f13.net

So I thought there ought to be a thread for shit that we might like to talk about but probably don't need a thread, e.g. golf, tennis, cycling, etc. 

My entry into this is a dude that is an unbelievable sprinter yet has no legs.  He uses prostheses on both legs but is beating folks that are "fully functional" in races. 

Pretty goddamned amazing (http://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/page/howard-110804/oscar-pistorius-meets-olympic-qualifying-standard-400-meter-time-renews-controversy-prosthetic-legs). 

I find it interesting that there is actual debate about whether the guy with no fucking legs has a competitive advantage.   :awesome_for_real:  I guess it is possible, in theory, but the dude has NO FUCKING LEGS. 

He has no knees/ calves. he's got thigs.  So it's not "no legs" so much as "incomplete legs."

I'd also agree he's got a competitive advantage.  He's more lightweight and his prosthesis have much more spring to them to help with propulsion. 

At this point he's a cyborg. If we're going to let cyborgs compete then bring it on.

Like I said, I suppose he could theoretically have an advantage.  I say let the guy compete anyway, regardless.  Heck, if a guy with nothing from the knee down can win against the big guys let him do it.  It would be great to watch. 

Presumably he could win if he got to drive a rocket powered wheelchair, too.

In other news, Real Madrid signs a 7 year old:

http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/news/_/id/6843531/real-madrid-signs-7-year-old-argentine-prospect-leonel-angel-coira

For fuck's sake.  That's just insane.  I wonder how long until  he is on the national team?

It's getting the kid a good education and out of poverty.  If it serves no other good, I'd say it's a wonderful thing. 

Without turning this into a political discussion, there is a lot more that Real Madrid could do to help kids out.  They have no other motives than selfish gambling.   

I know this.  Still, the kid is getting financial backing.  That's a start.  It's not much different than Hollywood bankrolling some kid and then dumping them like a rock when they hit puberty. 

I'm not sure he was actually in poverty, but I think the story is actually most interesting because of what it shows about how basically everywhere not the US handles the amateur/professional athlete split.

Well here we don't really have a split.  At least at OSU, Oregon, USC, etc. 

Whats the difference exactly?

Here we pretend that there's some sort of selfless nobility in amateur athletics, expect our young athletes to turn their noses up at crass materialism and ignore the money flying around them in huge amounts, and then act shocked when they get paid under the table. Everywhere else things are straightforward and relatively honest, it seems.

You're right, Ingmar.  I think that is a good point. 

So Tiger Woods is stinking it up at the PGA tour (http://espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&page=wojciechowski-110811&sportCat=golf).  This is a far out theory, but I think that it is highly likely that he was doping with HgH or steroids or something prior to this deal with his divorce.  Since then he has been perpetually hurt and out of shape (for him).  His game is completely off of normal, and every aspect is bad. 

I don't think it is all that far out at all, given his association with that Canadian doctor that was smuggling HGH around.

I had forgotten about that.  Yeah, he's guilty as hell. 

That would explain the length of injuries, perhaps, but I think more to the point he's lost the last vestiges of his focus and is in his mid 30's.  That's not exactly prime of life for someone who's been beating on their body athletically since age 2.  He's been on his way out for a while, this is just the pathetic, dribbling end.

Rumors about Tiger and hgh have been going around for a while.  Hell if a couple people are to be believed,  three quarters of the top 125 are on it.

It is pretty likely that he was but eventually that swing was going to do some damage to his body that the meds couldn't keep up with.  All that torque being generated on his left leg just put tremendous pressure on it.  It really all started a few years ago when an overzealous fan fell in front of him and hyperextended his knee.  Keeping that left foot to the ground over hundreds of thousands of swing took a toll on that achilles heal.  Three surguries later with relative little rest and that swing?  Recipe for disaster.  There's also the possibility that one of the surguries was botched.

The other thing is he's entering an age (early to mid 30's) where pro golfers tend to have some lulls in their careers - whether by injury, starting a family, divorce, other priorities, swing changes, etc.  He's kinda getting hit with injury, starting a family, divorce, swing change.  Basically hitting for cycle all at once.

Where Tiger doesn't have it anymore is the greens, which was his biggest strength, IMHO.  Dude was clutch all the time every time and a large part of that is mental and more so, confidence.  He still has the best stroke of anybody, he just isn't trusting it.  

Sad really.  Besides Philly Mick and Freddie Couples, there's nobody I enjoyed watching play more.   Tiger for the perfection, Phil for the drama, and Freddie for the liquid velvety smooth swing.

He needs a full year off to get his body back and get a swing grooved again.

Mettaworldpeace   :oh_i_see:

Fucking hell that Dan Wheldon wreck was nasty.   :ye_gods:

I'm surprised we don't see more of this stuff in Indycar.  The racers are so exposed.  

Here's a link to it  (http://msn.foxsports.com/motor/story/Indy-500-champion-Dan-Wheldon-killed-in-crash-at-Las-Vegas-101611)if you haven't seen it.

I'm surprised Wil Power wasn't killed too.  Crazy wreck.

There's still time.  I haven't heard much about the condition though.

I turned on the TV this afternoon and it was on ABC. One of the commentators was talking about the racetrack being one which was designed to allow cars to run flat out even through the turns.

Betting that this will end up being like what happened after Senna died in F-1. They will redesign the cars to slow them down a ton and they will re-design tracks to slow them down as much as they can. Though unlike F-1, IndyCar drives mainly on ovals so there is not a whole lot they can do to slow the track speed down.

And people will talk about "making the cars safer" but at this point, the only real way to make the cars considerably safer is to slow them down.

Here's a better view of the wreck (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMMHu8lnepM), from multiple angles. 

200+ racing deaths in the last decade? I'd say that considering it's pretty similar to the last decade that the safety precautions they've put in thus far are doing nothing.

Hey, it's safer than Iraq and Afghanistan.  What more do you want them to do? :why_so_serious:

I'm not a car racing fan, by any means but it's clear that these drivers should understand the risks.  I mean they're going 220 miles per hour in a fucking coffin on wheels, for fuck's sake.  I feel really bad for this guy because of his two little kids.  I hope he had good life insurance.

We understand the risk that NFL players may die 10 years earlier. That doesn't mean we should accept it willingly and ignore technological changes or rules changes to make a dent in fatality stats.

I don't have a problem with them monkeying with the rules to make it safer as long as it doesn't detract from the sport.  The participants always have an option to not play, however, and the risk for football isn't nearly as obvious as the risk to the Indycar drivers. 

Well, since the World Series was on last night - I watched the World Cup of Rugby final.  :grin:

Damn good game, 8 - 7, All Blacks over France, in New Zealand. Sometimes I forget how much high level rugby makes the "Major" sports athletes look like wusses.

Plus, I can't imagine a major North American sport ever allowing for something like this before the games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APxj503tjG8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APxj503tjG8)

That's pretty awesome.   :awesome_for_real:

If I had more time I would try to pay attention to rugby.

Shit, I forgot the final was yesterday. I love watching the All Blacks.

Pretty sure all of the games for the whole tourney are available online at the RWC site. www.rugbyworldcup.com

Their player is ridiculously advanced in the form of options etc.

Stupid NBA lockout is pissing me off.  Players screwing themselves financially just to protect their agents future earnings because they have no clue they already lost more money than what they are fighting about.  The average NBA career is barely over three years, you can't give up a fucking season over a 3% difference dumbasses.  And this bullshit about the owners "needing to be protected from themselves" needs to stop too, even with all the horrible contracts given out the past free agent season player salaries did not reach the 57% BRI they were supposed to get, the owners had to give a hefty check to the players association to make up the difference.

The NBA is still around? How cute...

That's the sad part, the NBA is more popular than it's ever been.

To me it's the rich, entitled owners versus the rich, entitled players.  The only winner is the agents, as you mentioned.  Come to think of it, it seems a lot like how our government runs these days.... :why_so_serious:

The thing that bugs me is that the owners are claiming to only have 8-10 teams that are making money. Don't blame that solely on the players - after all, who is agreeing to these contracts?

Fuckem all.  I  don't care if they play another game.  :oh_i_see:

Well, it's the NBA. Of course I don't give a shit if they ever play again.

But think of the kids being brought up in a world with no professional Basketball !! or overpriced shoe endorsements!!

I want them to play again, but only if they contract about 6 teams, reorganize into four team divisions per conference, and only put 8 teams in the playoffs.

I went over this.  The players get 57% of basketball revenue no matter what, the contracts only decide how that money is split.  Even with all those bad contracts the owners still had to pay extra at the end of last season because they didn't add up to 57%.  Obviously the blame is not on the players, the owners did agree to this setup on the last lockout, but they are trying to fix it now.

The last I read is that the owners were "losing" that much money through accounting tricks, such as counting players as capital depreciation.

That would have worked on a cotton planation back in the 1800s. Not so much today.

The owners refused to open their books to the public but they opened them to the players association.

I don't believe either side when it comes to moneytalk. 

Will any of this shit make the league competitive across the board again? I mean, it's been the same like half dozen teams that win everything every year for a looong ass time now.

In fact basically forever. The NBA, despite the huge number of playoff teams it allows, is the least competitive major sport in the country by FAR. The Lakers and Celtics combined have won over 50% of the NBA titles there have ever been. The Finals have had one or the other (or both) of those teams appear 40 times, out of only 64 (I think) seasons.

Not until they dump the lottery, no.

That might not even help that much.  The league is so money dependent and with only five players at a time you can make the finals with one really, really good player, e.g. Lebron. 

Uh, I think that might be more Lebron than anything else. No other team has done well relying so heavily on one player for a long time. The standard has always been two superstars and build around them.

LeBron didn't make it to the finals without Wade, so I don't think he really changes the math.

The only exceptions to that math I think are Mikan and Jordan when it comes to long dynastic runs.

Scottie Pippen won 6 rings too. There have been few exceptions to having two superstars: the Mavs and the Pistons off the top of my head. The Cavs and the 76ers also reached the finals having just one.

Ummm... 2007 begs to differ.

Yeah.  Lebron made the finals with a complete shit team.  So did Allen Iverson.  The Mavericks were a better team than either of those this year, but they really only have one true superstar in Nowitski.  In the NBA if one player gets really hot or is really good it can still carry a team.  Because of the way they structure their playoffs though it is tough for them to get over the hump and beat a team of superstars like the Lakers or Celtics typically have.

The nba playoffs are designed so that the better team wins, you can't just get hot in one game. The reason why the Cavs and 76ers lost was because they were clearly inferior teams. The Mavs have one superstar with very solid roleplayers, Nowitzki got plenty of help.

So does this argument hold for the NCAA tourney? I hate 7 game series in anything outside of baseball since there is a pitching and hitting rotation to consider... maybe even hockey to a point. But otherwise, I'd rather have a cinderella win out rather than the same stacked teams going at it every single god damn year of my life.

And it usually works.  In the NBA guys will have "hot" years though, so it isn't always perfect when you consider the playoffs as a whole. 

It wasn't just Nowistzky who carried the Mavs though, a lot of their roleplayers stepped up and played well even when Dirk struggled.  On the other side Lebron pulled his disappearing act and left a shorthanded team even worse off.

And it was glorious theatre to watch as Lebron continues to be the most over-rated star in the business.

Oh, is it time for this yearly discussion again?  :oh_i_see:

I think Lebron is a phenom, but the NBA screwed up and tried to fit the leader role on him when he might be best suited for a support role. Once the Heat figure that out, they might be deadly.

Hockey uses a large and long playoff system as well, but you have more then 5 teams winning championships.

I don't disagree that the nba has balancing issues, but it's definitely nothing to deal with having a singular superstar. Maybe it's ironic that we've switched from Superstars being capable of carrying crap teams to Lebron being overrated  :awesome_for_real:.

In the past 13 years 3 teams have come out of the West to play in the Finals: The Spurs, Mavs, and Lakers, and those teams have only lost 3 times. Those teams share a combination of being well-run and paying above the salary cap. Something needs to be done to break that stranglehold and I'm not sure what it is.

Also in regards to the NCAA, I don't watch it, but I think part of the experience is supposed to be that upsets are more likely?

I don't know what you're insinuating, but nothing ever gets rehashed around here.  It just doesn't happen.


Which game did he struggle in?  Was it the one where he had 21 points and 11 rebounds or the other one where he had 21 points and 11 rebounds?

Lebron will always be a rich man's Scottie Pippin.  He does everything Scottie did, only better.  Now he's just got to find himself an MJ to win the games. Maybe Wade is that guy.  I'm not super optimistic that his health will allow him to fill that role.

I'm okay with the only exception being a Laker!  Carry on.

If money is a problem, maybe they should institute a functional cap.

Looks like Hightower passed away (http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/7181905/coroner-bubba-smith-died-drug-intoxication).  It's sad to know that Bubba Smith will no longer be available for sequels.  It actually sounds like a little bit of a sad story.

(http://guymanningham.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/hightower-police-academy-bubba-smith-2.jpg)

Yeah, pretty sure we talked about it then  :oh_i_see:

It's a new article though, and I'm pretty sure folks around here aren't afraid to rehash, well, just about anything, right?

I don't know what you could possibly mean by that!



Trammel, sb.exe

Jerry Sandusky is a pig (http://msn.foxsports.com/collegefootball/story/jerry-sandusky-penn-state-football-sexual-abuse-scandal-tim-curly-gary-schultz-how-could-administration-let-it-happen110511).  Everyone at Penn St that even had an inkling of is, especially Joe Pa, should go down in flames. 

I agree with ya, but JoePa is untouchable. Besides, I doubt Paterno had any idea this was going on and if he was made aware of it, he would have jumped on it as soon as he knew. But that is just my opinion on JoePa.

It says in the article that Joe Pa knew exactly what was going on and reported it to the AD.  If he was such an upstanding guy he would have demanded that something more be done about it, i.e. fired Sandusky. 

Grad assistant caught the guy raping a 10 year old, and left.

I can't even imagine WTF was going through his head. He didn't call the cops, he didn't do anything but tell the head coach? Then he gets promoted?

The FUCK!?!

Sandusky wasn't working for Paterno at the time. The incident Paterno reported was in 2002, Sandusky retired in 1999. He was on site as part of some football camp or something I think?

Which is not to say there aren't about 400 very hard questions that Paterno et. al. shouldn't be answering.

Over a pit of glowing coals.

Dear lord, the more I read on this subject, the more and more I can't possibly believe JoePa can continue coaching after this year.

Penn State cancels Joe Pa's press conference (http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7207730/penn-state-nittany-lions-call-joe-paterno-news-conference).  It looks like he may not be coaching there. Something serious is afoot if this is the case, and it suggests to me that the feds may be looking more intently at Paterno's involvement.


More evidence that Joe Pa is gone (http://tracking.si.com/2011/11/08/report-penn-state-said-to-be-planning-paternos-exit/?sct=hp_t11_a2&eref=sihp).  Penn State planning his exit after this year.

New York Times chiming in (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/sports/ncaafootball/penn-state-said-to-be-planning-paternos-exit.html?_r=2&hp).

It's the age old rule. Nobody survives a scandal involving a dead girl or a live boy.

At best, he's too old to know what was going on, which you can't have as the CEO of a major program that's currently #1 in the Big Ten.

At worst, he covered for his buddy, let him retire but still hang around, and promoted the kid who saw something to shut him up.

What a gobble of idiots. How the fuck could ANYONE at the university cover up or otherwise ignore allegations like that? After all the Catholic Church has been through in the last decade with child sexual abuse scandals, how could the guys in the athletic department let this guy keep an office on campus? Even if the stuff he'd done had never occurred on campus or had anything to do with students, it's just crazy stupid. You're asking for your institution to get hammered by police and the press when/if the shit gets out.

Honestly this has seemed to be true for years anyway.

Agreed, he was going to be allowed to leave on his own terms, which was likely death. Now, you're out of options. His inability to do the job is costing people in ways that should never have occurred.

I had no idea PSU was a Jesuit school.

It's a good thing they're not.  There would be serious  :mob: going on, even more than now.

Why are all football guys considered meatheads?

Because they can walk in on their boss abusing a 10 year old and their first reaction isn't to beat the shit out of them.  You can insist it was just this one guy but how many scandals, problems and general bullshit do you have to experience in your life before realizing, no, it's systemic.

Fuck sports programs and our national love affair with them.

I read the 23-page grand jury indictment and it's so much  :uhrr: :ye_gods: Anyone at the university who had ANY knowledge of the shower scene that didn't contact police should be fired. There is NO justification whatsoever for not having called police and alerting child protection authorities about it. The fact that all they did to the coach was tell him not to bring underage kids onto the campus is reprehensible.

I think they should be charged as an accessory to a crime if they willingly covered it up. 

I can say this. I've walked in on people having sex before and your first reaction isn't one of clear thinking. It's usually a WTF moment and you just sorta amble out of the room. In hindsight people always say you should have done all this shit, but your typical reaction is just shock. And that's just normal people have consensual intercourse, not a crime taking place.

So, the people that are all, HE SHOULD HAVE BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF HIM, are being stupid. That's not the normal reaction in the situation. It's shock and flight for 99% of the populace when they see something scarring and horrifying. That being said, the reaction after the fact was where this guy failed morally. To put it all on the back burner and continue to work with a rapist that you know is a predator on a regular basis? How do you sleep at night?

Joe Paterno officially retiring at the season's end.  It's the right thing to do. 

The right thing to do ship sailed a hell of a lot earlier than today. Fuck him.

 :facepalm:

I agree, but he's dealing with this as it sits right now.  There's little he could do at this point other than retire short of diving on a sword.  

It will be interesting to see if the investigation into this shows that Paterno was even less forthcoming than it seems.  I suspect that will be the case, but only time will tell.

He can retire RIGHT NOW instead of at the end of the season.

How will that fix anything in a different manner than retiring in 3 games?  I think Paterno has enough good mojo from his career to give him that much. 

How much good mojo offsets allowing a serial child molester to continue working at your place of business?  How do you not go straight to the police with that shit?

