with a punch that could have done serious damage. This is a serious thing. This wasn’t two Pop Warner kids at school the next day behind the jungle gym. He should have known people would see him do this and there would be repercussions. By being so brazen, he practically obligated the NCAA and his school to hit him with a super harsh penalty. Stop glossing over this. A full season seems extreme to me, I’d have suspended him for a few games, but this is not the same as Serena Williams or Joe Wilson. Exchanges like this happen all the time and don’t lead to violence, so I don’t buy the argument that this is hypocritical to expect this instance to have not resulted in violence.

Okay, moving on again. One thing Gregg does all the time is take plays and describe them with total revisionist history. If you just read his column and never actually see the plays, you will not notice this. But frequently when Gregg says “no one moved”, a few guys moved. When he says 4 players were involved, 2 were involved, etc. When he says that he likes cheerbabes in skimpy outfits, he’s sucking on a dildo. Anyway, that brings us to his recap of the Brandon Stokley reception this week.

Single Worst Play of the Season -- So Far: Just maybe you've seen a highlight of the Brandon Stokley play that won the Denver-Cincinnati game. Forget the ball bouncing or Stokley running, where were the Bengals? Leading 7-6 with 28 seconds remaining and the opponent pinned on its 13, Cincinnati coaches sent only a nickel, not a dime, onto the field. At the snap, the deepest safety was only 12 yards off. Once Stokley grabs the tipped pass, linebacker Dhani Jones is the sole Bengal who chases him all-out. Other Broncos, and Bronco coaches, ran down the sideline with Stokley. The linesman ran with him almost stride-for-stride. Where are the other Bengals?

The underlines are mine.

Wow, that’s powerful stuff. The linesman ran with him! So did the coaches! But the well paid professional athletes on the Bengals didn’t even try. Based on what you just read, don’t you have this vision of a bunch of Bengals DB’s being beaten on a route or something and then when Stokley is in front of them, they just stop running because they are lazy assholes? All the while, a parade of people are stride for stride with Stokely on the sideline….even the much older linesman!

Here is the play. Watch it.

The DB’s fell and were out of the play once the ball was tipped. The linesman ran about 15 feet and not at all with Stokley. A couple of Bronco players ran about 15 yards, not at all with Stokley’s pace. Lastly, the part about the Bronco coaches is unverifiable from this clip. I couldn’t see anyone running. I suspect the TMQ made it up.

Easterbrook does this all the time.

Bill Simmons Went to VEGAS!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:42:00 +0000

Hey, you're still here? Sorry about not posting ever, I just don't read much online these days and I stick to Deadspin, TheBigLead and Firejaymariotti.

But I did catch that Bill Simmons went to Vegas recently. Oh yeah, you know what that Vegas means, another Vegas column about Vegas things that only happen in Vegas! Vegas. Bill and his Vegas friends are Vegas veterans, so you will be astounded at the hilarity of them playing Vegas craps, eating Vegas bad food, playing Vegas blackjack, having a group dinner, visiting a Vegas nightclub!!!! (oh boy!) and finally playing Vegas slots! Only in Vegas can you do all this! Seriously, if you try to get 10 guys together for dinner and fucking slots at Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun or Atlantic City, you'll get shot. Vegas!!!! VEGAS!!!

Since the columns (there's a day 1 and a day 2) are really long, I’ve just trimmed them down a bit, so you can get the Vegas gist.

These are the things you think about as you're driving to Vegas.

If there's someone else in the car, by Nevada law, you're required to scream out "VEH-GASSSSSSSSSSS!" like Double Down Trent.

Vegas. Vegas. Vegas.

Some people aren't quite meant for Vegas.

Time for another staple of any Vegas trip: Friday afternoon's "we just got here, we haven't gotten our gambling legs yet, we're not drunk or even buzzed ... let's grab this open craps table and throw dice together!"

That's veteran Vegas savvy -- you definitely want to be buzzed/drunk at the end of the night because it loosens you up and that's when you go on card runs, but you never want to be lightheaded drunk or sloppy drunk.

These are the things you say in Vegas.

Come on! It's Vegas! WE GOTTA SUCK IT UP! WE GOTTA FIGHT FOR THAT INCH! VEGAS!!!!

(VEGAS!!!!!!!!)

There's nothing quite like the feeling of waking up in Vegas and having absolutely no idea what time it is.

(These are the conversations you have in Vegas.)

Add this to the "great things about Vegas" list -- where else can you take a limo with 11 friends for 10 minutes?

I love Vegas.

Always respect the dead in Vegas.

(You gotta love Vegas.)

You know, every Vegas weekend has one song that every casino beats into the ground to the point that people groan when it comes on.

Call it the Vegas Diet.

Back to the room for second showers, shaves and a dress change, highlighted by Grady's phone call to his wife in which he adopts the Vegas Husband Voice.

(You're in Vegas, for god sakes.)

Out of nowhere, Mahady comes up with one of the three greatest Vegas ideas I have ever witnessed: Everyone throws in $100, we head to the slots and play as many Wheel of Fortune machines as possible at the same time.

Now I think we just need a new Vegas theory which I'm gonna call it the 'Vegas Shocker' theory.

(And if that e-mail didn't make any sense to you … well, you've never been to Vegas.)

Don't pull the Limo Price Bump move on old Vegas veterans like us, Driver With 17 Letters In Your First Name.

Time for another veteran Vegas move: My contact lenses are dry and killing me, so I order a spicy Bloody Mary with extra horseradish.

(Note: I should really teach a "What To Do In Vegas" class in college. UCLA, call me.)

These are the rules of Vegas.

See, it always evens out in Vegas.

Sometimes, you have to keep Vegas on its toes.

One of the mysteries of Vegas -- waking up that second morning and feeling fine.

"There should be a Web site that has before/after Vegas pictures," I say to Grady.

The obligatory hungover Vegas breakfast with Bish, Hopper and Grady.

We're just four washed-up Vegas sluggers watching a washed-up baseball slugger walk with his family.

Vegas, baby.

Vegas.

Vegas!!!!!

In all seriousness, the columns aren’t bad. I just can’t stand the constant references to Vegas like it’s another planet and Simmons acting like his friends and he do the town like a bunch of madmen.

There Should Be a Website Devoted to Getting Joe Morgan Fired

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:20:00 +0000

Two posts in June? Why the fuck not.

I happened to take a quick look at Joe Mo's chat today and I thought a few question/answers were worthy of posting here. Because they sucked.

These are cut and pastes so typos are as they showed up in the chat.

John (CA): What are your thoughts oin Tommy Hanson so far?

Joe Morgan: I haven't seen him, and I havent read a lot about him, but everything I hear about him on TV, he's going to be a star. But I don't use other peoples' judgements on players, I like to see them. I don't follow the lead of others in terms of rating players. I like to do it myself.

Summary:

I haven’t seen him.
I haven’t read anything about him.
People say he’s good.
But I don’t listen to people.
I barely watch baseball.
I don't read anything about baseball.
Question answered?
No.

Ben (Lincoln, NE): Joe, what's your take on the White Sox?

Joe Morgan: That's a team that I just can't figure out. Every time I think they're going to go down and they should start rebuilding, they win a few games ago.

To keep my brain from exploding I’m going to just pretend he didn’t end that second sentence with “ago”. So, if this means what I think it means, then no team should ever rebuild unless they go an entire season without a winning streak.

Contreras came back and looks great. They look good for a moment and then they fall back. So, I can't figure them out.

Seriously. At first I’m like…this team has won a few games in a row, they're AWESOME!…then they lose 3 in a row…so I’m like…this team SUCKS! Then they go and win a game again! Make a decision White Sox! Are you going to lose all the time or win all the time? You can’t just be a .500 team or something! Winning, then losing and back and forth and back and forth. I can’t analyze that.

They have some young players and veteran players, but I just can't figure them out.

This is the third time Joe said he can’t figure them out. He's typed 6 sentences.