And.... this  (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/michael_mccann/11/09/joe.paterno/index.html)would be why Paterno is being pushed out.  

[quoteUnder Pennsylvania law, as in other jurisdictions, perjury refers to knowingly lying while under oath. Obstruction of justice describes interference with the administration of justice, such as by concealing evidence or delaying or frustrating a criminal investigation. While Paterno has thus far escaped these criminal charges, his statements and behavior suggest that he remains vulnerable to them. That is particularly evident when considering troubling inconsistencies between Paterno's testimony to the grand jury that investigated Sandusky and the testimony of Penn State assistant Mike McQueary.
[/quote]


I'm not sure.  I think he'll eventually end up facing perjury charges with the rest of them, so then he'll get to pay the piper.  I have little problem with him coaching a few more games though.

Given what we know, was JoePa supposed to stroll into the police station and file a report with them based on hearsay? He could have dragged McQueary down there for his direct witness report. The stakes may change if JoePa was a direct witness, but right now, I can understand. I don't have a moral compass so I am looking at this completely different. Guess I should be burned at the stake as well.

Because it sends the message that - hey - at least you understand now that you've been caught that you were a shitheel and doesn't reinforce the message that winning > Law, Morality or common decency.

You know.. the entire reason this shit sandwich was covered up in the first place.


Yes, that's exactly what he was supposed to do.  Police's job is to investigate crime.  He heard of a crime. You drag the AC down with you to the Police and say "this guy saw that one diddle a kid." 

What the fuck world do you live in where you have to have concrete evidence before going to the authorities?

From the reports I read, Paterno was not told what the person saw just that they saw something they felt was inappropriate and they were unwilling/unable to discuss it with him and he followed procedure and put them in contact with the AD whose purview the HR/inappropriateness contact was.

Not trying to give anyone a pass on this, but everyone seems to be acting like Paterno was a direct witness which he wasn't.

There is some indication that Joe was potentially a little intentionally vague in his report to the AD.  While he might not have been at the point to run into the police station to file a report he certainly didn't follow up appropriately.  Of course it appears that nothing short of filing a police report would have gotten anything done since everyone above him was actively covering up for Sandusky.

I'm not sure that a few football games is going to make a lot of difference to those that were molested.  I'm sure none of them would make the trade of "hey, let this guy bang you in the ass a few times and then we'll make this other guy quit his job tomorrow to make up for it".  What very well might make a difference to the victims is full cooperation from Paterno at this point.  I think it is important to remember that it wasn't Joe that molested the kids and it's not exactly clear how much he really knew.  There is a possibility that he could have known everything, in detail, in which case criminal charges should probably be brought against him as well.  There's just too much unknown to dive in and bring the hammer down on someone like Paterno just yet.  That's why I don't have much problem with him coaching this season out.

Obviously one that you do not approve of.

How does his staying till the end of season serve the best interests of the team or the school? He's being a self-serving bastard to the bitter end.

The grand jury report says that the grad assistant told Joe Pa and the higher ups that he saw this guy fucking a kid in the ass. The guys who have been arrested for perjury claim the grad assistant said nothing more than "inappropriate contact." The grand jury didn't find them credible. Joe Pa SHOULD have gone to the cops, but at the very least, he shouldn't have allowed this fucker to continue to host shit on campus and be affiliated with the program if there was a hint of impropriety.

He let his "superiors" supposedly handle all that - which makes me think his attitude was "let it be someone else's problem." Which is all well and good until we start talking about child molesters being allowed to go scott free and do it again.

You can't let him take the field. You simply can't. Not only is that a PR clusterfuck you're opening up, but it's also just in horrifically bad taste to expose your school and team to this shenanigans that would take place with him coaching. The taunts, the signage, the general atmosphere. You are taking your school and just throwing it open for every possible criticism by letting him coach. Forget that it's even going to be a football game, if he goes out there it becomes a fucking circus for the rest of the season. It's the distraction to end all distractions.

Some might ask what can it hurt to let him coach it out? What the hell can it HELP to let him coach it out? He doesn't coach and we all know it. Having him there would only make him feel better. Fuck making him feel better at this point, he lost that right when he failed the great test of morality. Evil thrives when good men turn a blind eye and do nothing. That's exactly what he did.

He took the easy road. It's hard to stand up to your friends. It's hard to believe that your friends are capable of monstrous acts. It's hard to go to the police and open up your program to scrutiny. It's hard to ask the uncomfortable questions to those who are responsible. It's hard to hold people accountable for what they did. So instead, he did nothing. He's been doing nothing for years. His current lifestyle is about riding out his goodwill until he dies. Were I the school, I would say no more. We draw the line here as a university and as a society. We will no longer tolerate you doing nothing for any period of time going forward. It ends this Saturday.

Again, my thought is that we have no idea exactly how much he knew or "hid", as it were.  There's some indication that he was being vague, but we don't know how much he knew.  I don't like the idea of going over the top just because of public sentiment, particularly in an instance where there are many other aspects of his job that he was excellent at (and not just winning football games).  

And since you asked, him staying on could preserve the decent season they are having, provide some continuity and provide some leadership in trying to get through this circus.  

To be clear-  I wouldn't have a problem if Penn State decided to shitcan him tomorrow, but I also don't have a problem with him coaching out the rest of the season.  It's not like he does anything but sit in the coordinator's box anyway.

I don't have a huge problem with reporting something to superiors under the assumption that they will take care of it. You might assume that they have the proper contacts or better can navigate the procedures or whatever. But if you do that and clearly NOTHING HAPPENS as a result you have a moral responsibility to say "uh...yeah I told you that this guy was molesting kids and he's still on campus with kids. If you aren't going to call the police I will."

It does depend on what exactly Paterno was told. Apparently McQueary was "distraught" about it, called him and visited him at home, so even if he wasn't super-specific you have to think it's extremely serious. Paterno reported it as some thing extremely disturbing of a sexual nature so even if he didn't know the full extent of it he knew it was bad.

Now the McQueary father and son...there is no wiggle room there. This guy was an eye-witness, did nothing at the time, and continued to just stand around doing nothing while Sandusky continued to show up on campus with kids. They both knew exactly what happened.

Lots of people put blinders on when it comes to their family, which it sounds like this dude pretty much was for Paterno - it's retarded, because it usually ends up hurting everyone more, but it isn't exactly rare.

I think that part of my issue with this, as it stands, is that I feel the administration is offering up Paterno as a sacrifice when they know that this could bring down the entire administration of Penn State.  He's a player in this, sure, but he's not the guiltiest by any stretch of the imagination.  All this wrangling from Penn State about Paterno is purely to take attention off of the administration and that is also reprehensible.
 

Yeah, the people it was bumped up to not doing shit about it is the part that I find hardest to understand.

Honestly, I think the entire board, the president, and anyone else that even caught wind of this should eventually be gone.  

Edit:  Which is where this whole thing seems to be headed (http://tracking.si.com/2011/11/09/report-penn-state-president-graham-spanier-will-quit-or-be-fired-by-end-of-wednesday/?sct=hp_t2_a4&eref=sihp).  Penn State president supposedly out.

In a "the buck stops nowhere" situation like this you basically have to clean house. You can get endless finger-pointing, claims of garbled messages, each guy can say he expected somebody else to do something or the person reporting to him minimized what happened.

If the claim is "the system failed" then get rid of the people who make up the failing system. They fostered an environment where an entire chain of people can hear about sexual abuse of minors and do nothing.

They really have no choice. This is going to hang over the program for the next 50 years anyway; best thing is to rip the bandage off and let the healing start. I hope everyone responsible gets what they deserve, and I don't mean a nice retirement plan.

I'm going to put this in Random Sports Discussion, for the lulz.

https://www.esbl.co/

One of my colleagues mentioned that he believes that Paterno has dementia.  He is a fan and says that in his interviews that he typically seems agitated or just not completely there.  This may not be far from the truth.  Paterno has been operating on cruise control for a long time. 

Disturbing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMnq52jZejQ

Lovely...this whole thing just turns my stomach. Couple that with my already pissed off feelings about conference expansion this year, and the Cam Newton fiasco, and the Ohio State fallout.

I don't know, it's just getting harder to support college football in any capacity. Granted not all programs are dirty or are hiding child molestors, but it just shows you that even when something is so fucking wrong at the very core of morality they STILL won't report it. We all know and gloss over the educational bullshit, the money bullshit, but MAN. At some point it makes you question why you're a fan when these guys are the ones supposedly representing your institution.

The Sandusky thing isn't really a college football problem as such, more of a "any big entity with a reputation to maintain" problem. It's way way bigger than college sports; I'd bet good money that major corporations and charities and religious groups (beyond just the Catholic church) also sweep this stuff (and other things that would cause major embarrassments) under the rug more often than not. It doesn't really enter into it for me when thinking of the way that college sports fuck up in general, not the way that stuff that's actually specific to them does.

It's related to college sports in that Paterno and Sandusky are only big important figures that are protected because of how fucked up college football is.

For fuck's sake Sandusky was an assistant coach. It's absurd that somebody in that position is important enough to not immediately be thrown under the bus. The only thing that matters in bigtime college football is money. That should be abundantly clear to anyone. And it matters so much that at many places college football is more important than anything else the institution does.

Here you have a situation where the University clearly decided that putting kids in danger was less important than protecting the football program. (And everything that comes with it) Would this have played out the same way if it was an assistant swim coach? I'm guessing no.

The fact that you can compare a college football program to a major corporation or a religious organization really says something.

It's really the college as an institution making the decision, not just the football program though. A big college like Penn State is a multi-billion dollar enterprise and they have a lot of their 'brand' invested in the football program. A scandal like this will impact far more than just the athletic department, it will affect their ability to attract and retain good faculty, grad students, etc. But let's say some school whose brand is very valuable and unrelated to athletics entirely - say a Harvard or a University of Chicago - gets caught in a similar situation, covering up a high-profile faculty member's decades-long pattern of abuse. They'd be in much the same sort of deep water with the same sort of consequences PR-wise, and it wouldn't have anything to do with athletics.

In other words, I think there are things that are fucked up with college sports that are created by the weird business of college sports, and then there are things that are fucked up in a more general way and this is one of the latter.

The entire Penn State campus is deeply tied to Paterno. It is not just the athletics. The main library is named for him, he is one of their biggest donors to the campus (a large portion of his salary over the years has gone back to the university in donations) as a whole.

The fact that the Penn State brand is so tied to the football program is part of the problem.


Why is an assistant coach a high profile faculty member? We aren't talking about covering up for a nobel prize winning chemist, this guy was a fucking assistant coach on a sports team. And let's get real, Penn State is probably much more likely to cover up for a football coach than for a chemistry professor.

The fact that the most important people on campus are all related to the football program is pathetic.

There is a fundamental problem with bigtime college sports being huge money makers, hugely influential, dwarfing actual academics while not being considered pro leagues and not paying players. People really need to wake up and see these programs for what they are - professional-level programs that hide behind academics as a way to exploit players.

How is single-A baseball professional and college football not?

That's not really true, but they are the most visible people, certainly.

Meh, I've said my piece on this. Big time college football is corrupt to the core. Anything for a dollar.

There's certainly nobody of more symbolic importance, but there are dozens of people more important to the actual functioning of things, even on his own coaching staff he's a figurehead now.

Penn State is an enormous public research university with close to 100,000 students when you count up all their campuses. Even a program like their football program is just a drop in the bucket at a place like that.

Joe's done. They fired him.

It's the right call, but it's too little too late after Joe said he wanted to stay on.

One down, probably about 30 to go.

So Illinois goes down in the record books as both the team to make Paterno the winningest coach in Div-I and the last team to lose to him.

If he'd made it one more game he'd have the record for most games coached all to himself, as it is he ends tied with Amos Alonzo Stagg apparently.

I feel like I missed something because I don't understand how we've gone from an indictment to "Holy shit fire everyone."

I'm sure it's just a big misunderstanding. 

Because any person who had knowledge of this situation before it came to light and didn't report it (read: everyone involved) needs their fucking head chopped right off.  I have no tolerance for people that feed on children.

This was the final straw with me and college sports.  I was on hiatus this year as an OSU fan, taking a break from the fallout.  But this shit takes the cake.  This guy is supposed to be one of the good guys; a hero.  And he failed to do the right thing in a big, big way.   From now on I'm 100% pro, where I know it's about the money, murderers and rapists.  At least there I know I can't trust anyone.

Trustees are now involved which means two things: money and politics.

Being in a position of clear authority and not making sure that action was taken makes you the biggest asshole imagineable.  Shit, at least some of the other douchebags involved in this had some reason to fear for their livelihoods due to being in somewhat inferior positions (which also doesn't excuse them one fucking bit). Fuck "JoePa" in his tiny asshole.  With any luck he'll also die very soon, piece of shit.  Better yet, put some lipstick on him and throw him in a cell with Sandusky.

I agree.  The trustees getting rid of Paterno and the school president immediately is the only real course of action they had available.

This place is facing MASSIVE civil liability right now.  The Trustees are shitting their collective britches and heads are going to roll for anyone who even tangentially touched this thing. I wouldn't be surprised if the entire athletic department and coaching staff is purged.  How this all happened in basically the middle of the entire Catholic Church scandal is beyond me.

Because a lot of human beings absolutely suck?

I suspect other shoes are going to drop.  There is so much weirdness surrounding this whole sordid affair.

There certainly is an air of impending doom about the situation.  I suspect that there has to be something else lurking underneath all this for them to outright fire Paterno. 

A large portion (if not all) of the trustees are going to be ousted as well I bet.

Back to basketball!

Forbes doesn't believe the owners too (http://www.forbes.com/sites/prishe/2011/11/09/likely-nba-labor-resolution-will-transfer-250-275-million-from-players-to-owners/2/)

I'm so disinterested in the rich versus the rich.  They can all rot, for all I care.  The only pro sport that has any merit at all to me any more is the NFL. 

Yeah, there's the part that blows my mind. This was all going on when the whole Catholic priests raping boys scandal was constant front page news. As school admins, you HAD to know this would blow the fuck up on them. My only thought is that at the time, they didn't want to be equated with kiddy-diddling rapriests. But see, that would have been the PERFECT time to jump out in front of it, admit this guy was diddling kids on campus and show how proactive you are the community and the world at large. The PR heat on Penn State would have lasted maybe a fucking week and then forgotten as a blip in the larger scheme of things. Did they really think this was not going to eventually come out? Did they think this was like some isolated incident? It would have been one thing to cover up an affair with a male or female college student. At least then you could fall back on the consenting adult thing. But kids? Ass-raping kids?

There's just not one excuse good enough to explain why anyone involved didn't report this to at the very least the University police. You just cannot justify it at all. It's kids, for fuck's sake. There's no wiggle room there.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7215664/penn-state-nittany-lions-mike-mcqueary-coach-weekend

So just to be clear: the EYE WITNESS to this whole thing was not only not fired, but will be on the sidelines this weekend whereas the man who he reported to, JoePa, and everyone else up the ladder is gone.
 :uhrr:

Won't last. Expect him to be fired by the end of the day.

http://www.nesn.com/2011/11/jerry-sandusky-rumored-to-have-been-pimping-out-young-boys-to-rich-donors-says-mark-madden.html

I will be shocked if he lives through the holidays. Either he will sack up and kill himself or someone will take him out.

Death penalty is too good for this fuckstick.

Mike McQueary wasn't just any old grad assistant...he was a former record-setting quarterback at Penn State. He'd worked with JoePa on a regular basis for years on and off the field. This was not some kid who was scared to come in and talk to Joe.  He cannot possibly on the field their next game, that would be a god damn circus.

That sounds far fetched. Were it true, the Penn State football program ends.

The onion is our voice of reason.
http://www.onionsportsnetwork.com/articles/sports-media-asks-molestation-victims-what-this-me,26609/

Not the first time this rumor has been brought up online.
https://twitter.com/#!/dan_bernstein/status/134103234724896768

Not sure anyone linked this yet or not, but in case you want your stomach to churn for a few days:

http://cbschicago.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/sandusky-grand-jury-presentment.pdf

Yeah, I read the Grand Jury presentment. Before I had read it, I wasn't sure how bad the whole thing was. After... it's fucking bad. It's goddamn monstrous. There's a pattern of predatory behavior on this guy dated back close to 20 years, and that's just from the 8 kids they've put to the grand jury. There's no telling how many others there are that haven't come forward. And if the rumor about rich donors thing is true... Paelos may be right, that shit is OVER. Who is going to donate money to the program now if all it'll get you is a reputation as a kiddy diddler?

It's not only that, it's the civil suits, the criminal suits, the conspiracy charges, it would just be too much to bear. The NCAA wouldn't have any say in it. The Penn Legislature would feel too much political pressure to shut it down.

To be clear the donors in question in the rumor, at least as far as I've heard, were not Penn State donors but rather donors to Second Mile.

How deep does it go?

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/penn_state_child_sex-abuse_sca.html

"During our own investigation, years later, the mother told us that she had been specifically instructed by state police not to speak with reporters. No charges were filed against Sandusky in 1998. With the mother cowed into silence, the incident remained buried. "

That's pretty fucking huge if it turns out the coverup goes well outside of just PSU and maybe the charity.

If you don't understand just how deep into the community this went, you haven't been paying attention to the Cult Of JoPa bent to all the discussions or you think that's normal shit.

As one guy I know put it.  "Football is big at Penn, but JoPa eclipsed Football."

When you have people rioting and leaving classes in tears and saying "he was like a grandfather to me" about a man they've never met.  Something's fucking weird and that weirdness is going to go too deep for sanity.

What are the odds that Sandusky ends up dead this weekend?

I would have to say 50:50. 

This rabbit hole is going to go a long way down before this is all said and done, especially if the "sex ring" allegations turn out to be true.