Also, I fucking love this sentence. Read it again, it's beautiful. It's like Joe concedes that he can't "figure out" teams that have all veterans or all young players. But this White Sox team, well shit they have both....and he still can't figure them out.

They could turn things around and win the division or they can fall deeper toward the bottom of the division.

So they’ll either be awesome and win the division or they’ll suck.

Jason (DC): Joe, Is Magglio Ordonez toast, or will he rebound in a big way?

Joe Morgan: That's a puzzling situation for me, because Jim Leyland said he's benched indefinitely. I don't know if I've heard that phrase used before with the benching of a star. Something is going on there, and we don't know what it is. I find it hard to think that a guy that has had success and can just disappear. My first thought is that he needs a wake up call and this is what that is. Maybe he just needs a good ol' fashioned kick in the pants and this is it.

So, is Magglio Ordonez toast or will he rebound in a big way?

ben (los angeles): if you were the manager of the Dodgers what would you do with Pierre when Manny returns? It doesn't seem productive or fair to bench him.

Joe Morgan: I finally found someone who agrees with me. I said this on Sunday Night Baseball. You're not talking about a bench guy in Pierre. You're talking about a guy with a lifetime average of over .300. If I'm the Dodgers, instead of benching him, I'd try to trade him for a good starting pitcher. Don't make a mistake about it, the Dodgers as good as they are need another starting pitcher. But thanks for agreeing with me. I like people that agree with me. Though I like people that disagree with me so I can explain my side.

No one is going to trade a “good starting pitcher” for a guy who should be a platoon outfielder on a good team. The last 5 years that Pierre was a full-time player, these were his finishes in OBP: First, Second, Second, First, Third. Just kidding, that was "Outs Made". Also, Joe absolutely does not like people that disagree with him as evidenced by his pettiness against anyone who has brought up Moneyball since Billy Beane commissioned IBM to build a computer to write it for him.*

*See Firejoemorgan archives.

Ryan (VA): Hey Joe is Chipper Jones a 1st ballot Hall of Famer if he doesnt reach the 500 homerun mark?

Joe Morgan: Being honest with you...that's a great question. I don't normally answer those questions because I'm on the Board and I don't want it to look like I'm pushing for a player while he's still playing. however, I think that Chipper will end up in the Hall of Fame.

A. I like that Joe is honest when he's answering these chat questions.
B. Joe always reminds people that he’s on the Board and that he shouldn’t give an opinion.
C. Joe always then gives his opinion.
D. He accomplished A-C without answering the question.

Bill Simmons is Smarter Than You Are

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:28:00 +0000

That’s why he sees all the real stories. Behind the numbers. Behind the uniforms and canned quotes, Simmons is able to break it all down for us. Why did Lebron have a great season in ’08-09? Give up? Kobe Bryant played in the Olympics.

From the mailbag.

I'd bet anything that Kobe secretly regrets being on the Redeem Team. He gained nothing exposure-wise because they showed every game in America in the wee hours;

But he gained something exposure wise with the tens of millions of people around the world who watched Olympic basketball. Is there anyone in the US who doesn’t know who Kobe Bryant is? Also, wasn’t that first game against China on at like 10AM Eastern time on a Sunday?

all he did was put unnecessary mileage on his knees when he could have been resting.

That’s all he did. That’s all that was accomplished in Beijing. When Kobe Bryant is 60 and his grandchildren ask him about the Summer of ’08, his first memory will be…. “Oh that was the summer I put some more mileage on my knees. Nothing else of substance happened. Next topic.” Then they’ll probably ask him about Shaq or about winning the dunk contest in ’97 or being accused of rape or something.

If that's not bad enough, he SINGLE-HANDEDLY altered the course of his main rival's career.

SINGLE-HANDEDLY! This needs to be in all caps, so you know how important it is to his point. That rival? None other than Lebron James, who was an underachieving, underperforming pile of crap before the Beijing Olympics. Lebron James...the guy whose high school games were nationally televised. The number 1 pick in the draft a few years back. That guy. His career path was altered by the Olympics. Right.

Fun fact – Lebron’s per game averages for Points, Rebounds, Assists, Steals and Blocks either stayed the same or decreased from the season prior to the Olympics. Although he did play a couple less minutes because there were more blowouts. Still, his course was not altered any more than it would have been if Lebron had stayed home.

LeBron intimated as much himself: Only after watching Kobe's daily workout routine and nonstop commitment to defense did LeBron realize that he was selling himself short to some degree.

Did playing with Kobe Bryant (and Dwyane Wade, and Chris Paul, and…) make Lebron James better? Probably. How could playing with those guys not help your game? Is this something that we should credit with making him turn some sort of corner? No. This is like saying that Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade and Paul Pierce all wouldn’t have been the players they are today if they were drafted 1-3 slots higher. Oh wait, Simmons is convinced of that point too. He and other sportswriters love to take small, innocuous parts of the story, and make them the story. Because that’s what they think they are paid to do – point out the little things that dummies like you and me (especially you) miss because we aren’t as perceptive.

And when Kobe took over as the alpha dog in the gold-medal game (and everyone let him do it), that made LeBron realize, "I'm not quite there yet."

I bet a million dollars that Lebron James didn’t realize this, or think this after the gold medal game, and Bill Simmons is making up that he did so that he can tie it into his nice little bullshit anecdote.

Of the many reasons MJ skipped the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, I guarantee these were two of them:

The 1984 Olympics and the 1992 Olympics? Those are the two main reasons. He already had two gold medals. Just kidding. Bill is right. He was afraid that people would realize why he’s really good at basketball, in 1996, when he was 33 years old and had just unretired and led the Bulls to 72 wins.

"Why should I show these guys I'm trying to beat how I prepare every day?"

Double or nothing on the million dollars that Michael Jordan being afraid to show these guys how he prepares every day had nothing to do with him not playing in the 1996 Olympics.

and "Why should I give my foes any insight into what makes me me."

That’s the same thing as reason one. But very true, I doubt any of those guys knew much about Jordan in 1996. He had 4 rings, 8 scoring titles and 4 MVP's at the time .

He remembered how the 1992 Dream Team experience rejuvenated Barkley's career and didn't want to make the same mistake twice.

Um, I’m pretty sure the 1992-93 season coinciding with Barkley being traded to a good Suns team with a good blend of stars (KJ, Majerle) complementary players (West, Ainge, Chambers, Ceballos) and young guys who would pull productive years out of their asses (Oliver Miller, Richard Dumas) had more to do with his success in 1993 than the Olympics OR MICHAEL JORDAN PLAYING IN THE OLYMPICS. Barkley didn’t play remarkably better in ’93 than he had before; he just played with a better team than he had been dealt in Philly.

Anyway, if Kobe never plays in the 2008 Olympics, then LeBron and Wade become alpha dogs by default and spend the whole time playing poker or Bid Whist in Worldwide Wes' hotel room ... and Kobe is cruising to the title right now. He has to be kicking himself.

Sure.

Do you think Kobe has spent 5 minutes since he left Beijing thinking about the impact his presence at the Olympics may or may not have had on the other players? I don’t.

Orlando Magic Win, Larry Bird Sucks

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:57:00 +0000

If you’re a fan of the NBA, as I am, then you no doubt saw the impressive performance by the Orlando Magic against the Boston Celtics in game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semi-finals on Sunday night. They won going away, and even when the Celtics could pull within 4 or 5, you knew the Magic would respond to push the lead back up to 10+. The most amazing part was the relative ineffectiveness of the Celtics “Big 7” composed of Larry Bird, Kevin Mchale, Bob Cousy, Bill Russell, John Havlicek, Kevin Garnett, and Dave Cowens. I mean…..where were those guys? I thought they were all long since retired (or sidelined with an injury, in Garnett’s case), but after reading Mike Bianchi’s column in the Orlando Sentinel, they should have had the same impact on the game as they would have if they were 27 years old and wearing green and white.