For instance, the current governor of PA, Tom Corbett, gave a speech earlier today condemning everyone at Penn State who was a part of this fiasco and called the rioters "knuckleheads". Corbett (who as governor, is a member of the board of trustees at Penn State), also served two terms as state Attorney General, the most recent from 2005 to January of this year. This also covers the time during the grand jury investigation, whose details and severity he was undoubtedly aware of.

At no point during his current tenure as a trustee did he make any moves to keep Sandusky off of campus, despite Sandusky being on campus just days before his indictments and flouting the restrictions on his bringing children on campus as late as 2008.

Hmm.  Nebraska has asked their fans to not wear red to the game in Happy Valley.  Penn State fans are pushing the limits here.

Why would they not want their fans wearing red?

Cornhuskers colors are red and white. There is fear that angry Penn State fans will lash out and attack Nebraska fans.

This adds a new layer of complexity:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45244328/ns/local_news-philadelphia_pa/#.TrzJB0PiE8l

:facepalm:

Please. If drunken rednecks can keep it together, I expect those educated Yankees can stop from throwing their wine glasses at each other during a game.  :grin:

Hey, I'm not the one who gave it as the reason why.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7215871/nebraska-cornhuskers-tom-osborne-asks-fans-not-wear-read-game-vs-penn-state-nittany-lions

After the way the Penn State population rioted after Paterno was fired I am not sure that isn't such a bad precaution.

Or what, they release actual nittany lions on the populace? Or spray them with firehoses? They are so incensed by the firing of JoePa that they take out their rage on unsuspecting midwesterners that didn't even show up in the conference until this year?

Again, this is stupid, reactionary shit. Wear your colors Nebraska fans. Wear them proudly. Just don't make inappropriate signage. Go in there, lay the smackdown on a team that will be reeling, and exit with a classy win.

Yes.  You're correct.  We've hardly seen any stupid, reactionary shit from Penn State so far.   :oh_i_see:

I think there's probably 30 knuckleheads at Penn State, who will be easily controlled on gameday.

Maybe so.  Nothing wrong with being cautious if it doesn't hurt anyone else. 

Kinda like the Patriot Act eh?  :why_so_serious:

Yes.  Not wearing a red shirt is exactly like the patriot act.   :awesome_for_real:

No, THIS is the weird bit:


Laptop hard drive thrown in the river? Sounds like a hit to me.

NY Times article (http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2011/11/11/da-involved-in-penn-state-pedophile-scandal-missing-since-2005/) on the story also contained this blurb:

Yeah... you've never actually been to central Pennsylvania, have you? There's a reason they call it Pennsyltucky.

But they are high class! They've told us so!

Absolutely this is fishy. 

Not surprising in any way, shape or form.

Anyone else think Mcqueary is getting too much of a pass on this? some people are even saying he's the only one who did the "right thing".  That's bullshit, you see a boy getting pounded up the ass in the locker room by a grown ass man you call the cops, you don't go to your bosses first to find out what they want to do about it.  Honestly i think he is the biggest culprit here, being the one who actually witnessed the abuse first hand.

There are also rumors that he was the main source for the Grand Jury though, so maybe he ultimately did the right thing.  Doesn't excuse his earlier conduct, but maybe mitigates it a bit. No idea if this is the case, but it might be an explanation as to why.

Another theory is that the school is worried he might be protected by Pennsylvania's Whistleblower law so firing him at this time might get...complicated...though as you noted earlier they are soon to be knee deep in lawsuits so what's one more among friends?

My issue isn't so much with the lack of police intervention from him immediately.  I'd wager he was really, really lost for awhile after seeing that.  He did the right thing telling his bosses and likely assumed that they would get police intervention going. 

My problem is how, six months later, he must have come to the realization that this was being swept under the rug.  That's what gets me; the absolute lack of justice.  He likely thought "Well, I told my bosses.  They'll do the right thing."  And when they didn't, he failed to do the right thing too.  And for that, he deserves to go down on this just as bad as the rest. 

I just don't see how any reasonable man can think telling their boss is the correct course of action after what he saw unless his main concern was finding out how they wanted to deal with it, not justice.

To be fair, it was the right course of action. The wrong course of action was doing nothing after finding out the dude was still wandering around after you reported him, and the wrong thing was not insisting that they get the police involved.

When you are the witness to a crime, you don't go tell your neighbor, your pastor, your friend or your boss first.  You tell the police.  If I saw someone getting murdered at work, telling my boss would be the last thing on my mind.  The only reason anyone thinks that him telling his boss and expecting his boss to follow through with the authorities was the right course of action is because, despite everything that is happening, we STILL cannot stop treating these football programs as they are special and deserve special treatment.  Had I seen this happening, the first thing I would have done was grab a heavy, blunt object and ensure that this motherfucker ceased what he was doing ASAP.  I would then call the police.  No reasonable person defaults to telling the boss first.  Fuck that bullshit and anyone spouting it.

In an institutional setting like this I think McQeary did the right thing going to his superiors first for something like this.  I can forgive him a little.  Paterno should have absolutely handled things differently, but then again he was getting second hand knowledge.  The real failure is at the highest levels for failing to fully investigate and prevent. 

Bullshit, it was the bare legal cover your ass minimum.

I think you can blame everyone quite a lot, really, but I have a little less sympathy for McQueary than for Paterno. Paterno was an old guy who probably didn't want to believe his friend of many years could actually do what people told him - denial is the most powerful force in the universe when it comes to family and close friends. McQueary actually saw it and had to see that the only result was a cover-up. I can kind of understand being in shock initially and just not doing anything but go to the coach, but I'm definitely with Hawkbit that 6 months later he should have thought "what the fuck?" and called the cops.

Ultimately prison for the higher ups and lost jobs for Paterno and McQueary feels about "right" to me. (Assuming of course it's all true blah blah blah.)

McQueary told his superiors.  I suppose he could have called the police, but once he told his superiors I would imagine that he expected them to take care of it.  I doubt very seriously he would have thought to "go over Paterno's head" to the police because Paterno and the AD should have done the right thing.  He probably didn't hear anything else about it and assumed that it was taken care of.  I doubt that he was thinking cover up.  He was in a hard spot though and I think that any of us in that position would have had a hard time doing anything differently, even though we might pound our chests on the F13 forum and talk about how we would have "kicked Sandusky's ass".

Let's change it a bit then.

You own a practice, i assume you have one hygienist/ nurse who supervises others.   She's told that one of her charges is stealing some controlled substance or another from you and selling them on the black market.  She does nothing and the one that told her never notifies you.  You're saying the only one responsible here is the lead?  After all, the other told her supervisor.

Do you think - should it come out - the medical board would hold you harmless for not knowing what was going down?  After all, you weren't told.. and the other nurse had - in your opinion - done her duty.

I'm not saying McQeary shouldn't have some consequences.  Should he be fired?  Probably.  I just think that he was in a tough position and, while he could have done more, I understand why he did what he did. 

You're armchair quarterbacking. Nobody can say how they react to a situation that is hypothetical until they are put in that situation. You go to put your shoes in your locker and see one of your superiors nailing a kid in the ass? I mean the shock value alone on that is ridiculous.

Second, sometimes people don't immediately react in the best way as their first reaction. He's part of the program and he had probably been told a bajillion times that if you see something bizarre, tell the head coach. So he did. Now, after that he should have called the police when he saw nothing happened. He should be blamed a million times over and over for that.

However, I get sick of people saying what they would have done immediately. Bullshit on that. You have no idea. You can think you know. You can be SURE you know. But when rubber meets the road is when character is revealed, and McQueary lacked character when after the shock had worn off, he did nothing.

Sandusky wasn't his superior. He had been out of his position for several years at that point.

I am frankly shocked at some of the posts here. It isn't like McQueary saw someone cheating on their taxes, or jaywalking, or paying off a recruit's family. He saw another human being being physically assaulted by someone bigger, stronger, and older than the victim and did NOTHING to stop it, and didn't even alert the authorities. He is an abject coward at the very best, and criminally liable at the worst. I hope that kid's friends and/or family burns his fucking house down with him in it. Fuck him eternally.

I honestly don't know if I would have been able to do anything immediate to stop it myself. I have literally no idea how I would react. I mean, I can say how I'd like to think I would react, but you can't know until something like that actually happens in front of you what your real reaction would be, IMO.

But if I did react like him at the time, if a few months go by, I still see this guy in the weight room, and clearly nothing has happened? Then you can bet I'd be asking my boss 'wtf' and calling the cops if the answer I get isn't really fucking good.

Thank you.

They guy was raping a kid.  I can absolutely guarantee that I would have gone ape-shit on him, and damn the consequences.  I don't doubt for a minute that other people would react differently and not know what to do in the immediate situation - but ANYTHING that doesn't lead to calling the cops within 24 hours (six months?!  WTF are you people smoking?) is practically accessory to the crime as far as I am concerned.  RAPING A KID, you fucking cockweasles.

You're freaked out, you go to your mentor, he tells you he'll take care of it. You don't necesarily know how long police investigations take, so you wait a while and figure that the dude you trust is taking care of things. I just said 'a few months' because that is the point it should become clear to even the most oblivious person that something is Not Getting Done.

Sorry, but that doesn't pass the bullshit test.  No reasonable person reports a violent, heinous crime to their "mentor" and expects it to get cleared up within months.  Seriously, what the shit?  Because it's "an institution" we are allowed to act differently?  Like the catholic church I suppose?

All I'm saying is I find it pretty easy to understand how shit like this (well not Sandusky's part, that's mental illness of the least understandable sort, I mean the failures of the lower level guys involved) ends up happening. It's nothing to do with the "institution" or anything, not really.

It's easy for all of us to stand on principle when we weren't you know, there. I really fucking hope I wouldn't make any of the same mistakes that this guy did (and that I never have to find out) but fuck, who hasn't made the exact wrong decision under extreme pressure/stress/emotional fuckedupness at some point?

It's the failure to be able to look back at some point during the ensuing months and have any kind of perspective that makes you say "OK, I need to take this into my own hands and call the cops or he's going to get away with it." That's the part that is way more fucked up. The initial response is just regular old human weakness... probably. It could be all a big cover up conspiracy even from 1998, sure. It would sure make everything simpler, just send every last one of em to prison then.

Fine - I get it that people can and will react differently.  But that's also the difference between doing the right thing and being a culpable asshole, as far as I am concerned.  He did not do the right thing by any reasonable standard, and should be prosecuted as a result.

You'll forgive me if I am raging on you, Ingmar...I have two young sons, and just the thought of this happening to some other kid puts me into a rage.   :angryfist:  Nothing personal.

I think all of us here would say that what Sandusky did is despicable and that McQueary should have done things differently.  It's probably silly to rant about what anyone would have done if they were in that situation, however, because none of us are McQueary.  If that attorney truly did get knocked off it is possible that he even feared for his life. 

He also waited until the next morning to tell those bosses. At first, I had a little bit of sympathy for him, because I thought he ran right out to JoePa's house and told him. Nope, he waited until the next morning, didn't call the police (which really is what he should have done immediately if he saw some old fucker cornholing a 10-year old) and then never followed up on just why this kiddy-diddler wasn't in jail.

We all admit he's a gutless dipshit. I don't think that's in question.

I was thinking he was more of a spineless douchebag.

Sandusky to Bob Costas in exclusive 'Rock Center' interview: 'I shouldn't have showered with those kids.' (http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/14/8804779-jerry-sandusky-to-bob-costas-in-exclusive-rock-center-interview-i-shouldnt-have-showered-with-those-kids)

Guilty as fuck. :oh_i_see:

The article says that he is the father of 6 adopted children.  It will be interesting to see if any of them come forward with allegations.

McQueary has apparently said in an email to a friend that he did stop the act in progress, and did go to the police.  May have been only campus police.

http://news.yahoo.com/email-tv-talk-add-twists-penn-state-case-010955698.html (http://news.yahoo.com/email-tv-talk-add-twists-penn-state-case-010955698.html)

If true, then he isn't the complete shitbag I thought he was, only a partial one for not following through.

In a lot of places campus police = real police.  I wonder what actually transpired with that.  If he did go to the police and they blew it off it could get a whole lot hairier for Penn State.

The article sorta leads me to believe that, in this case, campus police are not real police.  But on the other hand, I don't think the article was clear or not on whether he may have also gone to the real police.

I would seriously doubt that Penn State campus police aren't real police.  And if he reported it to them I would assume there would be some form of official report.  That claim could come back to bite him in the ass.

Your probably right, but the article made it sound dubious to me if they were real police or not.

And if humans can be made to disappear in connection to this case ( :tinfoil: ) then making a police report go away is no problem.

Yeah, they're real police (http://www.police.psu.edu/).  They employ 46 armed officers.

The kicker in all this is that apparently PSU is somehow exempt from the state of Pennsylvania's open records law (http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/16/us/pennsylvania-sandusky-case/index.html?hpt=hp_c1).  This seems absolutely fucking ridiculous for an institution that receives a lot of state money.  Because of this it may not come out until the trial. 

It's just a big game of telephone -- everybody gave everybody an account, yet nothing much was done, other than eventually taking away the man's facility keys… …but he still went on to [allegedly] molest more boys on the Second Mile.

Guess it's the nature of being so insulated, so remote and where the athletic program is in complete control of its academic overseers, the media, the local law enforcement, etc.…

Holy Shit.  Bernie Fine, former Syracuse basketball assistant accused of molestation (http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/7248184/syracuse-police-investigating-bernie-fine-molesting-boy-1980s). 


This could be it for Boeheim  as well.

Oh this is starting to look good for the NCAA.  :ye_gods:

Another Oklahoma State airplane incident (http://espn.go.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/7250025/oklahoma-state-cowboys-coach-kurt-budke-assistant-miranda-serna-illed-plane-crash)

Women's coach Budke dies along with 3 other people.  That university is cursed. 


I don't like flying anyway, but I'll be damned if I'm getting in a puddle jumper. 

Here's (http://msn.foxsports.com/collegebasketball/story/bernie-fine-syracuse-story-irresposible-reporting-by-espn-112111) a nice article about the Bernie Fine situation.  It's by Jason Whitlock and he blasts ESPN for the uneven reporting on the situation.  He makes the point that you hear comments asking why the media aren't calling for Bernie Fine's head just like Paterno's, but that this is okay because they are different situations.  Much of what is being said about the Fine case is being pushed by ESPN for their own benefit in ratings.  I tend to agree with him on this. 

http://crownsports.blogspot.com/2011/11/sandusky-cover-up-scandal.html

Take it in the context that it is a blog entry, but the details outlined put a ton of stuff into the spotlight that probably are best served in the dark.

The author needs to seriously learn the difference between than and then.  And how to use simple punctuation such as commas to help break up some of those run-on sentences.  It started getting hard to read after a while.

ABOUT ME


Hacksaw Hemingway
BA English, The Ohio State University 1997

 :grin:

Well, I guess in his "defense" he posts a comment that he never expected to have so many hits on the blog and didn't bother to proofread the article.  I'm tempted to reply that nothing's stopping him from going back to proofread it now and fix all the mistakes. 

It's an example of people thinking that just because it's on the internet, they don't need to bother doing it right the first time.

Or he's fucking lying, which is more likely.  There's better grammar on this website, and I guarantee you people don't usually proofread there their stuff here.

Yeah, that article was TERRIBLE. His grammar and spelling were so bad I felt like there were missing words in sentences that would have made his meaning a lot clearer.

It was a pretty informative article though, and did put together some nice points with references. 

Yeah, Bernie Fine is fucked (http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/7286347/otl-audio-tape-syracuse-orange-assistant-bernie-fine-wife-admits-worries-abuse).   :oh_i_see:

Boeheim should be held to the same standard as Paterno, et. al. and should probably be brought up on criminal charges.

I don't think they can use her testimony though? Doesn't that fall under privilege?

I have no idea, but this is going to break open soon.  

Edit:  It's just a matter of time until Boeheim gets canned (http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/story/16264070/boeheims-statements-go-too-far-and-it-should-cost-him-his-job), and rightfully so. 

Bleh, that's at best fine-the-guy kind of talk, not fire-the-guy. You shouldn't really be firing dudes just for being assholes - and if "they're lying just to get money" is firing-worthy probably half the dudes in every police station, DA's office, and law firm in the country, unless they've never handled a rape case, need to go.

I bet that Boeheim knows more about this than he's admitting.  This one may have some gory details just like the Penn State situation.

Okay.  Who wants to crash Antoine Walker's party (http://www.iamagm.com/news/2011/11/21/antoine.walker.hosting.shit.crazy.party.chicago)?   :awesome_for_real:

Time for the first lawsuit (http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7298112/penn-state-nittany-lions-scandal-first-jerry-sandusky-sex-abuse-lawsuit-comes-new-accuser) for Jerry Sandusky, Penn State and his charity.  

I hope Penn State knows they are royally, and I mean royally, fucked.  This deal is going to cost the university and the state of Pennsylvania millions of dollars.  


Edit:  Also, this is a fucking crazy allegation (http://deadspin.com/5863908/which-syracuse-basketball-players-had-sex-with-laurie-fine) against Laurie Fine, and not just because she's uglier than hell. 

I hope it sinks the Penn State program tbh.

Read the other article about Laurie Fine.  I guess it wouldn't be surprising if she wasn't disgusting.

High school team loses title after celebration penalty (http://espn.go.com/boston/story/_/id/7327275/celebration-penalty-td-costs-cathedral-high-school-team-title). 

If you watch the video this was a very lame little fist pump that cost the team a lot.  It seems to me that they are trying to suck the fun out of everything any more. 


Doesn't this seem a little bullshit for something that is supposed to be about fun?

Caught this earlier today. What the fuck is the point of playing if you are not allowed to feel anything if you win? I completely agree... this is a fucked rule that they are using in black and white terms.

The analyst in the video on that link does bring up the NFL, and how at one point the elaborate touchdown celebrations were getting rather ridiculous and that's a big contributor in why we have idiotic rules like this.

It's still fuck all retarded.  Unless there's a celebration involving direct taunting of the opposing player or stands or the simulation of the use of a weapon or if it lasts longer than 5 seconds, almost anything should be allowed.