Let’s take a look:

All that mystique turned into a mirage Sunday night.

I know right? Larry Bird? More like Larry Turd! Guy didn’t score a point.

All that Celtics history turned into Magic histrionics.

Because everyone knows that a team’s record in the 1960’s should directly impact the outcome of games played by players who weren’t born yet.

Also, histrionics means what, exactly, here? Acting in an overly (unnecessarily) dramatic fashion. Awesome!

That famed and acclaimed Celtics green faded to Magic blue. And white.

Because no one thought the Magic would win, right? No one. I mean, they only won 59 games!

Ignite.

Other than rhyming with white, what is this word’s function here?

This can't be true, can it?

Please tell me why, the fuck, anyone thought it couldn’t be?

Well, can it?

Well, tell me!

Did the Orlando Magic really just bury the storied Boston Celtics 101-82? Did they actually destroy the defending champions by 19 ... in Game 7 ... on Boston's home court?

Well, yes and no. The Celtics team that won the championship last year included James Posey, Kevin Garnett and Leon Powe suited up. So they didn’t beat that team. They beat a team that was clearly fucking exhausted and unable to get Ray Allen a clean look for like 5 games. The Paul Pierce who was the best player on the court against LA last year was relegated to flailing around looking for foul calls. Orlando was the better team, why are you writing this like they were underdogs? They really really weren’t. They have a bunch of good players. They have the All-NBA first team center and Defensive Player of the Year.

Mark this down as one of the greatest days in Orlando sports history. This is the night, the Magic, the resoundingly resilient Magic, ignored all of the Celtics legend and lore and started building their own legacy of triumph and tradition.

I know right, I totally expected the Celtics “legend and lore” to have an impact on this game, because I have an IQ of 32.

"This is about as big a win as you can have — for our organization and our team," Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said.Hey, Shaq, do you still think Van Gundy is the "Master of Panic"? Or does he now qualify as the Patriarch of Pressure? Hey, Sports Illustrated, do you still think Dwight Howard smiles too much to lead the Magic to playoff success against the NBA's elite? Or has he finally proven you can grin — and win?

Slow down. Not to downplay the Magic’s win too much, but it’s the Eastern Semi’s. They have to at least get through Cleveland to dispel these assertions.

Did Sports Illustrated really imply that he smiles too much to win a championship? Really? I read the column, and that wasn't my takeaway.

Toppling a legacy

On this, the 20-year anniversary of their inception, the Magic vanquished the most dynamic, dynastic champion this league has ever known. The Celtics have won 17 NBA titles in their proud history, but the Magic's Big Three of Howard, Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu had that look in their eyes like they aim to win their first.

I know that this is what sportswriters do, but this is maddening. When the Celtics beat the Bulls in the first round, it had not one goddamn thing to do with Michael Jordan and Larry Bird, just like Orlando beating the Celtics had nothing to do with Boston's history. See, here’s the thing, it is history if you beat a historically good collection of basketball players, it's not history if you beat a franchise that has had a good history. Writers love to put up bullshit stats like “such and such a team has never lost a game 7 at home, or a series when they were up 3-1”. Those numbers are only relevant to the extent that they involve the actual players on the court.

The 2007-08, 2008-09 Celtics were absolutely not the most dynamic, dynastic champion the league has ever known. When teams beat the early 90's Yankee teams that weren't very good, I don't think they said...."Yeah, we overcame Ruth and Gehrig and Mantle and all that history!"

And, now, they are halfway home.

Eight wins from a championship.

Eh, only if you consider Cleveland and LA/Denver to be of the same caliber as Philly and Boston. You don’t, do you?

Bring on the Lebron James and the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers, who the Magic will play in the Eastern Conference finals beginning Wednesday in Cleveland. The Cavs have marched through two playoff series with a perfect 8-0 record, but the Magic have had their number. Orlando has beaten Cleveland in eight of the last 11 games dating back three-plus seasons.

If the Magic can dismantle the Celtics in this pressure-packed atmosphere, they can beat anybody, anytime. Before Sunday, the Celtics had been 17-3 at home in Game 7s. They had been 32-0 when leading a seven-game series 3-2 as they did after Game 5. And the Magic still buried them by throwing a Boston Three Party and draining 13-of-21 shots from three-point range.

See. Those numbers don’t matter, because they involve the Russell, Bird, or Havlicek era Celtics. This is not hard.

"I don't know too much about history," Howard said. "Sometimes, history is rewritten."

Dwight Howard should write for the Orlando Sentinel.

You've heard of the Magna Carta? In the history of Orlando sports, this victory will go down as the Magic Carta.

(cringes)

If there were any shadowy spirits or historic haunts hovering in Boston's arena Sunday night, the Magic played the role of Ghostbusters and exterminated them.

Historic haunts at the TD Banknorth Garden? Were they channeling the first ever Celtics team to play there, led by Rick Fox, Dino Radja and Dana Barros?

The Celtics leprechaun that supposedly sits on the backboard and blocks the opposition's shots? I think he ran in fear after one of Howard's rim-rattling power slams.

That’s probably 100% true. I don’t even remember seeing a leprechaun after Howard’s first dunk.

And that victory cigar that late, great Celtics coach Red Auerbach used to light up after big wins? The Magic snatched it from the Celtics' mouth and ground it into the dirt.

I’m confused by this, is he implying that the entire Celtics team were somehow planning to smoke a Cigar at the same time?

Also, I THINK YOU’VE MADE YOUR POINT ABOUT THE CELTICS HAVING A LOT OF HISTORY, YET SOMEHOW, SOMEWAY, NOT CHANNELING THAT HISTORY TO WIN A BASKETBALL GAME IN 2009.

Forget about the recent release of the new Star Trek movie, which flashes back in time and chronicles the early days of Captain James T. Kirk and his fellow USS Enterprise crew members. Do you realize the Magic are flashing back in time, too, and are now reliving the days of Captain Shaq and his crew members who led the USS Amway into the Eastern Conference finals back in 1996?

Yes, let’s relive the 1996 Eastern Conference finals, when the Magic lost 4 straight to the Bulls by an average of 17 points per game.

Also…nice…..Star Trek…. tie in?!?!

The Boston Celtics may have looked into the rafters Sunday night and saw the retired jerseys of past legends Bill Russell, John Havlicek and Bob Cousy, but guess what?

Um, those guys are old and are no longer playing?

The Magic looked within themselves and found a vestige of their own past — a past of heart and hustle and hopes and dreams.

That’s really sweet.

The Orlando Magic — your Orlando Magic — buried the ghosts of Celtics past and now are poised to march into their own blazingly bright future.

Jesus, this guy should be a speechwriter or something. The Celtics were two shots away from losing this thing in 5 games.

Some Heroic Randomness

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:59:00 +0000

So between job, wife, baby and life I haven’t been able to read much online lately. When I do it’s usually financial news, given all that is going on. But I have been watching the NBA playoffs, and I had a few snippets I figured I’d throw up on the ‘ol blog.

This is from a recent column where Jemele Hill and Scoop Jackson answered some questions about the upcoming NBA playoffs.

Question: Which player is most likely to jump into the national spotlight and make fans think, "Damn, I didn't realize he was that good"?

Scoop Jackson: John Salmons of the Chicago Bulls. Being in Chi-town, I've been lucky enough to watch this dude light up teams ever since the trade that brought him here in February. While some players are straight slept on, this cat was hibernated on by everyone except his family members and probably some ex-girlfriends. He can flat-out ball! Now I know he's barely played in the playoffs before, and it's a whole other level of comp and intensity. But from what I've seen over the past 30 games or so, Salmons (along with Ben Gordon, because he's playing for a new contract) is going to make a lot of fantasy hoop dudes pissed because they've been hibernatin' on him.

This paragraph made my head spin.

Why?

1. He calls John Salmons “cat” and “dude”. He does this because it’s part of his ultra-cool “Ladies Man” like writing style. Ya dig? Sorry I’m hatin, yo.
2. He is clearly very pleased with his discovery that he could use the word “hibernating” to mean “really slept on” (he had the italics in there). Sorry, “hibernatin’”. Next he’ll just start dropping “natin” into columns or something.
3. It’s now acceptable to just take words that are never abbreviated and just abbreviate them without a period or anything. Example being competition just becomes comp. Scoop Jackson is a whole ‘nother breed of ter writers.
4. No fantasy hoop dudes were “hibernatin’” on John Salmons and Ben Gordon.
5. Fantasy leagues generally end with the end of the regular season, so even if people were sleeping on your boy, it wouldn’t matter.
6. Remember last year Scoop said that the Suns were pretty much guaranteed a finals spot because they traded for Big and he’s made the finals in his 3 previous stops in the NBA? I do. Okay that has nothing to do with this post.

Scoop also said that Tony Parker was the best point guard in the NBA and pointed to the fact that he’s won a finals MVP and Chris Paul hasn’t made a finals yet. Yup. It’s that simple folks.

Bill Simmons recently wrote a column about how the Bulls – Celtics playoff series is awesome and stuff, which included this sentence.

They [the Celtics and Bulls] have veteran crowds that know how to affect games and make them a little more fun to watch.

Yeah, take that San Antonio. You too, Los Angeles. In Boston and Chicago, we actually affect the games that we watch. We’re blue collar. We’re a part of the action. We have veteran crowds. Fact: The crowds in Los Angeles skipped college and are only in their second year of following the NBA. The crowd in New Orleans had an average age of 7. No surprise they aren’t in the playoffs any more. We direct the outcome in Chicago and Boston. It is our will, passion, and intensity as basketball fans that make our teams win. You douchebags can come late (LA) and stare at the jumbotron (which they probably do in like, Miami, because those people are stupid and are probably day dreaming about Gloria Estefan and Dan Marino fucking the whole time anyway). In Boston and Chicago, we’ll just keeping living basketball history, thank you.

You have to love any series in which Ben Gordon finally realizes his destiny as a playoff killer. As a Celtics fan, I'm terrified. As a basketball fan, I'm titillated. But it was always meant to be. Even if comparisons to Vinnie "Microwave" Johnson make more sense on paper, I'd liken him more to a shorter Andrew Toney.

Saying that Ben Gordon is a shorter Andrew Toney is like saying that Shaquille O’Neal is a shorter Wilt Chamberlain. They are, like, the same fucking height. Maybe ½ to 1 inch difference, which doesn’t matter unless you have freakish Sam Perkins-like arms. I know I know…Toney may actually be slightly taller…but it’s not like a 4 inch difference or something that would impact the way they play.

Last night I watched the Sportscenter recap of the great Bulls-Celtics game 6 matchup. Jalen Rose described Ray Allen’s game (51 points) as being “heroic”. Um, okay. A little strong, but it was an awesome game and he played great. I’ll go with that. Then about 20 seconds later the anchor had the following back and forth with Rose:

Anchor (I forget): How bad does Kevin Garnett want to be out there?

Jalen Rose: Oh…Heroically!

Yeahhhhh.. Sure. I like it, that’s my new word for “really”. I want Jemele Hill to write a real column that I can puke on heroically bad.

On WEEI this morning (Boston radio), they were talking about the play of Glen Davis in this series and specifically about the matchups with Chicago. Dennis and or Callahan pegged his height at 6’6” or even 6’5”. After the 6'5" comment, John Meter-Perel chimed in with “at most”. He’s listed at 6’9”. Why is this so hard? Some analysts talk about height like they are trying to quantify the players “heart” or something.

One day I’ll read a bad column and maybe comment on it.

Some Hall of Fame Talk

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:26:00 +0000

Phil Arvia has posted his Hall of Fame ballot here. While I’m not going to just post/critique columns that support guys that I don’t support, I am particularly interested for the logic that drives the voter’s actions. Which is why, to me, Arvia’s support for Harold Baines was interesting:

Harold Baines: When he retired, he was the greatest DH ever. He didn't invent the position, he just defined it.

First…when he retired how many players were there that were best known for being DHs?

Next, let’s be clear here; the position that Baines defined was the position of….not having a mother fucking position. If the best thing for your team is for you to not own a glove, then to me your bat better be a lot better than Harold Baines’ was to achieve baseball’s supposedly highest honor. This is a nonsensical reason for voting for someone.

Let’s review what Harold Baines did well. It wasn’t fielding, because he DH’d most of the time. Speed? Try 34 career stolen bases. Power? He never hit at least 30 homers in a season. Average? .289 career…..313 was his highest single season average. He must have walked a lot you say? Never more than 73 times in a season. You want traditional crappy stats like RBI and Runs? He topped 100 RBI 3 times with a high of 113. His career high in Runs is 89.

Now, to me, a player in Baines’ era should have a nice run of years with numbers close to .313/29/113/89 w/ 73 BBs to be consider in the Hall discussion. That’s pretty much what you’re looking at with more heavily debated guys like Rice, Parker, Murphy and Dawson. THOSE WERE HIS SINGLE SEASON HIGHS! Their run of peak years destroy those of Baines. Baines had a couple of very good years, and was a consistent, good hitter.

Now, Joe Capozzi published his ballot this week as well. He employed the “if player X has better counting totals than player Y, then how can you leave player X out!” strategy in supporting Andre Dawson. This can be a somewhat useful tool using players who played roughly the same amount of time in similar positions and especially in the same era. Who does Joe compare Andre Dawson to?

Joe Dimaggio.

Sounds like a good comparison, right?

But I'm bothered by the prospect of excluding someone like Andre Dawson, who played on bad knees for struggling teams and still had more hits (2,774), more home runs (438) and more RBI (1,591) than Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio (2,214, 361, 1,537).

Let me say this very slowly.

A writer is making an argument for Andre Dawson by linking his name, via a comparison, to a sure-fire no-brainer all-time great like Joe Dimaggio.

He has cherry picked Dimaggio because Dawson’s counting stats were better.

Joe Dimaggio played for 13 seasons. He played in 1,736 games. He missed 3 prime years due to war service.

Andre Dawson played in 21 seasons, logging 2,627 games.

So. That doesn’t look right, does it?

In 891 more games, Dawson had 560 more hits, 77 more home runs, and 54 more RBI (using Joe’s stats), than Dimaggio. At the rate that Dimaggio had at-bats/game, had he played as many games as Dawson he would have needed to hit .160 in his next 891 games to have as many hits as Dawson. To catch Dawson in HR’s he could have lowered his HR run rate from once every 18 at-bats to once every 46 at-bats. So if Joe Dimaggio had gone from being Joe Dimaggio over his first 1,736 games and then turned into one of the worst hitters in MLB history over his next 891 games, he would had roughly the same counting totals as Dawson.

Do we all see the danger with counting stats and comparables now?

I guess one thing you could say is that Dawson seemed to keep pace with Dimaggio when it came to getting hits. But you know the problem with that right? Dawson never walked. Dimaggio had a career OBP of .398 (OPS+ of 155). Dawson comes in at paltry .323 and an underwhelming OPS+ 119. I think Joe Posnanski recently said every OF in the HOF has an OBP at least 20 points higher than Dawson.

And I don’t want to hear about how no one cared about walks in the 80’s. Walk rates have been virtually the same for decades.

Easterbrook Again Makes Meaningless, Incorrect Assertion

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:25:00 +0000

Check out this post for a comment from last week's TMQ regarding Drew Brees potentially breaking Dan Marino's single season passing yards record.

Below is an excerpt from this week's TMQ:

• The football gods did not want Drew Brees to break Dan Marino's single-season passing yards record -- because that record was set in a Miami playoff year when the yards were needed, whereas Brees' breaking the record for the eliminated Saints would have been a stunt.