Agreed. We need more

(http://gifsoup.com/view2/1304944/merton-hanks-o.gif)

Yes, exactly. But this is why there should be a gradient of celebrations. This is just an example of all or nothing. You win or score a touchdown/goal/etc, you should be able to express your happiness about it within reason. This just seems way over the top.

I don't know if you are being sarcastic, but I think that's awesome.

Celebration penalties are probably the most subtle form of racism I've ever seen.

I am not being sarcastic.  :heart: Merton Hanks.

Short of significantly delaying the game, I think pretty much ANY celebration should be allowed.  Including taunting.  Not that I think taunting is cool, I just think that the players should be allowed to express themselves however they like.  You want to risk looking like a complete dick and receiving some form of retribution?  Fine by me.  The whole point of sports is the competition - trying to prove you are better than the other guy - and this is a natural extension of it.

I don't understand how we got to be so uptight about these things.  I could give two shits about the hurt feelings of football players.  Get your revenge by playing better, and maybe not letting them score.  Crybabies.

 :roll:

Allow fighting, see how many TD dances you get then  :why_so_serious:

Okay, so I probably don't mean it about the taunting.  But I sure as shit believe that players and teams should be allowed to celebrate all they want, just so long as it doesn't delay the game significantly.  I realize that a line has to be drawn somewhere, but we are way, way beyond that line by now.

Gah why won't this thread mark itself as read!

Particularly gun or violence related taunting. 

Poor Greg Oden has to be the ugliest motherfucker on the planet.  And he's a great guy.   How come Stephon Marbury and Steve Francis couldn't look like cavemen? 

Oh, I don't know about that.

(http://www.espn.go.com/media/pg2/2005/0928/photo/g_muresan_195.jpg)

They probably both have acromegaly.  Their facial features are somewhat similar.

I thought the end of the NBA lockout would be the end of all the headlines that make me happy. Good ol Davey Stern decided that I needed a few more belly laughs at the league's expense. Holy fucking CLOWNSHOES.

What? He can cancel trades if he wants to.

I'm sure he'll send them a holiday card.

What conflict of interest?  :awesome_for_real:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yMwiHXAjPSo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3z8clyLn1I

Isn't this why the NFL has the franchise tag?

I hate the NBA so I laugh with glee at the idiotic Chris Paul trade debacle. Clownshoes on display.

Chris Paul to the Clippers could make things interesting out west.  If it weren't for the curse of the Clips I would think they could make a nice run this year.  They've slowly put together a team of very talented young guys and now put Chris Paul in the mix and you've got at least a nice team.  A lot of how good they are will depend upon whether Eric Bledsoe can offset the loss of Gordon.  Bledsoe is a hell of a scorer and shooter, but he's no Gordon.

So, Illinois may suck at football but the women's volleyball team is in the championship game! (which, in a mild bit of irony, is going to be against UCLA)

This shortened NBA preseason has shown me that there's really no need to have the scads of games that they typically have.  The stars play in the 2 or 3 that everyone seems to have had this year and that makes them somewhat relevant/interesting.  I hope this trend continues.

The DJ Steve Porter recap/remixes on SportsCenter have to stop.  :sad: I like that ESPN is willing to get a little crazy (Around the Horn), but those remixes.

I'm kinda looking forward to see what NBC does with their refurbished sports network (only kinda, because, Comcast). Then again, it could be, "Sports analysis for people who only wear plaid."

I was really glad to see Barry Larkin enter the HOF today.  He's a name from my past and I used to love him as a player for the Reds.  I think he should have been first ballot, but at least he got in.   :awesome_for_real:

Raines, Trammel, and Bagwell should be in too*, stupid writers.

*arguably McGwire and Palmiero also but I don't want to get into the steroid nonsense again.  :why_so_serious:

I think Fred McGriff should be in.  Not so sure about Bagwell due to steroid association.  I agree with Raines and Trammel.

There is no association other than 'that guy has big arms.' He never tested positive, was not in the Mitchell report, etc., etc., etc.

McGriff is borderline, I tend to vote no on those guys personally. (Also he and Bags played for roughly the same period of time - why isn't McGriff "associated" with steroids too?)

I believe that there's more out there on Bagwell concerning a former trainer, but I'd have to Google fu it.  So sure, let him in too.  McGriff is just 7 dingers away from 500, and he was a hell of a driving force for every team he was on. 

I would put the Crime Dawg in the HOF!

After further thought Edgar Martinez should go in there too. Yeah, he spent most of his time as a DH, but given the rules allow you to have a DH, there should be a spot for the Best DH Ever.

DH is the dumbest thing in sports.  None of them should be eligible. :oh_i_see:

If you're GOING to allow DH, then yeah, they should get recognized if they're completely ridiculously good at it.

I prefer no DH (pitchers batting = lololol), but a little part of me likes that there IS a DH. Especially when an AL team visits a NL team and the pitcher batting hilarity gets turned up to 11.  :grin:

Well, if they got rid of the DH, maybe some of those absolutely porker looking pitchers would have to learn to do something besides stand on the mound looking sloppy.

I love fat pitchers, you bite your tongue!

 It has been almost 40 years now...this is like complaining that the forward pass in football should be illegal. Get over it. If the position is legal, it should be represented in the HoF.

^ THIS. ^

Either get rid of it, or show the guys who did it for almost their entire careers some damn love. Edgar Martinez should be a first-ballot guy. That man played with two tin cans for knees through the last back of his career and still put up good numbers. AND he played over a decade for SEATTLE without complaints, asking to be traded or being a douchebag. This alone is worthy of note. You telling me Big Papi's numbers aren't worthy of HOF consideration because he didn't field badly at first base?

I don't like the DH, but this disrespect to the guys who played the position by the HOF is pretty fucking retarded. I don't see you shitheads putting shortstops in the HOF that were spectacular defensive players while hitting .186 over their careers. Stop being fucking hypocrites about hitters vs. fielders.

Of course, I have no problems with them freezing out juiced up assholes with necks larger than their heads. Sosa, Bonds, McGwire can all go choke on a bag of dicks as far as I'm concerned.

Nope.  No DH in the HOF.  They're worse than punters.   :grin:

A great punter can make a serious impact on a game.  :awesome_for_real:

Not that I don't agree with you about putting DHs in the HoF, but Joe Tinker and Phil Rizzuto say hi.  :why_so_serious:

Two out of how many?  :awesome_for_real:

Oboy. 

Utah school board says Cougar mascot too offensive to women. (http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2012/01/19/utah-school-board-says-cougar-mascot-too-offensive-to-women/)

I just really don't know what to say about this other than  :ye_gods:.

No one posting about JoePa? You people have failed me for the last time... :why_so_serious:

I figure that should probably go in the college football thread. 

I can't bring myself to feel bad about it.  I don't want to bring up the reasons all over again.

Joe Pa was a better man than most that coach.  I don't really feel bad for him because he led a great, long life.  He screwed up the molestation thing, but he did a lot of good in his life as well.

It's about the whole picture, really.

Character is tested in the times when nobody is looking and nobody will know.

I will say this, though, his influence almost single-handedly brought instant replay into college football, which was a godsend.

This may shock you, considering my bowl-centric views, but I don't like instant replay.   :grin:

I know why. You love controversy.

I like resolution, sir. Clarity!  :awesome_for_real:

No.  Not at all.  I just have rarely seen a fucked up call that gets reversed where it would make a big difference in the game.  This is particularly so in college football.  I think they seem to do a better job of it in the pros, for some reason.  Maybe it's because they're pros.   :awesome_for_real:

What replay has shown me in college football is that the refs fuck up all the time. Now, we can at least track them.

Ironically the NFL refs are part-timers.

I was making the point that they do the replay process better in the NFL, not that they are necessarily better refs. 

They both have upsides. The NFL system falls down on the fact that you only get 3 challenges even if you're right on all of them. They've expanded it to all scoring plays now, so that sorta evens it out some from the previous system, with the remainder done in the booth inside 2 minutes. The problem with the booth is that sometimes the coach really wants to challenge, but the booth doesn't buzz down in time, and everyone rushes inside the drill.

The college system falls down on the fact you review everything. I mean every damn turnover gets reviewed. The games are already so long that they take 3:30 minimum just to finish with all the TV timeouts, and you're extending it longer with the reviews. Then, the by-product is that the refs are taught to let the play go on a possible fumble because blowing it dead would kill the review. However, the call on the field reigns in a close call. So, by nature the refs are taught to give more questionable fumbles or turnovers since the review is there and killing the play is bad. Which leads to more reviews. And more time.

And that is why I think it would be better just to let the game flow.  I think that the refs also depend a bit on the replay at this point, making the "safe" call instead of trying to make the right call.  For instance, they will call someone in bounds, knowing that there will have to be incontrovertible evidence to overturn that call, thus taking all risk out of the play for themselves.  I don't like that.  If they are going to depend upon the replay that much they should just get rid of all on field referees and do everything via video review.  It will get quicker as they do it more and utilize the technology in a more efficient manner.

I think there's a better middle ground than that.

Maybe, but I have seen 2-5 minute disruptions of play for replay calls, when all they did was uphold the original call.  I'm not sure how you get away from that when the refs are using replay as a crutch.

Jerry Sandusky: I’ll Never Forget All The Things Joe Paterno Did For Me (http://www.theonion.com/articles/jerry-sandusky-ill-never-forget-all-the-things-joe,27169/)

The single act of inaction, of overlooking a heinous crime done right under his nose, wipes out all the positives of JoePa as far as I am concerned.  How many kids got raped that could have been prevented?

Bah, I don't want to go there again.

The inaction means more to me because most of his "good deeds" revolve around giving money or support to the University. So what? You supported higher learning. Good for you. That's about 11th on my charitable giving things I can really give a shit about. Giving to rich institutions so they can create more rich people in Pennsylvania, whoopdedoo.

Meanwhile, dozens of kids had their lives irreparably shattered because he cared about a football reputation instead of protecting the innocent victim. And the "I'm old, I didn't understand" thing doesn't fly with me. My grandfather is 95 and understood exactly what this was when it came up. That defense has been tried by aging Mafia dons in the past and it didn't fly then either.

Tough crowd here. I can't agree, but meh. Not worth the discussion.

Yeah, I don't agree either.  Everyone makes mistakes.  I bet if Paterno could have done it over again he would have handled the situation differently.  I don't think he was being self serving in his treatment of Sandusky and I guarantee that he thought he was doing the right thing at the time.  That incident doesn't take away from his lifetime of achievements. 

It absolutely does. If his inaction let even one kid get fondled or raped or whatever, it absolutely does. Football is a game...Sandusky was ruining lives and Paterno could have done more to stop it.

I guarantee that his version of the right thing was: "I absolutely cannot let something like this damage the institution I love. We have to get rid of this guy."

Not: "I absolutely cannot allow children to continue to be molested. I need to report this to the police."

It's the same moral failing the Catholics ran into. They believed that it would cause too much damage to the good that the institution was doing.

I don't think he was trying to be self-serving at all. I think his priorities were completely fucked up.

That is a huge assumption/speculation. But I cannot get into this pit of despair or risk the life sucked right outta me.

The actions speak pretty loud that a guy in line for a head coaching position was suddenly retiring at 55, after working under a coach that continued coaching well into his 80s. Hell, the average age of a head football coach is aged 51 in the NCAA.

They all knew in 1999, three years before the alleged McQueary conversations. When they were told again, they had to go through the motions to keep the story quite. And it worked well for another 8 years.

Is it an assumption? Sure. Is it huge? Hell no. The Hawaii head coach just retired and he's 66. Very few people retire from college coaching at 55. Hell you don't even get a shot at a good job anymore until you are in your late 30s usually.

Well, we've already rehashed this same shit about 20 times and none of us has changed our opinion yet so fuck it.  Let's talk about something else, such as Phil Knight's sweatshop loving self sticking his nose in a place it doesn't belong (http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7506640/joe-paterno-penn-state-nittany-lions-memorial-exposes-anger-firing). 

Duke just put a dagger in UNC. Wow. You don't see many better college basketball games outside the Madness!

Yall must really hate college basketball if you can't even get fired up about a couple of these games on during Rivalry week.

I hate basketball, so. Yeah.

You hate all the things I love  :heartbreak:

I refuse to believe that Duke versus UNC exists.  Kentucky pounded the shit out of Florida though.  They're damned good this year.

I don't pay attention to college basketball until bracket time.

Part of the reason I hate it is because everyone in the world thinks I played it and was good at it. I played it for two seasons and was fucking terrible.

College basketball is really my sport to follow.  Nobody else around here seems to give a shit though, so I don't bother to post about it.

To be fair, all women are terrible at basketball.  :why_so_serious:

And while I don't care much anymore about the NCAA regular season, I love the tourney.  It's one of my favorite events in all of sports next to the World Cup and tennis slams.

Har har!

Seriously, though, I was so fucking terrible. Ugh.

I give a shit. My top teams right now that I think are the best "teams" are Syracuse, Duke, Kansas, and UNC. I think Kentucky is just stupidly talented, but they will fall down in the tourney when they get pressed as a unit.

Kentucky has beaten UNC and Kansas out of that group.  They are better than you give them credit for.  Duke is crazy good when they're hitting their threes, but they often get beat at tourney time due to lack of inside presence and, shall we say, less than their typical "fair" whistles.  Syracuse's D is the only thing I see stopping Kentucky.  Anthony Davis and Kidd-Gilchrist are two of the best freshmen to come through in a long time. 

Anthony Davis is the Uni-Blocker  :grin:

I don't know if you happened to watch the UK/LSU game, but that guy got the absolute fuck beaten out of him.  He's a tough dude, and ugly as hell.  Michael Kidd-Gilchrist has it going on too.  He's got that MJ/Kobe thing happening, and he could end up being a superstar in the league. 

Your Bulldogs don't look like they're going to do much this year.  I miss the Alec Kessler/Hugh Durham Georgia. 

Hmmm.  Ex Memphis Tiger kicked of Spanish team (http://eye-on-basketball.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/22748484/34822113) for taking "Extends" penis enlargement pills. 

Wow. 

 :awesome_for_real:

It's because of people like him that we have to deal with spam :oh_i_see:

I suspect he was taking it for the steroid effect and thought he could get out of being busted by using that as an excuse. 

Not really a "sport" but the Westminister people chose a Pekingese as the Best in Show.

Fuck toy dogs. Srsly.

Pekes are weird little dogs, for sure. But, the dogs aren't being judged against each other, but against their own breed's standards. So he's the best Peke a Peke can be, I guess.

Yeah, so Floyd Mayweather is a complete prick (http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/02/14/mayweather-slams-linsanity-on-twitter-says-hype-due-to-race/). 

It's true though :awesome_for_real: (at least for the Toronto game)

Floyd's right that this is about being Asian.

Except Lin can actually ball better than most black NBA players, so he can cram that idea.

Yeah I never see any black players in NBA highlights.  :oh_i_see:

Wait. Is Lebron black?  :awesome_for_real:

We all know full well that the fact that he is Asian has something to do with the attention he is getting.  But it is also because he is a Harvard grad, and virtually came out of NOWHERE.  There are few or no NBA stars that just come out of nowhere like that, it just doesn't happen that way like it can in other sports.  It's as if Haemish all of a sudden came in and scored 25 off the Laker's bench 5 nights in a row.  That's the bigger story to me, but I fear that the masses are unable to get past the Asian part.  Which should still be celebrated, in a way, but it shouldn't be the lone focus.  Most sportswriters out there seem to be getting it right.

In his first 7 starts (past 7 games), he's averaging 24.4 ppg, 9.1 apg and 1.6 spg. He was also undrafted. There aren't many players that have started that well.

I may have mentioned it earlier, but I read something about his first four games were actually an NBA record for points scored.  As crazy as that sounds.

The traditional thinking is that, since basketball is a relatively uncomplicated game where success is primarily driven by skill and athleticism, it is unlikely that the guy is a fluke that will fall back down to earth.

Yeah, that really is the thing.  His numbers are quite incredible, and that is before you consider the fact that he was undrafted.  This is not your average feel-good story, it is actually quite unprecedented.  More important, he has been the catalyst that has led them to winning 7 of the 8 games he has played. 

His turnover numbers are way too high, but they can probably work on that.  Besides, it hasn't seemed to matter a whole lot.

Lin is providing something that Mark D'Antoni's teams need to work-  energy.  It will be interesting to see how marginalized Melo becomes with this setup.  We have seen that Stoudemire can work very well within D'Antoni's scheme.  I'm not sure that Melo can do it.

Danica Patrick is a terrible driver and I wish she would go away.

I agree.  She's not even hot. 

There are about 30 drivers that are terrible - who cares if they have a penis?

Because they don't get shoved down our throats and plastered on modelling contracts. When you are terrible, you're supposed to get no coverage.

Exception: Tebow!

Don't forget kournikova, I don't care that she never won I always appreciated her highlights.

So apparantely Danica won the pole position in the Nationwide, prompting many statements about how she's the first woman to ever grab the pole.

I have many chuckles.  :why_so_serious:

DANICA INTO DA WALL

Yep she's already crashed again in the Nationwide.

So that's two cars she's managed to ruin now in this weekend.

Yeah, but she's hawt.   :oh_i_see:

(http://i2.cdn.turner.com/si/2009/writers/tom_bowles/07/30/NASCAR_fixes/danica-patrick-toronto.jpg)

I won't lie, I think she cleans up pretty good.  I'm generally not bothered by the media over-exposure of her, mostly because she doesn't seem like she goes out of her way to seek it.  I think she just wants to be a good race car driver, at the end of the day.


I seem to recall hearing that Kournikova was actually a very successful doubles player, so I guess she won plenty?

No one is forcing Danica to do the modelling stuff or the GoDaddy stuff. She knows exactly what she is, and she's taking full advantage of it.

I have no problem with milking your celebrity, I have problems with people pretending that she's anything but a hood ornament of NASCAR. She's there because she's hot. If she was an ugly chick and raced the way she does, she would have been bounced out of the league eons ago.