It’s an odd little swipe at Brees, attempting to discredit the yards he threw for this year as less important than the yards that Marino threw for in a 14-2 Dolphins season, when they cruised into the playoffs. By Easterbrook’s rationale, all of Tom Brady’s yards last year were needed, as the Patriots were in a playoff year. Gregg would never say that, right?

Also, this football gods thing….is tired.

Easterbrook Just Makes Shit Up

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 22:25:00 +0000

Don’t ask me why I’m breaking such a long hiatus to write this post, but this week’s TMQ includes this line in reference to the possibility that Drew Brees could break Dan Marino’s single season passing yards record:

In this case, if Brees succeeds, it will be essentially a stunt, given the finale game has no meaning to the eliminated Saints. Marino's record year came as the Dolphins reached the Super Bowl -- those were all yards the team needed to win pressure games.

The 1984 Dolphins finished 14-2. In second place in the AFC East were the Patriots at 7-9. The Dolphins were 12-2 when Marino threw for 404 and 340 yards in the last two games.

So, Greggggg, how exactly were “all” those yards needed to win “pressure” games?

New Orleans is 8-7. Maybe Brees will rack up yards because he’s a competitor who wants to win? Maybe they want to finish above .500? Maybe they are psyched up to play a good Carolina team with a good passing defense?

Nope, says Gregg, it’ll be a “stunt”.

I wasn’t going to post about this, as I mentioned it instead in the reader comments over at FireJayMariotti, but this was in TMQ a few weeks ago and it is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read from Easterbrook:

Trailing Cleveland 6-0, Tennessee went for it on fourth-and-1 on the Browns' 28 and got a touchdown; the Titans won. (Tennessee cleverly threw to blocking back Ahmard Hall, who lost a fumble on fourth-and-1 earlier in the year; knowing that, Cleveland totally ignored Hall.)

Do you really think that Cleveland “totally ignored” Hall by design? If they did, do you think it’s BECAUSE EARLIER THIS YEAR HALL HAD A FUMBLE THAT HAPPENED TO BE A FOURTH DOWN PLAY????

I do not. I think that’s asinine.

Scott Miller – Digging up the Dirt

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 02:48:00 +0000

Okay okay I’m about to finish my paragraph supporting Albert Pujols for MVP. I needs to hammer this baby home with that final sentence that summarizes exactly how MVP-like Pujols was this year. Should I drag out numbers? No, numbers don’t tell the story. Perhaps recall an at-bat, or a play? Too singular. Lots of people have great plays. I’ve got it, a quote! Yes, a quote from a highly respected baseball man! A broadcaster or writer? A current player like Greg Maddux? A former player? A hall of famer like Nolan Ryan or something? I’ve got it, a GM! People are really intrigued by GMs!

Hey, Kevin Towers, tell me what you think of Albert Pujols!

"Pujols is a frickin' baseball player," Padres general manager Kevin Towers says.

Frickin’? Is he trying to be Dr. Evil? Oh well. Almost done.

Amen.

Done.

Jon Heyman More Valuable than Tom Verducci, but Verducci Better

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:18:00 +0000

There’s nothing that draws out crazy failures in logic like MVP and CY Young voting. I just stumbled onto CNNSI and checked out Tom Verducci and Jon Heyman’s picks, and there’s a whole lotta wrong to be discussed. To be honest, I didn’t follow baseball as much this year as I have in prior years. I had a really busy summer at work and personally. It’s also pretty late and I’m tired. So instead of doing a bunch of research and using numbers to dissect their picks, which strike me as odd, I’ll just try to approach it more high level, with some basic logic.

First, Verducci, who is generally decent. Unlike Heyman, who must have incriminating pictures of someone important at SI.

NL MVP

1. Albert Pujols
2. Lance Berkman
3. Ryan Howard
4. Ryan Braun
5. Manny Ramirez
6. Brad Lidge
7. CC Sabathia
8. David Wright
9. Johan Santana
10. Hanley Ramirez

The guy is just posting his opinion, so just because I think Chase Utley should be on the ballot and he doesn’t have him, I’m not going to throw a fit. But Manny Ramirez played in 53 games. Brad Lidge had a great year. He threw 70 innings with a 1.95 ERA. But I have a fundamental problem with closers being MVP’s unless they are historically awesome.

But here’s my bigger problem. Based on the above list, how is Verducci’s CY ballot not:
Lidge
Sabathia
Santana

?

Here it is:

NL Cy Young

1. Tim Lincecum
2. Johan Santana
3. Brandon Webb

Verducci tells us the CY is meant to honor the best pitcher in the league, and correctly says that the pitcher with the most wins isn’t necessarily that pitcher. But how the fuck isn’t the best pitcher more valuable than the second best pitcher? How is the most valuable pitcher not one of the 3 best pitchers? And how is the best starter not more valuable than 2 other starters? In my mind, any attempt to reconcile this position is a failure to understand the singular nature of baseball performances. It’s not Lincecum’s fault the Giants suck. He can’t control what the other 4 pitchers do, or what the hitters do.

Similarly, Verducci had Francisco Rodriguez ninth as the most valuable pitcher in the AL, but not among the top 3 pitchers. Aren’t the pitchers who pitch better more valuable?

Now to Jon Heyman.

NL MVP

1. Manny Ramirez, Dodgers. The savant saved the storied franchise, slugging .743 and lifting the Dodger dogs to the NL West title.

Okay, but 53 games? Even if you include all his games in Boston, Pujols still had 147 Runs Created vs. Ramirez’s 134. Ramirez RC number in the NL was 60.9. The Dodgers won the NL West because the NL West sucked. If they were in the NL East, and the Mets were in the NL West, Heyman’s first 4 players are Mets. Why is this so hard?

2. CC Sabathia, Brewers. Carried them with three straight outings on three days' rest, and oh yes, had a league-leading seven complete games.

It’s just a philosophical difference here on Ramirez and Sabathia that’s not worth debating further. Sabathia is more defensible (to be on the Cy ballot), to me. For the rest of them, I’ll just show the list without the explanations because I have the same point that I had with Verducci.

3. Ryan Howard, Phillies.
4. Brad Lidge, Phillies.
5. Albert Pujols, Cardinals.

Pujols just finished his best season. He posted the best OPS+ in baseball (190) since Barry Bonds in 2004. The best by someone not named Bonds in the NL since Sammy Sosa in 2001 (64 homers, .437 OBP). Manny Ramirez’s (highest full season OPS+ was 186 in 2000) was higher in his 53 games in LA. I’m going with the guy who played 148 games in the NL.

6. Ryan Braun, Brewers.
7. Johan Santana, Mets.
8. Carlos Delgado, Mets.
9. Chase Utley, Phillies.
10. Lance Berkman, Astros.

So his CY ballot must be Sabathia, Lidge, Santana?

NL Cy Young

1. Santana. Gets edge over CC for ERA title and for being in the NL all year.

But, in the MVP race…….you had….Sabathia SECOND, and said you could easily have flipped him with Ramirez! Why….here…does being the NL all year mean more??

2. Sabathia. Sheer second-half dominance.

What about the first half? Does that count?

3. Lidge. Though tough to leave out Webb and especially Lincecum (18-5, with a league-leading 265 strikeouts) in this year with at least five deserving candidates.

NL Cy Old: Tom Gorzelanny. Ugliest numbers ever, including a demonic 6.66 ERA.

Ugliest ever? Cy Old is lame and doesn't make sense. Wouldn't the Cy Old be....like.....the best old pitcher?

AL MVP

1. Francisco Rodriguez, Angels. An alltime great season with a record 62 saves.

Ladies and gentleman, your AL MVP…..the 4th best closer in the league!

2. Carlos Quentin, White Sox.
3. Dustin Pedroia, Red Sox.
4. Justin Morneau, Twins.
5. Kevin Youkilis, Red Sox.
6. Joe Nathan, Twins.
7. Joe Mauer, Twins.
8. Jermaine Dye, White Sox.
9. Josh Hamilton, Rangers.
10. Evan Longoria, Rays.

Apparently Grady Sizemore and Alex Rodriguez were not as valuable as any of these 10 players because the other players on their teams did not play as well as the other players on the above teams.

Okay, so his Cy Young ballot must start with Rodriguez and Nathan?

OF COURSE NOT.

AL Cy Young

1. Cliff Lee, Indians.
2. Roy Halladay, Blue Jays.
3. Francisco Rodriguez.

I know that Heyman thinks this makes total sense and that I'm just a geek and he would say that I don’t understand baseball and pennant races and cracker jack and locker rooms and sweat, but this is a giant failure to exercise defensible logic.

I suppose Verducci and Heyman feel that good closers are very valuable, but they aren't necessarily worthy of being deemed the best pitchers, but how can Heyman defend having two starters 1 order in the MVP balloting (Sabathia / Santana) with good separation between them, but then have the order reversed in the CY balloting?

Hollywood VORP

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:15:00 +0000

Forbes magazine recently posted an annual review of the most overpaid movie stars. I’ve seen this linked on Yahoo, MSNBC, and various other places on the Internet. While I see some commentary about the list, everyone seems to take it at face value.

It’s extremely difficult to judge the actual value a movie star has on a movie, because you can’t separate the star power of the actor from the actual quality/marketing/buzz of the movie, and some combination of these things is what drives profits. To me, the true value of Russell Crowe is the dollar value of profit that he adds to a movies profit over what another actor would contribute in the same movie (released at the same time, same script, etc.). I think Forbes has a big flaw in their analysis, which I’ll try to illustrate, because they entirely focus on the ratio of the profit to the actor’s salary.

Forbes’ list is derived from a “payback” figure they compute to determine how fairly paid the star is in relation to studio profits. Below is the gist of how the figure was computed:

To calculate our payback figures, we took half of each film's worldwide box office (to roughly approximate the studio's cut of each ticket). Then we added the first three months of DVD revenues and subtracted the budget to derive the film's gross income. After that, the actor's total compensation (upfront pay plus any money earned from sharing in the film's profits) was divided into the gross income to get the actor's payback figure for the film. The payback for the last three movies for each actor was averaged to calculate ultimate payback. We deliberately used gross income rather than net income in our analysis because the latter figure is so easily manipulated by studio accountants, with marketing expenses treated differently for almost every film.

So it’s obviously more of a ball-park calculation, but, still, it sounds like a lot of thought went into the analysis.

Here’s an excerpt from the results:

Our list of the top 10 overpaid celebrities is rife with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Tom Cruise ranks third with a $4 return for every dollar he was paid mostly because of last year's stinker "Lions for Lambs," which Cruise's studio, United Artists, produced. For every dollar the star earned the film returned only $1.88.

That the list is rife with the biggest names in Hollywood should be obvious, since the analysis focused on stars whose average fee was over $5 million and, more importantly, it severly penalizes big paydays, even if they are justified.

Cameron Diaz may be the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, with $50 million in income between June 2006 and June 2007, but studios might want to question whether she's worth the money. Her films returned a lowly $4 for every dollar Diaz earned.

The main problem is that their value is being distorted by only focusing on how much the movie’s gross income was in proportion to the actor’s compensation. They should focus on the impact the star had on the dollar value of the profit, not the percentage.

Here’s a very extreme scenario to prove my point:

Let’s say Tom Cruise is compensated $1 billion for his role in “The Little Albino That Could: The David Eckstein Story”, which we’ll just call “the movie”. The movie has a budget of $1.1 billion, including Cruise’s comp – so $100 million of non-Cruise budgetary costs. The movie then has gross receipts of $4 billion (the ½ box office + DVD sales). $4 billion less $1.1 billion is $2.9 billion of “gross income” as defined above. $2.9 billion divided by $1 billion is a “payback” of a mere $2.90 for every dollar that Cruise earned.

Now let’s say that David Eckstein stars in the movie, and is paid $5 million for his efforts. This is the same script, same director, same everything else except lead actor. David Eckstein grits out a tough movie, but ultimately doesn’t have the box office pop that Tom Cruise does. The movie grosses a highly respectable total (ludicrously high for a movie staring David Eckstein) of $300 million. The budget is now $105 million, leaving “gross income” of $195 million. The movie’s “payback” is a kickass $39.00 for every dollar earned by Eckstein.

$39.00 would make Eckstein a world class movie value and underpaid in the eyes of Forbes. Cruise would be way overpaid at $2.90.

So if you own a studio, would you rather make $2.9 billion in the first scenario or $195 million (that’s 93% less) in the second? I’ve rigged the analysis to look ludicrous to prove a point.

Further exacerbating the flaws in this analysis is the fact that top flight movie-stars typically earn a portion of the profits (as Forbes notes above). Movie accounting is terribly complex and I don’t have the requisite industry knowledge to really be thorough here (or the time to do the research), but I suspect what further skews these results is the fact that top stars often get a piece of the profits once the movie is in the black, which narrows the proportional gap between the movie’s profits and their pay….but only because the movie was wildly profitable, partly because of the star.

Let’s run through an example to show how Forbes’ analysis is distortive:

Again take two exact same movies and budgets – more realistic numbers (but still made-up and probably retarded). Use a budget of $50 million, except for lead actor’s pay. Eckstein and Cruise both agree to a $5 million base salary, except Cruise is a big star, is also acting as a Producer and will be heavily promoting the movie. So he is going to get 30% of the profits (in exchange for taking such a low base, for him) after the movie has gross receipts (the ½ tickets + DVD’s) of $100 million – to cover marketing and other ancillary costs that must be recouped by the studio on top of the budget. If the movie makes $100 million, then the "payback" for both Cruise and Eckstein would be $9.00. But a movie that makes $100 million with David Eckstein as its big star might make $300 million with Cruise, which is why he’d command a share of the profits. In my model, at $300 million, Cruise would take home $65 million. Forbes would say that his “payback” is only $2.85 per dollar earned. In their eyes, Cruise is 3 times more overpaid than Eckstein, because Eckstein’s pay as a percentage of gross profit is much less. But Cruise’s movie had “gross income” as defined by Forbes of $185 million compared to Eckstein’s $45 million. He only made more money because his movie generated more.

How is Cruise overpaid in relation to Eckstein in that scenario? I think the studio would happily take the extra $145 million. The only risk to the studio was that the movie was so good that Eckstein could have carried it to the same gross income (before 30% profit-share) as Cruise and the studio could have pocketed that profit-share money. I do realize how off these numbers are to reality, but the theory should hold.

I’m not saying Forbes’ method wouldn’t point out some overpaid stars, but I think it’s a terrible way to conclusively list them. In Forbes’ defense, I think they sort of realized the flaw in their logic and used the $5 million per picture floor in computing the pool of actors to review, which removes extreme outliers (if you paid me $.01, I could have a higher payback than any actor). But I have to think this can be done in a better way. The other glaring issue is that the movie may make no money for various reasons that have nothing to do with the ability of its star to generate box office receipts. The movie, not the star, could just be terrible – that doesn’t mean the star is overpaid.

Forbes had this revelation later:

In general, actors who earned under $10 million per picture did better on our list.

This is not surprising. If you pay Jennifer Love Hewitt $5 million and Angelina Jolie $15 million, the Jolie movie’s gross income doesn’t need to be triple Hewitt’s to justify the cost, it just needs to be $10,000,001 higher. Forbes would require Jolie to generate three times the income, and that makes no sense. There’s no variable costs tied to Jolie that would justify that extra profit burden on her.

So how should Forbes have modeled the calculation to be more reflective of the actual return on the actor’s value? Is there some way to measure a Hollywood equivalent of baseball’s VORP? VORA - Value Over Replacement Actor...tied to movie profitability? There probably is, but it would take someone with intimate knowledge of Hollywood’s accounting/compensation practices and someone much smarter than me to build that model.