Who is pretending otherwise?   :awesome_for_real:

She's not even that hot.  No, really.  She's Glamour Shots hot.  Anyone with professional hair & makeup can look reasonably attractive.  She's an average woman with both in all the "hot" pics.  There should be a disclaimer on all such photoshopped & treated displays  "Person in Picture is Hotter than they appear."

She's hot for a NASCAR driver.   :oh_i_see:

I agree with you though.  She doesn't do anything for me.  In the non photoshopped photos that you see of her she looks a little mannish for my tastes. 

Woman in a predominantly male sport (like all American sports, really). I can't wait for the first female placekicker in football.

Only thing I can't stand is the media paint-up of her. She can drive, we'll see how well she fairs in the coming years when she gets used to the bump and grind of closed-wheel stockcar racing.

And who gives a shit if she is using her gender to make some money? People do that all the time. I have more of a problem with how people play up Junior - considering he is the "face" of NASCAR with a pedigree. Outside of that, he is an average driver.

Again, I don't have a problem with people using their gender to make money in sports. We invented a whole genre of "stupid reporter" called sideline reporting, just so hot chicks could have something moderately serious to do on camera during a game.

I just don't like novelty in racing. Win or don't win. That goes for Junior as well. He's as much of a freaking novelty as Danica, and just as terrible on the track.

Not sure if green.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Hnida)

I assumed that he was talking about the NFL since we're discussing getting paid.

Yes, my mis-step there. I am talking on the professional level.

Now if she would have kicked for LSU that would have been a completely different story.   :awesome_for_real:

 :rimshot:

She was a novelty as well, though. I think she kicked 2 extra points and wrote a book about getting molested by the other players.

Oh and Danica's crashed for the 3rd time this weekend. This time in the first lap along with JJ, and Bayne.

There goes ALL interest in the race. They singlehandedly took out the best racer, the novelty pick, and the defending champ in a matter of 5 minutes.

From what I'm reading none of these crashes were actually her fault?

No, apparently it was Elliott Sadler who nudged Jimmie Johnson into the wall and caused the pile up.

That doesn't actually seem to matter... all anyone seems to want to believe is that she wrecked again, must be that she is a bad driver. This is as far as I can go with it before I get pissed off.

Paelos is never wrong about sports matters.

No, women drivers, boys, women drivers!  If men are always wrong in all matters then women are always the problem drivers!  :awesome_for_real:

I'm curious what percentage of drivers on the circuit she has to outperform to 'belong'.

Are we seriously having a discussion about NASCAR?   :oh_i_see:

Should we break out the banjos and moonshine?

She's not even the real news. It's been wreck after wreck with cautions coming out seven times, only to lead up to Montoya actually running into a drying truck and causing an explosion. So now everything's gone red flag, and the race is just a mess.

EDIT: I should mention that running into the truck caused a jet fuel leak and fire. So now it's about getting the jet fuel which caught ablaze off the track, in addition to checking that the track is functional. Which I think it may not be at this rate.

It's likely damaged beyond anything they can repair while the race is running.

Now there's huge crews of people dumping sand or something literally across a turn in the track. It's not looking good for a pre-midnight finish.

It's probably something to suck up all the fuel on the ground.

Page with video of crash and aftermath:

http://www.nascar.com/video/post-race/highlights/120227/cup-day-high-eight/index.html

In one of the funnier moments, now they are saying they have to scrub the track with dishwashing soap.  :awesome_for_real:

Makes sense to me, that stuff is all about breaking through oils and junk. I also imagine they aren't just squirting a bottle of Dawn on the track and using some kind of concentrated solution.


Though if they are that would indeed be funny.

Pretty amazing display of both emergency response and quick reconstruction of the crash site.  One of the more entertaining races I've seen in a while. Pretty rare when you have the dirvers out on the backstretch huddled around an iPhone playing with Twitter in the middle of a race while they try to repair the results of a conflagration.  Now if only a fist fight had broken out in the infield it would have been the best 500 evar!

Oh, and on Danica. It's not really her, it's her sponsors that really push her out there. Godaddy obviously paid Fox a ton of money to feature the car a certain number of times.  She is just using what she has to get paid and I can't fault anyone for doing that really.  She is a competent driver actually.  I mean, you are talking about drivers in the top .01 percent of the sport and she is in that mix not embarrassing herself.  None of her wrecks had anything to do with her driving. She was turned in the Nationwide and collected in the other wrecks.

Plus, anything unusual is going to get coverage. Look at the Lin stuff.  It's just the sports media mentality. They have to fill all that time with something

They do that for anything oily and greasy.  It became common practice around Cincinnati about 12 years ago when a tanker hauling rendered fat overturned on one of the major east-west overpasses. (I-74 & I-75 interchange.)  They couldn't find any commercial products typically used for road spills that would get rid of it.  Then one of the execs with P&G suggested using Dawn since it's specifically formulated to cut grease.   
Not Kidding. (http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1696&dat=19980502&id=efoaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=00cEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4289,133876)
 Cleanup Pt. 2. (http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19980506&id=BlxPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kwMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5064,2074135)

They also use plain old Dawn to clean animals affected by oil spills.  Same reason.

That was the most entertaining Daytona since I started watching NASCAR in 2000, but it was not for the racing per se. Seriously, the juggernaut, Jimmy Johnson gets punted (and Danica) in the first minutes of the race, couple big wrecks, god damn fireball wreck into a blower truck (rule change incoming), the "face" of NASCAR was actually in it (but had little chance the way that 18 car was able to run just about anyway it wanted), and a repeat champion (though Kenseth is more a wallflower on the circuit, he still has a nice resume). And all during primetime on Monday night... only thing that killed it was the duration. NASCAR tides me over till college football starts, so this was a nice spearhead into the season.

And in other news, anyone watch the interviews with RGIII from the combine? Christ he is impressive. Luck or RG3? I just can't imagine the Colts aren't at least curious about Griffin.

Don't be fooled by the underpants Olympics. Luck is still the guy for Indy. They don't need to take any risks, and RG3 is still considered a risk.

Yeah, Luck is regarded by some experts as the best QB prospect in the past 30 years.  He's the Colts' man. 

I don't know.  There is some kind of weird football karma here that needs balancing.  There is entirely too much cock polishing going on with Andrew Luck.  Everyone is just a little too pleased with him, and it is just too convenient to think he will come in and replace Peyton and Indy will roll on.

So I am just going to flat out say it.  I think he is going to flop.

I dunno if he will flop, but that team needs a lot more than just a QB. Say what you will about with-Peyton and without-Peyton, there is only so much you can do given your receiving corp and O-line. Then there is the defensive side of the ball. Indy has been declining since their last superbowl, just not particularly steep.

I say this partly projecting from my own woeful team's perspective. I keep thinking, if the Browns make the trade for RG3, what exactly is that going to do for them as a team? The O-line is suspect and the Browns haven't had a receiving corp since the 80s. So if RG3 remains upright for 5 seconds, who is he going to throw to that won't drop it? Surprisingly, the Browns defense turned a corner, but the offense just has no tools at all which makes grabbing a "franchise" QB sorta pointless. Then again, Cleveland is where athletes go to get experience playing other professional teams before getting out and actually being a success.

He may flop, he may not.  Who can tell?  He'll still go number one.

Doesn't Cleveland do that for Coaches as well, or is Bellichick the exception?

No question about that.  I just think all the "sure-fire!" talk in the media is beyond ridiculous.  I am merely predicting that the universe will attempt to balance itself out somehow. 

The road to the NFL is riddled with top prospects who never did shit.

Tim Couch is a nice example.  A hell of an athlete and a hell of an arm.  He just didn't have what it took to play. 

Interestingly, I know a couple of his relatives and they say that the biggest reason that he didn't stick in the NFL is that he is dumber than a box of rocks.  He couldn't memorize even the most basic playbook for Cleveland.

More like they go there to die unless they make a pact with Satan. Curse of Paul Brown that only a blood ritual could break. Since the New Browns:


Yeah... not a lot of hope there. Crennel might have a shot in KC, but yeah... Factory of Sadness status. Even before that, Shottenheimer was one of the only "successes," but even then, he couldn't get over the hump.

Which actually brings me to this curse thing. The Cubs in Chicago obviously comes to mind and the Lions in Detroit, but does any other city compare to Cleveland in sports woe (in terms of actually winning a championship)? Indians were good in the late 90s (and I was at the Jake for many a sold out game back then), but still never got the Series. Cavs... /cry. Browns... /weep.

Well, the hit piece on Ben Howland (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/magazine/02/28/ucla/index.html?eref=sihp&sct=hp_t11_a1) is finally here.  SI.com did a story on him and the UCLA program trying to essentially demonize Howland.  He does sound a bit like a piece of shit, but the real story is on Reeves Nelson.  That guy is fucking nuts, and likely has antisocial personality disorder.  If I was an NBA team I would stay far the fuck away from Reeves Nelson.  

And if I were Howland I would be readying my attorney.  This is a true hit piece and will likely cost him his job.

Losing games in a conference that's largely irrelevant in college basketball over the last 5 years doesn't do you many favors.

I haven't been able to follow the Browns at all since moving to Cincy, I just knew they were in a perpetual losing streak.  I didn't realize it was really Cincinnati levels of bad.  So sad.

Shottenheimer was the Brown's coach I grew up with, Belichick being coach only my Sr. year of High School.

Still, I'd think it was the curse of Art Modell, not Paul Brown.  Paul's "Legacy" infects southern Ohio.

No, but going to three straight final fours probably would have bought him another 4 or 5 years without this sort of thing. 

I'm trying to think of their signature wins in those runs. They beat Kansas, Memphis, and Gonzaga. The rest were pretty easy wins up until they got demolished by Florida. The conference just hasn't been good in a while and gets no real respect.

The fact that you're trying to diminish those final four runs is hilarious.  You are off your meds. FFS, stop.  Just be wrong about something for once and move on.

I'm not trying to diminish them, I was simply looking up what they did. You are reading too much into what I'm suggesting. I had no idea until I did some background on it. They had some great teams who got beat in the final four by a strong Florida team that was a complete anomoly in the SEC.

UCLA had a great team, I won't suggest otherwise at all. What we're discussing is the idea of why they have fallen down of late, expectations on that team in order to win, and whether the surrounding element of their conference is a factor for the ire. What I'm getting at is that when you are a great team in a bad conference, you're forgiven. But the moment you go average, you suck and are terrible, and you get hit pieces against you where you should be canned.

Meanwhile the PAC-10-12 has fallen on harder times in basketball. 4 bids last year, 2 bids in 2010, 6 in 2009 but only 1 left in the 16. That was sort of the turning point that leads us to now. 2009 was the last year where the PAC-10-12 had serious cred, and they had the UCLA runs to thank for that. Now, I'm looking at Bracketology and they are projected to get 3 bids along with the WCC and the Mountain West. Washington as a 10, Ca as a 9, and Arizona as an 11.

A big reason for their demise is that UCLA has had a shitty few years.  Oregon is usually pretty strong too, and they've been down. 

Getting to the final four three years in a row is something that only K and Izzo have done in the modern tournament.  That is golden, regardless of their path.

My entire point about this is that he shouldn't have to be a babysitter for these kids.  They are adults and should be able to know when to party and when not to party.  Did he screw up with Reeves Nelson?  Sure he did.  It sounds like it would be tough not to though.  The kid is an animal.  Howland should be given a second chance. 

Have you BEEN to college? Yes, they are "adults" but let's face it... college kids don't often act like it. That's why you get the "LOLCOLLEGE" response from people when you mention things like partying by college athletes. Someone will have that faraway look in their eyes that signifies they are remembering the time they drank 17 shots of Jager and ended the night face down in a mud puddle with a diaper on after having run a train on some passed out sorority chick. And what the fuck was that badger doing there?

Athletes who have been courted by multiple big name schools, whose faces are plastered on television and who get interviewed by ESPN dudes in their locker have to be really mature individuals to not get their heads turned by the notoriety. That's not to excuse it, nor is it to say the coach should be their babysitter. But he damn well better know what's going on and try to make sure his players aren't getting busted by the cops, or doing crazy whacked out shit like trying to injure their teammates in practice running a illegal pick because "dude looked at me funny."

These guys are 18 and can vote.  They should act like adults.  If people that age can't act like grownups we should take away that right to vote and basically all other adult privileges until they reach 21 (something I'm not entirely opposed to).

I agree with you that he should have had a better grip on the situation, but we weren't there.  All we have is this hit piece of "journalism" to go on, and I daresay that it's pretty biased.  Another thing is that sociopaths like Reeves Nelson are pretty good at hiding things and also good at bullying.  It sounds to me like he was also bullying the coach. 

Do you remember 18? If you did, and you remember the people you hung around with, you'd slap yourself for making that statement.

Sure they SHOULD act like adults. They don't. Fuck it, I didn't and I was both intelligent and fairly mature. I got drunk off my ass and drove that way more times than I care to remember, despite knowing how fucktastically stupid that is. I did the same thing at 21. An arbitrary number of birthdays that comes attached to a privilege to choose your society's government does not in any way signify an ability to act responsibly. I know people twice that age who don't act as responsibly as my teenage nephew.

Congratulations. You finally made a post SO fucking stupid I can't unroll my eyes. Anyone know a good surgeon?

Really dude?  Does it matter when your head is up your ass?   :grin:

Or do you need the surgeon to remove that for you?

Yes, it is me whose head is up his ass. That must be what it is.   :oh_i_see:

I'm going to attempt to not turn this into fisticuffs, even though you're clearly looking for some PvP action here.  It is perfectly appropriate and reasonable to expect people who are considered adults to behave as such.  I don't care if they are 18 or 98.  That expectation involves not breaking the law, being good to those folks that are around us and generally not being a jackass.  If you believe otherwise it certainly is you that has your head up your ass.   :awesome_for_real:

At 18, they are ACCOUNTABLE for doing stupid things - but very few people really expect an 18 year old to act responsibly. Quite frankly, I don't think they should, because at 18, you learn when not to be a jackass by not having the fallback of your parents and your status as a minor. College athletes, especially at a big school like UCLA, are treated like kings, and thus, without someone on the coaching staff or the team holding them accountable for being a dumbass, they will be a dumbass because while they don't have mama's skirts as a fallback, they also don't have mama's restrictions on their behavior either. You can expect an 18-year old to be responsible - you can also expect fairies to come from another dimensional realm and grant you all the wishes you want, but unless your name is Timmy, neither one of those things is happening without some external force enabling it.

Well, the law holds these folks accountable and expects them to act responsibly.  There is no legal difference between someone who is 18 or 100, as far as I know (feel free to correct me if wrong, Ab).  And yes, I was 18 once, just like all of these guys and I had fun but you know what?  I had my shit together enough to actually be able to make something out of myself.  The players on this team should be able to do that on their own, without an excess of hand holding.  Bed checks and curfews are for 14 year olds.

Know why we don't expect it?  Because that's how the culture expects them to behave.  Do you think humans were lolfuckstupid until 18 our entire evolution, too?  No, that's a recent occurrence.

I expect 18 year olds will make stupid decisions because of lack of life experience.  I do not expect them to be the kind of idiots regularly athletes are because they were treated like children and catered to for so long and have their shit covered-up because big money is involved and they have talent at a kid's game other man-children like throwing money at.   Neither does the rest of the nation since, y'know, we let them carry guns and kill at 18, too.

Shit, you get it with kids in their 20's now on a regular basis, too.  "Oh, he's only 25 he does't know any better."  Fuck you for lowered expectations.

Perhaps you did. But not everyone is like you. If everyone had the same level of maturity, no, these athletes would not need hand holding. Some folks just can't handle their shit. Period.

EDIT TO ADD: It gets worse with certain sectors (like athletics or entertainment) because these people are making someone else money. College athletes are not only making the university money, but ESPN money and various TV networks. These kids are CASH COWS and they get whatever the fuck they want and can get away with. If you don't have someone like a coach keeping that kid grounded, do you really expect most will be able to handle their shit? Maybe 1 out of 100 would when given the star treatment.

Why wouldn't we, as a society, expect them to handle their shit?  As Merusk said, there are plenty of examples of how society does expect them to be able to function as adults.  There are lots of players/actors/musicians that do handle their shit at that age.  We generally just hear about the fucking idiots who don't, like the players in question here.  There are a ton of guys that do very, very well with that sort of pressure.  Kobe Bryant is one.  Kevin Garnett is another.  They may have very well been running around partying and what have you, but they had the sense to do it when it was time to do it and they took care of business when it was time to take care of business. 

The reason we've moved away from that accountability at 18 is because we've effectively started adding on college education for 4 years as a mandatory part of the development process. It wasn't uncommon 50 years ago for the majority of adults to just get a job and move on with your life at that age.

That being said, when you exploit kids for your money, you get what you deserve when they lash out.

People have always been fuckstupid at 18, they were just fuckstupid people who had more responsibility if you go back.

Well, the point remains then-  if they're going to act like adolescents why don't we give them the rights and responsibilities of adolescents? 

Because they have to grow up sometime?

It isn't unusual for people to still be growing physically through their early twenties. I don't really understand why we can accept that but at 18 they must suddenly be utterly adult in every other way. The brain is still changing too.

The draft.  :why_so_serious:

Actually, people are still growing both physically and mentally quite a bit through their late teens and early 20s.  If you look at people that you know that go off to college at age 18 and then you don't see them again for 4 years, they often behave and act quite a bit differently.  It's tougher to see when you see them every day or week.

So to get this out of the politics nosedive, what the hell is up with the news agencies fucking with Tiger Woods over wanting to be a Navy SEAL?  I mean hell, the guy did basically everything that you can possibly do wrong short of killing someone, and this is actually a somewhat wholesome goal.  I don't get it. 

In all honesty, it was because of the Vietnam War. The 26th amendment was put into place to make the voting age 18 because they were being drafted. That's it. They wanted to give kids who would go shoot somebody the right do vote on it.