Peter King: Hotelnerdness

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 03:42:00 +0000

From this week's Monday Morning Quarterback.

Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Week

Sometimes I forget the things that annoy me on the road, and Saturday, at an NBC rehearsal for the 2008 TV season, Bob Costas reminded me of one.

At hotels now -- and this has been happening for four or five years -- when you order room service, the male or female waiter who comes to the door always asks: "May I come in?''

I’m not as old as Peter “skunk stripe” King or Bob “I look like a mini-Luke Skywalker….which is hard because Mark Hamill is small” Costas, but I don’t think I’ve ever had room service just barge into the room without knocking or anything. Nor do I want them to.

Which prompted Costas, coming off a month in a hotel in Beijing, to say: "May I come in?! No! I'll eat the meal in the hallway! What do you mean, 'May I come in?' ''

Good point, Bobby.

No, no it’s not. See, maybe the hotel staff is acting professional because they don’t want to walk in on Bob Costas jerking off (to his interview with Nastia Luikin) or taking a dump (to his interview with Michael Phelps).

Seriously, hotel staff ...asking if it's okay for them to come in….is a nuisance?

Mike Freeman Demands Immediate Satisfaction

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:51:00 +0000

Remember the Olympics? Yeah, the Olympics…the collection of athletic contests that ended Sunday. Remember Usain Bolt, that fast guy? Mike Freeman thinks it’s the biggest joke in sports that he’s not in talks with an NFL team as of Wednesday. 3 days after the Olympics ended. Biggest joke in sports. By the way, I'm going to be lazy and assume that Bolt has not played much football. If that's wrong, well Freeman should have brought it up.

Yeah, so there’s a lot of hyperbole on the way.

Why is NFL so slow to go after lightning-fast Bolt?

I know right, it’s been 3 fucking days! Why isn’t Bolt lining up in practice right NOW! Also, matching lightning with “Bolt”? Friggin’ brilliant.

The National Football League is run by smart and hyper-successful people. Well, except for the Cincinnati Bengals. Other than the team that re-signs misdemeanor generator Chris Henry, the league is brilliantly engineered -- which is why it's so puzzling no team has made a strong play for Olympic speed demon Usain Bolt.

Has he ever played a down of organized football? Has he ever run in pads? Has he ever been tackled? Do Sprinters automatically have great hands? Do Sprinters have to memorize inch-thick playbooks? Could he be great? Sure. Is he such a sure thing that NFL teams should have made a move 3 days after the Olympics ended?

Bolt would instantly be the fastest person in the sport, yet teams are signing retread jerks at wide receiver like Henry, whose buffoonery has embarrassed an entire city.

I’m dizzy trying to connect these dots. I bet Mike Freeman every penny I have that Chris Henry is a more valuable wide receiver than Usain Bolt right now. Also, I suspect that Cincinattionians or whatever are not personally embarrassed by Chris Henry.

Maybe Bolt will say he's not interested. Well, make him interested. Make him an offer he can't refuse. Throw millions of dollars and some Black Uhuru CDs at him.

Yeah! Fuck the salary cap! Give millions of dollars to a guy who we don’t know has ever actually caught a football! This is smart business.

At the very least try to get him into the NFL. That's my problem; I've spoke to NFL team officials over the past few days and there is no indication a team is even trying to convince Bolt to play football.

I know right, and the Olympics have been over for days! Don’t these teams want to win?

The fact no one has attempted is one of the biggest jokes in all of sports.

Can I nominate this for Hyperbole of the Year?

When Bolt runs, time moves backward. His 40-yard dash time is in milliseconds. Bolt is the only thing in the known universe that can escape the gravitational pull of a black hole.

"I'm not so sure I can beat him," says a speeding bullet.

He’s fast, we get it. This is intentional hyperbole, so this doesn’t count.

If someone could teach Bolt to catch the football and absorb punishment, he would instantly become one of the top three most dangerous weapons in the NFL. Put him with the right quarterback and he'd possibly be the most lethal.

Instantly top 3? Am I the only one who thinks this is nuts?

A guy who is 22 years old, 6-foot-5 and 190 pounds, and might run a sub-4.2 40-yard dash? You tell me what his potential would be.

This “guy”, he’s never played organized football right?

Please read carefully. This isn't to say Bolt is guaranteed NFL success. But why aren't some of the wealthier owners known to take chances, like Jerry Jones, throwing cash at this guy?

Salary caps? They are busy paying attention to guys who actually play football, perhaps?

History might indeed be against Bolt succeeding on the NFL level. Track stars don't have a long NFL pedigree. So what? That doesn't mean Bolt can't do it.

Yeah – so what? Throw millions at him! That’ll fix that little bit of history!

It might not work.

Then why is the non-pursuit “the biggest joke in all of sports”??????????

But these five reasons explain why and how it could:

1. Bob Hayes. Bolt and Hayes have almost identical backgrounds. Hayes set world records at the 1964 Olympics and then was signed by the Cowboys with limited football experience. (Hayes should be in the Hall of Fame, but anti-Cowboys sentiment among voters has kept him out.)

Good point. Plus, professional football has hardly changed since the 1960’s!

Actually, wait, there’s another small difference….Bob Hayes played college football. Relevant, right? Also, there’s been a bunch of sprinters who failed.

This is from the SI Vault:

Hayes differed from the sprinters who would follow him into and out of the NFL, because he was not merely a sprinter who happened to play football. He was, as he liked to put it, "a football player first, then a runner." There were lots of fast guys on Jake Gaither's Florida A&M squad, and he'd shuffle them in and out, align them in different formations. Hayes was listed as a halfback, but he'd line up all over the place—on the wing, in the slot, wherever he was needed.

People have said that his college career was only so-so, but he was a starter at wide receiver in the 1965 College All-Star Game, and the quarterback who started that game for his team, Roger Staubach, would, in the years that followed, go on to launch many deep strikes to Hayesfor the Cowboys.

So that’s a pretty shitty example.

2. The biggest reason why Bolt wouldn't work is the NFL might not be able to afford him. Bolt will make a ridiculous amount of endorsement money in the coming months. (Bolt endorses Porsche, Bolt endorses Nike, Bolt makes a commercial for a speedy pregnancy test.)

Yeah, because track stars make way more than NFL players.

No, really….here’s SI’s “Fortunate 50” – please count the track stars and football players. Something tells me they could make that the “fortunate 500” before we see a track star on there. Admittedly, it's just US athletes, and maybe track stars make a ton of money overseas. But still, I would bet that the NFL brings more riches.

What a team says to Bolt is this: How much more money do you think you'd make if you were a two-sport star?

But what they should say first is….. "have you ever caught a football?”

Then they'd educate Bolt about Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson. Sanders played a nine-year, part-time MLB career while playing football. Why can't Bolt do something similar?

Ahhh Deion and Bo…..these are two athletes who were freakishly fast, but also had the athletic ability to hit a 95 MPH baseball and agility to maneuver through huge, fast athletes, in full pads, with ease.

So far we know that Bolt can run straight, on a track. Do you think it’s safe to assume Bolt has the variety of athletic skills that Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson had? I’d say not.

Play to his ego -- and if you don't think he has a fat ego, rewind the end of that gold medal race when he taunted fellow runners after activating the second stage of his Saturn V rocket boosters.

Bolt could race around the world, make his money, and then play in NFL games. They have these things called airplanes. Some have props, some have jets. He can hop on one.

That’s true, since the NFL is soooo easy. Plus he wouldn't be at all tired from sprinting against world class athletes. He wouldn’t need to practice or anything. Those off-season workouts that Jerry Rice put himself through? Waste of time.