It has nothing to do with kids being fuckups on the college campus. They were then, and they are now. We just have more media coverage of it.

Because it's so delusional and Tiger has such an ego that it is amusing to puncture.

I suppose it does make him squirm quite a bit when it's brought up.   :grin:

Apparently made him squirm a whole lot when a reporter brought it up the other day.

It is really, really weird how this guy has tanked so bad ever since his incident.  I mean, we could all kinda predict he'd go through a rough patch, but he has become nearly irrelevant on the course itself.

There's a lot of discussion that it's the Nike putter, rather than the incident itself, that has killed his success.  Greg Norman was talking the other day about how his putting stroke seems different every time he goes out.  Tiger really needs to man up and get himself a short game coach.  He's too old for dicking around  :grin:

In his favor is the fact that most true superstars (Nicklaus, Watson, etc.) seem to have a short burst of greatness toward the end of their career that will sometimes net them a major or two.  Tiger is that sort of player, and if he gets his putting together he could really pick back up where he was before.

Also, injuries and being off the juice.

Key point. In 2009, the year of his famous crash on Thanksgiving, for the 5 years leading up to that Tiger had averaged 303.5 yards per drive.

In 2010-2012? He's averaging 295. Why does that matter? Because in addition to coming up shorter on average, he's also gone from #1 on tour in greens in regulation for 07-08, to 167th and 37th in 10-11. He's not able to get home as easily anymore. It's not sudden age that caught up with him in 2 years.

Seriously, a guy named Bubba just won the Masters.  Really?   :drill:


Addendum:  God sports are boring this time of year.   :oh_i_see:

Wow.  Pat Summit is retiring after 38 seasons (http://espn.go.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/7828864/pat-summitt-steps-aside-coach-lady-vols).  She is, somewhat amazingly, only 59 years old. 

Understandable considering her mental diagnosis. However, yeah... 38 seasons and not even 60 years old is quite admirable.

Very much a legend of the game. It's a sad illness.

She really is a sporting legend.  It will be sad to see her go.  I was befuddled by her age because she has been around so freaking long.  I expected her to be at least 69.  Interestingly, she looks about 10 years older than she actually is at 59.  I guess basketball coaching is pretty stressful.  And putting up with Bruce Pearl could age anyone.

Anyone want to take any bets as to how long Larry Brown lasts as SMU's coach (http://espn.go.com/dallas/ncb/story/_/id/7833478/smu-mustangs-announce-larry-brown-take-coach)?  I'm wagering he will make it through the first season (a season in which they will struggle to make .500) an then quit.

I hope he doesn't die on the job.

Ah, yes.  Neon Deion was apparently attacked by his estranged wife and some other person (http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/24/sport/deion-sanders-wife/index.html?hpt=hp_t2). 



Rich, famous people should not be allowed to get married nor should they be allowed to procreate.  They are, every last one of them, fucking lunatics. 

So Clint Dempsey has 23 goals for his Fulham squad this year and 50 total in the English Premier League.  Is he the best American to ever play the sport?  

No, he's the luckiest American to ever play the sport.  :awesome_for_real:

I will say that my appreciation for him has grown recently. I still think he's more lucky than good, by that I mean his best quality seems to be his innate ability to be at the right place at the right time as opposed to any stunning physical ability. Most of the goals I've seen him score are poacher's goals. Still, you can't argue with his scoring stats for Fulham.

That same "luck" made Gretsky the greatest hockey player ever.  It might not be "ability" but whatever it is, it is a rare gift and any athlete so endowed should not have its importance belittled.  My using that word is not an accusation that you are so doing.

Oh no, I realize that especially in soccer, positioning is a talent almost as important as passing, tackling or shooting. Getting in the best place to receive a pass that lets you turn and make a better pass or a killer shot is extremely important. That just happens to be what Dempsey is good at.

Going to stick this in the death of football thread, but this part caught my attention and swept it into this thread:


From here: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/ben_reiter/05/09/ban-college-football-debate/index.html

I kinda like the idea.

College athletics is one of the biggest shams in history, as it stands today.  I'm not sure what most athletic programs do for their universities and colleges and to have such emphasis on sport really detracts from their mission. 

It's been a long running goal of mine to bury the bowl system by picking over their 990 filings and public document requests proving they are unworthy of non-profit status.

Normally, I don't like horse racing considering the fact I hate horses... but holy shit the Preakness was pretty god damn intense. I doubt the horse will take the triple crown, but with the way he ran down Bode today... hard not to favor him.

Yeah, what a great race. Jock almost waited too long before he let him go. Wow, that horse can close.

The Preakness would be only the second time I've made a point of watching a horse race. It's getting huge play here, as the jockey Gutierrez is based out of Hastings Park (downtown Vancouver).

This will be a good year to watch the Belmont, that's for sure.

Well, no triple crown this year.  I'll have another is out of the Belmont with a swollen tendon (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/more/06/08/Ill-Have-Another-scratches-from-Belmont.ap/index.html?eref=sihp&sct=hp_t11_a0).    :heartbreak:

Caught that on the breaking news... sucks ass, but way better than having another Barbaro episode. That horse could close like no one's business.

Nobody wants to watch another horse essentially die on the track.

Your Ultimate Frisbee fix for the day:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pOJ9GzWOTOY

I grew up going to Churchill Downs and Keeneland and I can say that there is little more jarring than watching them have to shoot a horse on the track when it's broken a leg.  I don't particularly care for horse racing because of this possibility.  It's a dirty sport that's probably as full of doping as cycling and, on top of that, the horses aren't particularly treated all that great. 

Jerry Sandusky is fucked (http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_t2#/video/us/2012/06/19/point-nbc-sandusky-costas-intv-helping-young-people.cnn). 

The guy is indefensible.  I don't know how his attorneys can sleep at night.

If his lawyer was smart, he'd have plea-bargained this case. He didn't, and now we get to watch this asshole twist in the wind.

I believe in forgiveness, but I hope Sandusky is tortured by what he's done while he goes to prison for the rest of his life. I hope it will also help the victims move on to have semi-normal lives knowing that there was at least some small form of justice done.

This type of justice won't fix them.  And he won't be rehabilitated nor will he be a good example/deterrant for potential child molesters.  Better to put a bullet in his head. 

And here we have the mother of all bad ideas in sports marketing (http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/18/us/adidas-shackle-shoes/index.html?hpt=hp_c2).  

(http://cbsdetroit.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/shoes.jpg?w=300)


Addendum-   :ye_gods:

What...

The...

Fuck?

I agree.. those are a horrible style and color choice. :why_so_serious:

OH OH THE CHAINS and SHACKLES!  :uhrr: 

Yeah, saw that earlier today and really wondered if people are so far removed from reality that it did not occur to them that those might be a tad bit wrong.

/danieltosh "High Fashion"

Sepp Blatter now says that "goal line tech is a necessity" (http://espnfc.com/us/en/news/1109501/sepp-blatter-wants-goalline-tech.html).  Is there anyone more comically incompetent than this asshat?  While just before the 2010 World Cup he was against it.  He is the consummate politician. 

Why would soccer be afraid of goal line tech? I mean shit, it can't possibly slow down the game, nobody scores that much.

I'll become a diehard soccer fan when they start doing something about all of the dives and play acting.  That shit ruins the sport far more than any pace or lack of scoring issues.

No shit.  Until they do the retroactive penalties/cards for the floppers nothing will change.

He is such a cockmunch. Hell, the entire soccer world was saying it was a necessity after the 2010 World Cup while he put it on a "meh, we'll see" ignore list. The only thing I can think of is he didn't get enough kickbacks from the companies making GLT until now. Corrupt shitcock.

Well yeah. That too, but I can't imagine retroactive replay is a bad idea in any facet of soccer.

This almost makes the whole Sandusky case worthwhile (http://deadspin.com/5919859/?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_facebook&utm_source=deadspin_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow). I am a horrible person because I can't stop laughing at this.

And it is unfortunately starting to infiltrate our other sports as well.

Chris Bosh flops like a complete bitch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h60uviwKC0)

Lebron being a fucking weenie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihuOrQHSjWQ&feature=related)

The NBA-  where acting happens.... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKh8Zq6zhRc&feature=related)

Yeah and it's already becoming an issue with the commish. However, I can see them stopping it through suspensions. Soccer won't do that.

Soccer should have done it years ago, but they can't even seem to get their shit together and come up with a simple electronic system to determine whether or not a goal is actually a goal.

I was watching the European championships the other day (BTW the Irish team SUCKED and should have been beaten over the head as they got on the plane) and it was pretty stupid. For example, Italian player screams and flops on the ground clutching the back of his leg. The ref ignores it and the guy stays on the ground till the ref is forced to blow the whistle while the Irish team is actually attacking the italian goal for once in their lives in order to see if he is alright. Then the guy gets up, limps a bit then is suddenly jumping over tall buildings again.

And then they run the slowmo and the guy had actually slammed his shin off the back of an irish players leg rather than the other way around.

Even the defenders of the game say that the diving game is ruining the sport. Oddly I watched an american game on ESPN the other day and enjoyed it as there was none of that shit.

I hope everyone is watching the exhilarating 0-0 tie between the Czechs and Portugal today.   :oh_i_see:

Better than watching a bunch of doped up bicyclists riding around on their ten-speeds, screwing up traffic.  :why_so_serious:

I would disagree, but to each their own. 

To be fair, the Italian team is NOTORIOUS for being diving bitches. It's one of the reasons I can't watch Seri A games (along with the Italian game being extremely defensive in nature). It infects the other major leagues, but not nearly as much as Seri A or the Italian national team.

Unless FIFA starts retroactively issuing cards for obvious dives, it ain't going away. They already do that sort of thing in the appeals process for red cards (i.e. rescinding a red card giving in error), so why not do it for diving if you are really serious about cutting that shit out of the game.

Now Sandusky's adopted kid, Matt, has accused him of abuse.  Again, this dude is indefensible.  It's sickening.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/12021422/Photos/schland.jpg)

Sandusky guilty on 45 counts. He will die in prison.

He got off light.

I doubt he lives long.

Is he still out on bond? If so, he will kill himself. Like he should have done 30 years ago when he started fucking people who couldn't give consent.

No.  They revoked his bail and took him to jail.  Apparently he'll be kept in solitary confinement for a while, probably to keep an eye on him and see how stable he is.

If he wanted to kill himself he should have done it long before the judgment was passed.

I watched the Germany-Greece match from a random pub here in Corfu, and the locals were pretty livid when the Merkinator came on screen  :why_so_serious:

They same happens here in Germany. For different reasons, on the other hand maybe not so different at all...  :grin:

Spain is beating the fuck out of France so far.  It's only 1-0, but they've completely dominated the match.  They look very, very good.

Oh England, is there no situation you can't fuck up?  :oh_i_see:

I got kind of disgusted with the England-Italy match. Italy was the better team because all England did was sit 10 guys behind the ball almost the entire fucking game. Granted, some of the England internationals are overrated - in particular I'm thinking of James fucking Milner. But there are some quality players on that team, and Hodgson had them lined up like they were a relegation-threatened lightweight up against Man U. Fucking ATTACK for FUCK'S SAKE. Milner starting every game on the right wing was idiotic. He's 1) better in the center of midfield (though not as good as either Parker or Gerrard) and 2) better defensively than offensively so is wasted as a winger. Glenn Johnson's defensive weaknesses luckily didn't affect them (probably because he had Milner back there defending most of the time). Wayne Rooney, whether from ring rust or just his usual disappearing act in big tournaments, was fucking worthless against Italy. Andy FUCKING STATUE Carroll had a better game than Rooney.

EDIT: Also, Germany is going to win the Euros.

I hope Germany does. I find them the least objectionable of the remaining divefests.

I don't know if anyone here watches F1 but the race in Valencia on the weekend was pretty nuts.

I cant stand Lewis and yet I still feel bad for him as he didn't deserve to go out like that.

Overall a great season so far!

I do, but usually time shifted for sometime durning the week.

Also all you people bitching about diving in soccer, MLS rewatches every game and dishes out Reds and fines for diving and other unsportsmanlike conduct.

Also, every single MLS game (save Dalas v Chivas) was more entertaining than the Euro Quarters this weekend. I didn't say higher quality. I said more entertaining.

Germany versus Spain would be a quality match.

That's what the final will be.

You know, I've cheered England on in the past and I can't for the life of me figure out why.  They play the most boring style of football and continually choke.  The only thing interesting about them is that Wayne Rooney is likely to shiv someone at any moment.  I think I'm done.  I'm either adopting Spain or Germany.  Probably Germany because they've brought football out of the dark ages of 89 minutes behind the ball and hope for a lucky cross.   :oh_i_see:

England keeps hiring managers who don't know how to do anything but 4-4-2, 10 behind the ball counter-attacking football. Which works great if you're Fulham, but really shackles players like Gerrard and Ashley Young (who was USELESS this tourney), it really hinders their ability to make plays. Then you sit young talent like Oxlade-Chamberlain and Walcott (say what you want about him, when he was brought on as a sub, he had an impact - except against Italy where the team was told not to move into the other end of the field at all) and it's no wonder the team looks like a creaking inept monstrosity. Spain's football is gorgeous and effective, Germany just bosses the game against everybody but Spain.

I've never seen a squad control the ball like Spain.  "Oh, bad pass?  You'll be getting the ball back in about an hour". 

I'm really, really hoping that Germany changes the face of European football. 

Put me down for hoping Germany dominates. Fuck the Italians, Portugal, and Spain style of play.

Oh I enjoy the Spainish style of play the most as a viewer. They completely dominate play because their players are the best goddamn collection of players in the world.

I think Germany wins this Euro because Spain is missing some pretty significant talent in David Villa, and Fernando Torres has shown brief glimpses of his former glory against lesser teams. Germany is not a lesser team, and is only a half notch below Spain on the talent scale. They have fewer injuries to important people and a striker who is firing heat seeking missiles he's so on form. Normal day, I give Spain the nod. When their coach has to resort to using what is in essence 6 midfielders because he doesn't trust his strikers, I give it to Germany.

I thought Villa was playing.  I swear the announcer called his name against France.

I'm not so sure. Spain doesn't seem have much in the way of striking at the moment. It will have to be some great stuff From Xavi or Iniesta in the middle to get it done (although they are certainly capable of that). Renaldo, as much as I dislike the guy, seems to be on fire.  A Portugal win would not surprise me at all.

David Villa didn't play against France, or even feature on the bench.

Spain hasn't really NEEDED striking. While yes, Portugal and Ronaldo are hot at the moment, I think they will lose. Even without a striker, Spain can just boss possession so much that they can minimize Ronaldo's involvement and the rest of the team is not nearly on the same level as Ronaldo. I do expect that Torres will start against Portugal, though.

Ronaldo is the type of player that can drop 2 or 3 goals on a team in short order, even a good team like Spain. 

Man, this semifinal has been excruciatingly boring.  :x

This is why I don't want either team to win this thing. Ugh.

The ref is booking a ham sandwich at this point to keep these cheeseballs from completely cocking up this game.

 :argh:

So much diving. So much sloppy passing. Spain actually showed up in extra time, but fuck me, they needed Torres or Llorente to be on the end of some of those crosses they were making once Navas and Rodriguez got in the game.

Oh Pedro. You are terrible.

Go Germany!

And at this point, I stop caring about Euro 2012. There is absolutely no way this final can be good.

Well boo.

Italy versus Spain.  Bleh.   :uhrr:

The part of the game I saw at lunch wasn't too horribly defensive and dive-y, but that was just the first half.

Well fuck. I didn't get time to watch this streaming at work, and I stupidly read this thread and got my Tivo recording spoiled. But since Italy won, that's really something I don't want to see.

GO SPAIN!

according to my colleagues at work, germany's piss-poor defending is exposed.
Thank god they drop out now really, because Spain would've exploited it to the fullest -

Most of the office backs Italy now since they're bored of spain.

Backing Italy is something I cannot bring myself to do.  Boring, defensive football and non-stop diving.  NON STOP.  It is an embarassment to all sports, that kind of bullshit.

There are a few factors at play here actually.

The German line up includes eight Munich players all of which have been at the Champions League final. Look at Schweinsteiger he looked tired and down for most of the Euro. They still haven't gotten over the Chelsea defeat IMO.

It's not piss poor defending but rather sloppy work and an Italian set-up (4-2-3-1 with two strikers playing deep) that's a bit "old school" and harder to defend when you use a more more modern style 4 player block defense. (Also the reason why Greece is unexpectedly effective even though they are not really that good).

All of the players are young (Kroos is 19 for example) and they lack the experience and concentration to keep up their game for a whole tournament.

I see it more as an issue with Löw actually. For someone who wants to be unpredictable and perfect he makes a few choices I don't get

He should have used the starting line up from the Greece game. IMHO tactically a better fit against Italy. His insistence to keep Boateng, Gomez and Schweinsteiger in the starting line up is especially startling since those three have basically been the weak points of an otherwise brilliant and technically sound line up during the competition.

Gomez and Boateng brought down the tactical set up of Germany with their refusal to change their playstyle to help the german game and forced Khedira and Özil to play out of position for most of the match. Gomez because he doesn't support the game in midfield and instead relies on being passed to (and therefore can't support the midfielders during attacks or when they switch to defending) something he has in common with Podoski. A style he has been called out on multiple times during the competition.

You could see how much better the game from midfield was once Podolski and Gomez weren't there any more both at the Italy game and against Greece.

Boateng's sloppy work contributed to much of the disorganisation in the defense and contributed to quite a few chances from Italy. He hadn't improved from the Greece game at all (where his weak game opened up the way for Greece's first goal)

Combine that with the best performance of Italy in this Euro and you have trouble brewing.

Löw's tinkering with tactics and line-ups while brilliant at times contributed heavily to our defeat though.