3. His size. Remember, Bolt is a sturdy 6-5 and 190 pounds. This doesn't mean he's ready to take a hit from Bob Sanders (who the hell is?) but a team can slowly get Bolt accustomed to physical contact the way Dallas did with Hayes.

Also, the way Hayes got accustomed to physical contact when he was playing football in college.

4. Jerry Rice. Hire Rice as a consultant to work with Bolt. Or Michael Irvin or even Deion Sanders to teach him about the chess game defensive backs play with wideouts. Just make sure Rice doesn't teach Bolt how to dance or Irvin doesn't teach him about drug paraphernalia.

Ahar har har.

So after you dump millions and millions of dollars on Bolt, go hire some high price consultants so that he can learn a playbook.

WHY HASN’T THIS HAPPENED YET? IT’S BEEN 3 DAYS….THIS IS THE BIGGEST JOKE EVER!

5. This quote from Scouts Inc.'s Jeremy Green to ESPN says it all: "We all go to the combine every year to look at receivers who are 5-11 and run a 4.7 40. Why not this kid? I could see it."

It's definitely a long shot and tough sell to Bolt and it's likely Bolt might state he's not interested. He grew up in Jamaica and might care less about professional football.

He might be more focused on, I don’t know…sprinting?

You won't know until you give it a chance. If he says no way, ask again. If he says no after that, ask once more. Do what it takes to get him on a football field.

Okay, fine….you want to see Bolt play football. Me too….sort of. By why all the hyperbole? Why should anyone take Mike Freeman seriously when he writes garbage like this?

You Can Not Fool the TMQ

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 01:48:00 +0000

I’m not a batman geek. I’ve seen The Dark Night, and I liked it, but I don’t recall the details all that well. That shouldn’t overcome the general point of this post, which is that Gregg Easterbrook is a fucking killjoy who doesn’t understand when you’re supposed to take your thinking cap off and enjoy life for 2 ½ hours….and I’m not talking about pretending to be turned on by cheerleaders. There’s a difference between picking on unrealities in a Batman movie and in a movie that intends to be realistic despite the unrealistic premise, like Point Break or Speed (or any Keanu Reeves between Bill & Ted’s and The Matrix).

The latest Batman installment is a hit, and well-made from a cinematography standpoint, but the Joker character was unrealism carried to an extreme, even by Hollywood's low standards. The Joker has hundreds of obedient, superefficient henchmen, including surgeons and high-ranking police officers, who serve him without question -- even though they know he murders his own henchmen.

He is a criminal mastermind. They have a lot of henchmen. It’s a fictional movie based on a fucking comic book character.

The Joker knows things no one could possibly know, such as what street the police van carrying Harvey Dent will turn down during a wild chase. (He has henchmen positioned on that street, one of dozens the van might have turned down).

Wasn’t there a tractor trailer rigged to block the alternative path, so that they were more likely to go down the street they went down? I may be confusing scenes here. I also thought that the whole exercise of carrying Dent in the police van was a ploy to try to draw the Joker out, so they weren’t trying to be secretive.

Also, he’s a criminal mastermind in a fictional movie.

The Joker can get poison into the police commissioner's private office without anyone suspecting anything.

Well, I think he probably broke in, or had someone on the inside break in. I don’t think he just walked in during the day and put the poison in the bottle and no one suspected anything.

He was able to break in because he’s a criminal mastermind in a fictional movie, and they do things like that.

City officials make a sudden decision to load several hundred people into ferries; in just a few hours, Joker is able to place thousands of pounds of explosives aboard the ferries without anyone noticing, plus rig devices to take over the ferries' engines.

I think a ten year old would have realized that he did this well in advance of the people getting on the ferries. Also, I thought they were put on ferries as part of an evacuation, masterminded by the criminal mastermind, the Joker? Man, my memory sucks.

Anyway, he’s a criminal mastermind, and those fuckers think ahead.

Joker is able to move thousands of pounds of explosives into Gotham General Hospital without anyone noticing.

How do you know that no one noticed? Maybe 20 people noticed and he killed them all. They do that, those criminal masterminds in fictional movies.

Positioning the explosives for the two giant-blast sequences in "The Dark Night" would have required large trucks and a front-loader carrying multiple heavy objects through places crawling with police officers without anyone noticing.

Um, what about the warehouses full of explosives used on Harvey and Rachel? Wasn’t THAT unlikely!

Answer, yes. But these are both examples of scenes orchestrated by a fictional character in a fictional movie about a billionaire playboy that dresses up like a bat.

Joker always knows exactly where everyone he wants to kill is in a huge city (how?);

Maybe he follows them? The people he wants to kill are, like, the most famous people in the city and they are frequently the target of media. I guess the Joker (criminal mastermind) finds them the same way that paparazzi find Britney Spears. I don’t think he “always” knows “exactly” where they are. He first finds Harvey Dent at a fundraiser thrown….for….Harvey Dent.

he's beaten to a pulp by Batman, yet just minutes later, easily overpowers a huge policeman;

He really wasn’t beaten up that much really, and that police officer was not huge and he looked about 50.

Joker steals from the mob, yet no mob soldier simply shoots him.

Because they are frightened of him, and also because he guarantees he can deliver things to them (the Asian dude, all their money back, Batman).

Joker has a bomb sneaked into the jail where he's being held -- somehow he knew in advance what cell he would be in! -- and it blasts open the jail wall, plus kills all the police officers standing around the Joker, but does not hurt him.

Wow! IT'S ALMOST LIKE HE'S NOT REAL!

Am I Crazy or This a Double Standard?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:58:00 +0000

I don’t know much about Alan Abrahamson, who is writing for NBCOlympics.com, but I’ll concede that he knows more about Track & Field and any related stories of doping than I do. But I have to object to the way he starts his column about Usain Bolt.

BEIJING -- Usain Bolt of Jamaica etched his name into history Wednesday as one of the Olympic greats, indeed one of the greatest athletes of all time.

What an asshole, right! Who does Abrahamson think he is?

Okay, that’s not the part I meant. On this point I have to agree. I was impressed when he so easily ran the fastest 100M ever, but I thought Michael Johnson’s record was relatively safe.

Assuming he's clean.

This is the second line in the column. Has anyone said this about Michael Phelps, even though swimming has historically been a doped up sport as well?

Aren’t we assuming everyone is clean? Isn’t that where we start? Does it have to be said?

And while no evidence of any sort has surfaced to suggest he's not, it's naïve not to wonder how Bolt is able to run so fast.

Just like one has to wonder how all the gold medalists in track and swimming can run and swim so fast. On the list of how he can run so fast, where is “he may be on drugs?” What about simply thinking that he’s a freak of nature/gifted, he trains really hard, and he’s in amazing physical condition….. these things take a back seat? This strikes me as a bit of a pessimistic way to start a column on the day Bolt broke the record when you've heard no evidence of any sort. Did Alan Abrahamson write about Michael Johnson with this skepticism in 1996 when Johnson ran 19.32? Usain Bolt runs 2/100ths of a second faster and you immediately default to ….hey, great race…..IF he’s clean.

If there’s no evidence of any sort, then why cast that shadow over his accomplishment?

Because no one in the history of human beings, from the first primitive soul desperately trying to outrun a saber-toothed tiger to the sophisticated races of our times, has ever run as fast as Usain Bolt has run at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Has anyone ever swum as fast as Michael Phelps? Does that mean he’s doped up?

"I am the best," Bolt declared late Wednesday night. "I proved it at the Olympics."

Yeah, if you weren’t on drugs, druggie. You can’t fool us.

The rest of the column was a perfectly fine summary of the race, and the background on Johnson’s record falling.

In this column about Phelps, Abrahamson’s title/header is as follows:

Built to succeed ... and assume his place in history

Mental strength, intense focus drove Phelps to epic 8-for-8 in Beijing

There is no mention of steroids or the possibility of Phelps' using PEDs. This is appropriate. Why put “assuming he’s clean” as the second line in a story about Bolt’s impressive feat?