They are the Duke basketball of international soccer.   :why_so_serious:

Schweinsteiger had a HORRIBLE game against Greece, one of the worst I've ever seen him play. Normally, he's absolutely rock solid. He looked tired and worn down. His passes were awful. Starting Kroos against Italy was a mistake. I think Muller would have been a better choice, as I think his absence against Spain in World Cup 2010 is one of the reasons they lost that game. I don't have a problem with Gomez starting but agree with you about Boateng. The other guy they started in the 3rd group game would have been the better choice.

Schweinsteiger was playing injured through the whole tournament, so it isn't too surprising he wasn't up to his normal standards.

Uh, Spain is good.

Yeah, and Italy punched above their weight by beating Germany, they had to go to penalties to beat an England team that barely even tried to score after the 70th minute. Spain is really that much better than the rest of the freaking world right now, because they spent most of the tourney without even a true striker on the pitch, and still weren't in real danger of getting knocked out the whole time. I didn't expect them to win it because I expected Germany to do better.

Germany would have given Spain a better match, IMO.

Fucking exciting win by Mark Cavendish today in the TdF.  The guy still has it with no team to lead him out.  Brings back memories of Robbie McEwan who I used to like quite a bit.

Lance Armstrong is completely fucked (http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/report-hincapie-leipheimer-vande-velde-zabriskie-vaughters-give-evidence-against-armstrong).  The USADA has George Hincapie, Christian Van de Velde, Dave Zabriskie, Jonathan Vaughters and Levi Leipheimer all testifying against Armstrong.  They were all allowed to testify in exchange for 6 month doping suspensions.  

Edit-  Now Vaughters is denying any suspensions have been levied (http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/vaughters-no-slipstream-sports-usada-suspensions). 

How they can let Serena Williams still compete in Tennis without ridiculous testing on her is beyond me. Her body looks like nothing else on the woman's tour.

All it would require is a panty check.   :awesome_for_real:

Finally watched the game after giving myself a media blackout, Ecstatic that Federer won another Wimbledon and broke more records, bad luck to Murray but maybe next year...  :awesome_for_real:

Can't wait to watch the tour tonight.  I was thinking I might like Wiggins, but he seems to be a major fucktard so I'm pulling for Evans.  According to Cyclingnews Evans has been putting a lot of heat on Wiggins.  I love the mountains. 

The Penn State investigation report just got released this morning.

Holy hell.  :ye_gods:

It proves in extreme detail how this thing was being covered up at the highest levels, including by JoePa, since 1998.

You know, the idea that Penn State concealed facts regarding Jerry Sandusky's little boy romps was something that most of those familiar with the issue, i.e. everyone, suspected, but this new report from the former FBI director Louis Freeh (http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8159195/report-says-penn-state-senior-officials-disregarded-children-welfare) is pretty much going to fuck Penn State.  They should get their checkbooks ready because they are going to be out millions of dollars by the time this is all over.  



My personal hope is that this will open up some eyes as to what is considered proper reporting of these issues.  I know that many in my own profession are negligent in reporting problems of this sort (physical and sexual abuse) when confronted with it because of the fear of legal ramifications for themselves, i.e. getting sued.  Still, there's a fine line between reporting inappropriate contact between kids and adults and creating an enormous quagmire of whistleblowers and lawsuits and tedious investigations over every minute complaint that is made.  I can't help but believe that you could prevent most of these issues with appropriate rules and regulations regarding contact with minors (or really anyone) in a social area.  There's really no reason for two people to be in a room with the door closed by themselves.  There should always be a third person mediator involved.  Additionally, there should always, always, always be windows in any door that isn't a bathroom or changing room.  

And I guess the next step for Penn State and the government of Pennsylvania is to go after these people that covered up this mess fairly aggressively.  I don't know if criminal charges could be filed, but every avenue possible to do so should be explored.

What a mess.   :facepalm:

The next step imo is to cancel the 2012 football season before the NCAA gives you the death penalty for doing nothing.

Seriously, fuck what the NCAA has to say about it.  PSU should be worried about civil and criminal penalties first.  While I tend to agree with you about cancelling the season, I don't think it will do a bit of good for their impending legal woes.  I'm also thinking about this from more of a prevention standpoint. 

Oh they are worried about their cash for sure. Which is why they will want to have a football season so they can pay off their debts.

This is about as close to the death penalty situation as you can get for a college football program. SMU got it for running cash slush funds through the university and repeatedly covering it up at the highest levels. These cover ups are even worse.

And somewhere on the University of Miami's campus, an athletic director is breathing a little easier.

And Ohio State. 

People are already arguing that the NCAA has no right to stop Penn State from playing football. That's ridiculous. The athletic department as a whole failed. It's the very definition of a program operating completely independently off the university, and in this case being ABOVE the university.

I think that the NCAA governs for particular issues and this may not fall within their focus.  I don't think anyone would mind (other than PSU fans) if the NCAA were to suspend them for a year or two.  They won't do it, though, as PSU is one of the most beloved institutions in the country and a HUGE moneymaker for the NCAA.  Money talks.  It won't happen.

I think there's too much vitriol. This is a defining moment for the NCAA to see if they care only about the cash. It would cause a very large problem in the community if they just ignore it.

I don't think they will ignore it, but they won't give PSU the death penalty.

IMO, anyone who knew about this shit and didn't tell police or testify at the trial needs to be in jail with Sandusky, toot suite. Ass-covering shitheels running the school letting that shit go on AND alerting the coach he had been caught just wrong on so many levels.

EDIT: And the NCAA, they need to get on the rape train to PSU just as fucking quickly. When you have a coach, AD and university president covering up CHILD MOLESTATION because it might make the football program look bad? It's time to not have those pretty football toys anymore.

One thing I don't like about this is that people are acting like this is a PSU problem and only a PSU problem.  There need to be evaluations at all institutions to make sure that their policies and training is appropriate for this type of situation.  One of the only ways you're going to get that is by completely destroying the PSU athletics program.

Addendum:  Here's the full Freeh report (http://i.cdn.turner.com/si/.element/img/4.0/global/swapper/201207/120712.01.pdf), if anyone wants to read it and is lazy. 

That's the NCAA's problem as a whole. All the violations the NCAA finds and reports on lean towards school athletics departments being corrupt, just that most of it is being covered up well. A university like Miami still having any athletics program after all the shit their football program has been up to over the years makes the NCAA look like a joke. And that's just for strippers, cash and tattoos and shit. When there's child-fucking going on? If the NCAA doesn't bring the hammer down, what good are they? It would just prove that successful, popular football programs can get away with anything.

From what I understand from reading the sports news outlets, the NCAA has been in touch with the PSU folks in regard to this.  A discussion on Mike and Mike or somewhere else that I was listening to suggested that it is pretty up in the air as to whether or not the NCAA can do anything.  Is this scenario addressed in their rules?  I don't know the answer to that question, but I doubt it unless it is some generalized catch all rule that would set them up for a lawsuit.  I doubt the NCAA is going to have the balls to go up against that.

But to answer your question-  the NCAA is no good.  They are a corrupt organization that is money hungry and biased. 

This has nothing to do with the stuff the NCAA has oversight over, though? Sandusky wasn't part of the football program when this stuff was going on, it didn't affect any student-athletes participating in NCAA programs, it all happened in a 3rd party charity, etc. etc. etc. I'm pretty sure it would be overstepping their power to do anything about this; the civil and criminal aspects of this all are going to fuck Penn State sufficiently anyway I would think. Seems like a prime 'get out of the way and let the real goverment do the fucking' moment to me.

It all has to do with what is in the "lack of institutional control" rules.  This is pretty damned clearly lack of institutional control as it involved football coaches and football facilities, but are the rules tight enough to encompass something that is quite different than they (the NCAA) are used to dealing with?  Who knows?  And in the end it will come down to whether or not the NCAA decides to continue its corrupt, greedy ways or grow a pair and do the right thing.  I'm suspecting it will be the former.

Nike will be changing the name of their Child Development Center and will remove Joe Paterno's name from the facility (http://sports.yahoo.com/news/report-nike-change-name-paterno-172013250--ncaaf.html). 


 :awesome_for_real:

I'm not sure why Nike didn't do this a long time ago, but at least they finally wised up.

It doesn't matter if Sandusky was employed. He was named a Coach Emeritus and had universal access to the Penn State program. The program itself knew about the issues on its watch and in its facilities. The highest levels of the program browbeat employees to keep it under wraps because they were afraid it would affect their program.

Ask yourself this question before you say it's not an NCAA problem: Would this have happened if the guy in question was a random physics professor? Would it have happened if it was the janitor? Would it have been covered up if the victims weren't random children, but actual relatives of university members? At every juncture, the administration chose football and money over justice and action. It happened because Jerry Sundusky was given access to the program by the administration, and that was the very currency he used to lure young boys into his web.

I've seen blatant alcoholism, drug use, theft and other issues covered up by administrations, so it's probably not too far fetched to think that a similar situation has occurred somewhere, at some time that wasn't related to sports. 

And those problems are mostly individual without individual victims. It's not the same. A similar issue would be covering up a rape charge.

Coverups happen all the time.  You still haven't convinced me that the NCAA has a clear stake in this game. 

I can't see how the NCAA wouldn't haven't some power over this. If they can skullfuck a program because a kid traded a trophy he won for a tattoo, why can't it handle a situation where the head coach and athletic director coerced a student coach (and now actual coach employed by the school) to cover up a fucking crime? I think they'd be stretching it a great deal if they tried to claim they COULDN'T do anything about this.

He was still a coach in 1998 when the first reported incident was investigated.

They may.  Only an attorney (and I suspect a lot of attorneys) can say for sure.  And I don't think it will be a matter of "Couldn't do anything about this".  They will do something, it's just a matter of what.  Will it be a slap on the wrist or will it be the death penalty?  I'd like to see them shut PSU down for a couple of years to prove a point, but it probably won't happen.  So you're probably looking at a post-season ban for a year or two or lost scholarships, which seem to me to be slap on the wrist type penalties. 

Under Compliance Principles of Institutional Control, Section C - Act that are likely to Demonstrate Lack of Control

#7 - A director of athletics or any other individual with compliance responsibilities
fails to investigate or direct an investigation of a possible significant violation of
NCAA rules or fails to report a violation properly.

#8 - A head coach fails to create and maintain an atmosphere for compliance within
the program the coach supervises or fails to monitor the activities of assistant
coaches regarding compliance.

Also, a Level 1 violation is now loosely listed as "A violation that seriously undermines or threatens the integrity of any of the NCAA enduring values"

The application of those rules to this situation sounds dicey to me, but I'm no attorney.  I'd love to hear one of the board attorneys' opinions on the matter. 

Looks like Penn State is going to renovate their showers (http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8164484/penn-state-nittany-lions-renovate-areas-where-boys-were-abused-jerry-sandusky) to make them less child molester friendly after the Sandusky revelations. 

I can't think of anything that falls more into the "oh fuck we've got to do something to make it look like we're doing something" category.  How about just having a rule that old men don't take little boys into the showers and if you do  you get the police called on you and you're fired?  I can legitimately see Penn State being relegated in all fields (academic, athletic, research) due to the amount of money that they're going to lose on this mess. 

Looks like Mark Emmert is considering heavy penalties (http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8171574/jerry-sandusky-scandal-ncaa-president-mark-emmert-signals-heavy-sanctions-penn-state) against PSU for the Sandusky issues.

I suspect that he (and the NCAA) will be all roar and then will hit them with little bite.  He's got some pretty strong words for PSU as of right now, however.


I think this is a pretty clear signal to PSU that they need to get some self imposed penalties in order and they better be good.  If they don't, the NCAA may bring down a huge hammer. 

They need to cancel this season, I think. There's nothing good that can come from these kids playing in opposing stadiums, nor can any PSU fan take pride in their product right now.

Yeah, I think you're right.  Hopefully greed won't win out.

At the very fucking least. I hate it for the kids who had nothing to do with it, but the utter callous lack of compassion for even younger children is just beyond the pale.

It's not like people are going to forget about this after a year, though. So what happens in 2013 if they cancel this year?

The best reason I heard for letting them play is that they are going to need to money to pay off all the lawsuits :awesome_for_real: :oh_i_see:

Yeah, but I think that people will be much more forgiving of a bad situation if they self impose the death penalty for a year or two.

The 1.8 billion endowment should take care of that.

But yes, a year out of the public eye will help put some of these issues to rest. The problem right now is that not even all the lawsuits or criminal cases are concluded. That break would give things time to get resolved.

These civil cases will be dragging on for years to come. 

There's also the chance that cancelling the season could bring even more scrutiny on PSU.  I still think it's the right thing to do, but they're properly fucked with all of this. 

I'm watching BBC news 24 right now, and so far its wall to wall Olympic cockups. Great entertainment.   :why_so_serious:

Who would put a guy named Buckles in charge of anything but a clown car?

I would like to see the other schools on the PSU schedule refuse to play them and force their hand. There really isn't a big enough fuck you anyone could deliver compared to what is deserved, but it would be a nice start.

No way will moral outrage outweigh the moneys from the games. What society do you think we live in? College football is one of the biggest money grabs in the world... no way they kill the cash cow by voluntarily forfeiting a game against PSU, no matter what the moral message would say. Not saying I fully disagree with you, but let's be realistic.

He was being realistic.  He just said what he would like to see, not what would likely happen. 

I think that would also be a fantastic way for the opposing schools to show their distaste.  Even better, kick them out of the Big Ten.

Frank Schleck out of the tour for a positive test (http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/frank-schleck-speaks-with-police-in-pau).  Apparently it was a diuretic.  

I love how his team manager throws him under the bus, as if he had no clue:

Addendum-  apparently Schleck is going with the "I was poisoned" defense, which isn't too far fetched if these guys are grabbing random bottles on their trek up a big hill. 

The culture in bicycle sport is sick and rotten. Just turn it into total entertainment @ "american-wrestling-on-bikes" or burn the whole thing down.  

Harder and more doping control is certainly justifiable! Hell keep the samples of riders and especially winners for 50 years, and test them with 5 year interval with all the newest tests available. And if they get caught, take away their titles and exclude them from participating in any kind of bicycle activities, like riding, training teams, managing, hell even driving the cars of bicycle teams. People that have already been caught and / or admitted to doping needs to be excluded as well. Having people like e.g. Riis managing a team just means he transfer on the sick and rotten culture (Schleck drove for him, and many many others that have been caught rode for him). Remove them immediately. Burn down the house I say and rebuild from the bottom.

The culture has been that way for years.  In the beginning nobody gave a shit about doping.  Everyone was taking amphetamines and cow testicle extract and whatever else they could get their hands on to make their performance better.  The concept of doping in cycling is relatively new phenomenon (since the 1960s, I believe).  I think that you're right though, that it is a rotten culture, but I think a lot of that feeling is brought about by the testing process itself.  Paelos and I have argued about this pretty much until it's been argued out, but I think cycling is a prime example of failed doping controls.  And I'm not sure its fixable.  I personally say let them have at it.  It's already a risky sport. 

Its absolutely possible to fix it. If we assume most doping is one step ahead of doping tests that can catch, all it takes is continue testing of the samples years (and many years after) and then hammer them so bloody hard that they wont be able to be part of racing again if/when they get caught. Hell, make them sign contracts before participating in the big races, that if they do get caught they can be sued for every little penny they have made.

And all the current known riders and former riders that have taken drugs and is still part of the game? Put them on the stake and burn them I say. I dont care if that means you also chase away those that have actually changed, because when the whole house is filled with rats, its better to tear it down totally.

I guess my thought is how much that is going to really make cycling (or any sport) completely unenjoyable to watch and follow.  I don't think people understand how much of a witch hunt it would have to be to find everyone that is doping (mechanical, chemical, whatever).

Also, if you're going to clean it up I think what you're suggesting is the only way to do it.  I'm just not sure the people in charge are incorruptible enough to make it work, e.g. the Lance Armstrong situation.

It was awesome to see Wiggins leading out Cavendish for the sprint on the Champs Elysees.  He's done that several times during the tour and it makes me think more highly of him. 

Neil Reed, the guy that Bobby Knight choked in the famous incident that got him fired, has died at age 36 (http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/8204126/sources-indiana-hoosier-neil-reed-figure-bobby-knight-firing-dies-36).  You can't beat Bobby. 

He supposedly died of cardiac arrest in his 30s. This can mean what we all think it means. Druuuuuuuuuuuuuugs.

That's definitely high on the list.  Or one of the genetic disorders that greatly increases your chances of dying for an MI early in life. 

Glad to see that Luther Campbell has been cleared to coach high school football in Florida (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/highschool/08/03/luther-campbell-certification/index.html?sct=hp_t2_a9&eref=sihp).  Now he can mold some young minds to do what is proper.   :awesome_for_real:

Seriously? They were going to block him on the grounds of raunchy lyrics?

The article reads more like terms of a court sentence than a teaching license.  :uhrr:

Fucking Florida, man.

I don't think that I, as a parent, would love for my kid to be playing football for Luther Campbell.  I'd have to meet him first and see what he was like.  

Addendum-  I love Rage Against the Machine, but would be loathe to have Zach de la Rocha coaching my kid in football.  I love lots of bands but would be loathe to have them coaching my kid in football.  I loathe 2 live crew and would be super loathe to have Luther Campbell coaching my kid.  

Wait... what? How are we comparing the two?

Also, the last 2 Live Crew album was nearly 20 years ago. The one that caused all the drama was nearer a quarter century ago. (Add in usual "artist license" and does not mean that the person is like that, etc etc.)

Rage is pretty over the top. at times  It's not a stretch to compare. 

Still, I would have to meet Luther and see what he was actually about before I let me kid play football for him.  That's no different than I'd expect for any coach.  I like to form my opinions in person.  He doesn't have a background I'd like to see in someone that is educating my kid, however.   

Well sure, you'd probably rather have someone with a long history of coaching, who started his own charity, etc.  :why_so_serious:

No, I'd rather have someone that wasn't into shitty rap.  I'd also rather not have Jerry Sandusky.  I'd also not like to have my football coach. 

I'm sorry, but I'm into high character people teaching and coaching my kids. 

Yeah, I like that one song where the sing about fucking bitches and partying. Are you afraid your kid would turn into a commie?


So, if it's something you would expect from any coach, it's not a matter of who he is/was, really. He's clearly been coaching and doing well. I'm not sure how his past comes into this, and I'm not sure when someone is allowed to be separated from that persona. he's pretty far removed from being "that guy'. And he was never even "that guy".... his most criminal thing is child support, which is shitty mind you... but I'm not clear what you are afraid of here.

Besides, Sandusky never made a rap album.


What are you even talking about. "High Character"? And is it just the quality of the rap? What? Do you think that Anthony Hopkins actually ate people?

Well my point was mostly that you really can't tell by appearances.

He refers to one of his daughters as the "sperm donation" and paid her mother back child support in pennies.

Not exactly sure that's the kind of dude I want teaching young men.

Perhaps not, although on the other hand sometimes people learn better from someone who can give real examples of how bad decisions screwed them over, you know? I don't know, this doesn't strike me as David Lee Roth becoming a paramedic, it isn't a publicity stunt or anything, there wouldn't even be any coverage if it wasn't for the fact that he had to fight for the approval as far as I can tell. Seems to be a pretty genuine desire to help.

No, but this is information about his estrangement from his own kids as recently as 10 months ago. If a guy expresses interest in teaching youth, I'd like to make sure he made amends with his own kids first.

Cite your sources, for those of us that aren't deep into "Rage". Given what I know about them as a band politically, I have to imagine that might need a hell of a lot of context.

As far as estrangement goes... I have no idea about any of that.

Along the lines of what Ingmar says, at what point do you "let" someone be a valuable member of society again. This sort of thing is why recidivism, in part, is so high.

I will say that one should definitely get to know the kids teachers/coaches.

Man, if we exclude everyone with estranged family from teaching... we're going to be missing a lot of teachers suddenly.

EDIT: Also, I'm sorry, it just bugs the shit out of me when we treat people like ex-criminals when they aren't. It is bad enough when we do it to actual ex-criminals. I have a hard time seeing Florida raking a white dude with a comparable history (Andrew Dice Clay becomes a math teacher?) over the coals in the same way, too.

I'd feel a little better about it if I thought Florida really gave a shit about the misogyny angle as opposed to the dirty, dirty lyrics thing.

Also not teaching my kid math.  It's okay to realize that someone has a shitty character from what they portray to the public even if it isn't illegal.  Dice Clay is a douchebag.  Luther Campbell is a douchebag.  There's any number of douchebags around that I don't want coaching or teaching my kid.  I think I'm being generous to say that I would at least talk to Campbell before yanking my kid off of the team.  

Addendum-  I'm also going to add that I always find it shocking when people defend a completely sexist idiot like Campbell.  It happens a lot with the rap artists.  Why?  I have no idea.  Is it because they are black?  Fuck, who knows.  I don't like sexism or racism.  And I don't want my kid being around someone that perpetuates either of them. 

So, he can't ever do anything good ever because of what he did before?

Also, nice strawman arguments you're building there.

Yeah I dunno, I mean, do we still hold License to Ill aganst the Beastie Boys even after everything they've done to apologize/make up for it? If not, then obviously there's a continuum here. (And if we do hold it against them, I am so dropping this conversation.)

In any case, I don't really think saying 'we shouldn't treat him like a criminal just because he did some really stupid, non-illegal shit 20+ years ago' is really defending the stupid shit he did in any way.

Okay, License to Ill is a really stupid comparison.  Also, why are you defending a sexist moron?  You gonna let your daughter have a sleep over at his house?  What about David Duke?  You hip on him being your kid's football coach?  I'm not. 

sickrubik-  I love it when people claim "straw man" argument.  It makes me laugh.  Make an argument yourself, don't be a moron.  

What we know, is that he was a sexist moron 23 years ago, who is apparently now trying to do something positive. I'll stand up for someone trying to turn their shit around every time without feeling bad about it, if I think there's reason to believe they're sincere about it.

I mean let's take Michael Vick. His crime was a lot worse than releasing a shitty offensive rap album (like, it was an actual crime) and since then he's done the right thing in every way he should and seems to have genuinely turned over a new leaf. I'm willing to accept him back into society and give him his job back, it seems clear to me that he's learned his lesson, is sincere, has done his time and everything that's been asked of him. And I like animals way more than I like people.  :why_so_serious:

So no, you're not going to make me feel bad about taking this position in the discussion.

From the daughter: http://thegrio.com/2011/08/29/campbell-it-broke-my-heart-to-be-referred-to-as-a-donation/
Here's where he was arrested in 2009: http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/MI113267/
Here's the quote he made in 2010: http://theurbandaily.com/819775/luke-campbell-issues-statement-on-sperm-donor-comments/


He's making these comments as of 2-3 years ago. Dude hasn't changed. He's still a dick.

 :facepalm: I like how the 3 page SI article about all the good shit he's done for the kids he's coaching mentions none of that.

Paterno did some good shit for people too, but remember that we threw that out the window.  

Seriously, why are you going to defend a sexist asshole?  It makes absolutely no sense to me bro.  Edited to add-  I'm not going to get all Google-fu on you about what Campbell has done.  I would legitimately like to know why he deserves my respect and why I should trust him enough to let my kid spend time with him in a forced leadership position.

Because if we take the SI article at face value, he's doing legitimately good things for these kids. That goes on one side of the scale, the other stuff goes on the other, and we can quibble about if it outweighs it or not, but I am pretty sure in this case it doesn't. I don't really see what I am arguing as 'defending' him in any case. Lots of assholes do good things in other arenas. If he wants to do something that's a net good for the kids he's helping, why stand in his way?

There are very few people out there with no redeeming qualities at all.

If he wants to help, there are numerous outlets other than coaching youth. I question the outlet, not that he can/will/wants-to/is-capable of change.

I'm not saying he shouldn't try to give back to the community. I'm just suspect of a man with those suspect values, towards both women and his own children, being in a role model position for young men.

Yeah, I guess I would feel bad for him if he had a drunk driving conviction 20 years ago and still couldn't get a job.  I see your point, but at the same time I, as a father, would be very careful about letting my kid be associated with him. 

Well, the problem I was having with that is that you were attempting to put me in positions that I don't support. It was the definition of a straw man, and it's annoying to deal with when you're attempting to have a discussion, regardless of how heated. Because you didn't agree with my points or ignored them doesn't mean I wasn't making an argument.

I'll leave it at that. I had a busy weekend with the fiancee's birthday so I wasn't able to come and check in at all. But it looks like the discussion moved along great, thankfully.

Actually, I was pretty squarely pointing that one at Paelos and Ingmar.  Sorry for the mixup!   :awesome_for_real:

on reviewing the thread, I don't know where I got my signals crossed and through that was in reference to Zach de la Rocha. I'm going to assume I was still confused about how we were comparing Zach de le Rocha and Luther Campbell.

Oh, I'm just saying that De La Rocha can be a raging prick and uses lots of profanity.  I just threw him out there as an example because he was on my mind (was listening at the time).  There are about a billion people out there that I wouldn't want to teach/coach my kid. 

In other news...

I got to go to the Championship game yesterday at Heinz field for the WFA http://www.wfafootball.com/

It actually was a fun watch and some of those women were insanely good. Overall the play was way slower and the defensive side of the ball was lacking, but there were a ton of big plays and the final 3 minutes were intense. My friend came in from Philly with a few of her teammates to watch and got me a ticket. I got to hang out with them and other teams back at the hotel - man, they put guy talk to shame when they are all together. Fun times.

http://www.hlntv.com/article/2012/08/08/60-million-dollar-high-school-football-stadium-allen-texas?hpt=ts1&hpt=hp_t3

$60m stadium set for kick off at the end of the month... did I forget to mention it is a high school stadium?   :ye_gods:

For fucking High School Football?  :uhrr:

Hell, I went to high school in Texas and my stadium held about 8,000 and was worth over $10M back in 1999. They just built and indoor facility for $4.5M back in 2011 to go along with the parking deck.

It's Texas. Texas is crazy when it comes to football and cheer-leading.

Again, for high school football? And if they're anything like the players at my high school, all that cash will be spent on a bunch of punks who will amount to not a whole lot after high school; i.e. - the types who, 10 years later, will bitch about paying $50 for reunion tickets (or $100 if they're bringing the baby mama).

Again, it is Texas.

You seriously just do not understand how Texas is about high school football. Go watch Varsity Blues, that will give you a taste of the minimum level of insanity they focus towards friday nights.

I live someplace where folks spend lots of money on HS football programs that are extremely good and consistently produce college and professional stars (Plant, Armwood, Lakeland).

Thing is, yes, for HS football.  We're talking about full rides for college, easily worth $30,000.  And if you're good enough to make it in a draft straight from high school?  $$$

It's amazing how much it costs to live in an apartment zoned for those schools.  Parents will pay insane amounts of money to live in crappy apartments just so folks can have a shot at college educations at high-ranked high schools.

I wonder how their Art and Music programs are doing.

A football program and a quality education in those schools aren't really mutually exlusive.

For example, my high school also produced two Academy award winners, a nobel prize winning physicist, a pulitzer prize winning photographer, the founder of Teach for America, a Tony Award winner, and a Gemini astronaut.

EDIT: Also, the high school in question who built the stadium (Allen High School) has a marching band with 680 students. They've played in the Rose Bowl. It's one of the best music programs in the state.

I understand, but overall this country has some serious priority issues.  $60 million towards the actual education of the students at the school (or even including all the neighboring schools) could do a hell of a lot of good.  While some schools like that may be able to do both, at my High school (and most across the country) the sports programs got huge amounts of money, while funding for general education, teacher salaries, and the arts were constantly slashed.  Most people in the country want to see their child throw the winning pass on a Friday night game, not grow up to be a Nobel winner.

And yet, this school has the means to build a stadium and produce one the finest music programs in Texas.

Be fair, you asked a question and got an answer that surprised you. I would think that would make you happy, and might show you that not everyone has their priorities out of whack just because they like football.

The question was completely rhetorical and you know it.  Kill the stadium and give the $60 million to other schools that aren't producing students who attend college at a 100% rate, since this one is obviously rich enough to handle its students.  Football and most sports in this this country are a massive waste of time and money that is literally going to kill us in global competitiveness.  They can have their $60 million dollar stadium when the entire team graduates to become engineers, and every school in Texas is pumping out 4.0 students at a 100% rate.  Until that time, its a sad waste of money.  You can play football successfully in a mud pit.  Great education actually requires money and effort.  This city most certainly has all of its priorities out of whack.

Well yes, It's Texas. I thought we went over this already!  :why_so_serious:

Ahh, but how much extra money do they get from their insane football people? I know at my school (which was in NJ, and had non-insane football priorities) (which is to say, WE WERE TERRIBLE AT FOOTBALL), we were still glad for all the attention they'd manage to get, because as the marching band (you know, fine arts people), we would NOT EXIST AT ALL if it weren't for them. And we wanted them to have a decent field and stadium, because. Well. We marched in it, you know?


PS: Marching band is fun as hell (and good exercise) and totally different from regular ol' concert band (which is fun for entirely different reasons). I know a lot of people that only kept playing because they wanted to be in MARCHING band once they got to high school (our marching band was pretty good, see).

Thought Texas hated education?  :why_so_serious:

I see, you've decided to go the other route. I have a problem with you already making up your mind, asking a snarky question, being shown that it's not the case, and then continuing on with whatever opinion you want EVEN THOUGH IT'S NOT THE CASE IN THIS SITUATION. Nobody learns anything that way.

I god damn knew they'd have a decent marching band if they're throwing money at a stadium like that.  It was a snarky question, and I'll admit I messed up in writing it, as I meant to imply Texas as a whole, not just that school.  So apology's for that, but nothing has changed, and you didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.

My position has always been that since this country cant seem to get its shit together, inter school sports should either be banned, or have a requirement placed on them that you need something like at least a 3.8 GPA while taking a full array of AP courses in order to play.  If you don't have that, obviously you have other things you desperately need to be spending your time on.  Schools should by law be prohibited from spending money like that (donated or otherwise) on sports.  The glorification of sports over academic achievement in this country needs to end.

If they're desperate for it, the city can build its own stadium somewhere in the city that's not on school grounds, organize its own private team, and pay for the management and maintenance of it out of city funds.  Then challenge other cities who have done the same.  Just don't link it with the school at all.

And yes, I know this is all extreme and has no chance of happening in this country, but I think its probably the only way left to fix things at this point.

 :oh_i_see:

 :oh_i_see:

You do realize that banning it wouldn't magically move money to schools right?

Of course not, but it does show where are American priorities are in terms of what we truly value. Fuck school and learning... we need more gladiator arenas.  :why_so_serious:

I don't think "fuck school and learning" is correct...whether it's Sputnik, NCLB, or that publication that came out in the 80s (forgive me, I forget the name and Google-fu--), education has had gobs of money thrown at it from time to time.

What I think it boils down to is boosters supporting something they enjoy.  The baseball complex I played at in high school had an air conditioned clubhouse full with washer and dryer. 

All because one dad wanted it for his kid.

Interesting.  Apparently Hope Solo was conceived during a conjugal visit while her father was in prison (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2178817/I-conceived-jail-Hope-Solo-mother-pregnant-conjugal-visit-father.html).   :why_so_serious:

Yay!  The US finally beat Mexico in Mexico City.   (http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story/_/id/1134899/u.s.-beats-mexico-in-mexico-for-first-time?cc=5901)

Wow.  Former Georgia coach Jim Donnan charged (http://ww2.ajcmobile.com/autojuice/?targetUrl=http://www.ajc.com/sports/uga/former-bulldogs-coach-donnan-1500620.html) in $80 million Ponzi Scheme. 

 :facepalm:

You and half my family.

The hits just keep coming.

At this point, I fully expect to get woodshedded by Missouri just to ice the cake of how shitty this season could go.

Well, if you go 1-11 and beat UF, it's still a winning season.   :drill:

At least you can say former UGa coach Jim Donnan. 

If Mark Richt was involved in a running a Ponzi scheme, I'd literally lose all faith in humanity.

Augusta National has finally decided to crawl out of the dark ages (http://espn.go.com/golf/story/_/id/8284599/augusta-national-admits-condoleezza-rice-darla-moore-first-two-female-members). 

I'm surprised that a woman would want to associate with such sexist fucksticks, but to each their own, I suppose.

It's the most beautiful golf course in the U.S.  Also, why not be the person to break down some barriers?

Seems like a win-win.

I disagree that having an all-male club makes them fucksticks, but whatever.

Glad Condi was one of the ones that joined, she's a wonderful lady.

Might change your thinking when you realize she is a die-hard Browns fan and even went so far to do the modeling of the women's line of NFL jerseys. Now I am torn on her.

(http://golfpicture.com/pebble%20beach%207%20117.JPG)

 :grin:

Sorry, when your reasoning is "that person has a vagina, and thus is not allowed in our totally sweet clubhouse" it pretty much makes you a fuckstick if you're over the age of 10 or so.

That's 17 at Pebble Beach, right?

I'm a southern boy at heart.  Damn Californians and their tri-tip steaks ><

I think that's 7 actually.

Then there's Cypress Point...

(http://www.sghgolfphotography.com/media/archive/catalog/item-38_1_large.jpg)

There are a bunch of courses down there, all with varying degrees of that.

The only time I wish I played golf is when I'm down there and see that stuff. I used to do a summer music program at a school down there when I was a kid, we'd cut across part of Spyglass to get to the lodge for snacks. VERY NAUGHTY apparently (the tresspassing part), though I never got caught. Or hit in the head.

To you maybe. To others, not so much. Like minds will disagree on gender-specific clubs (golf or otherwise), but they exist on both sides of the coin.

They do (and I'm not always against all male or all female groups) but to argue that this bunch of douchebags deserves any benefit of the doubt is absurd.

I don't argue benefit of the doubt. I think they run a nice golf course. Whether or not they want to keep out anybody from a private club is their business, and your right as an American citizen to think of them as complete fucksticks. I just don't see it that way.

Actually, it's not if the people they want to keep out is based on something like gender or race.

Not true, but ok. It's been fought in the courts, but there's nothing definitive about it. At best it's a state by state thing.

There's a difference sometimes between what is right in the courts and what is morally and ethically correct.  A bunch of rich old white guys excluding brown people and women based on the facts that they have pigment and vaginas (or both) is really fairly reprehensible and is very reminiscent of slavery era society.  But if you're for it then enjoy.  I won't watch the Masters because they are a bunch of assholes. 

It's still a nice course, and the #1 course in the United States. They don't care.

They don't care?  Is that why they just admitted a black female?   :grin:

I meant they don't care if you watch the Masters.

Apparently they do or they wouldn't have let in a black woman.   :oh_i_see:

There's no way they would be doing this if there wasn't significant social and financial pressure on them to do so. 

I think it's both.  It is Augusta National and the Master's, so plenty of folks will watch.

But, nobody in his or her right mind wants to leave money on the table by imposing archaic rules like HE MAN WOMAN HATER'S CLUB...no gurlz aloud!

I think they saw an opportunity to let in two extremely conservative rich women, and let the haters from the Women's Libber movement choke on it.

You're dying to get this flushed down the politics toilet bowl, aren't you?   :ye_gods:

Of course, for a while it was about nothing but cycling and touching children.

Speaking of cycling, the judge dismissed Lance Armstrong's case against the USADA.   :grin:

I'm going to sound old here, but I think $315 is too much to pay for the latest Lebron shoes (http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/8288491/nike-sell-newest-lebron-james-sneaker-300), even if they are the fancy edition.  Apparently the regulars sell for $175, which is just absurd. 

This must be what it felt like for my dad when I came home with my first pair of $100 Air Jordans.   :awesome_for_real:

Over/under on people that get murdered for those shoes?

It may be the only way that people will get them. 

If it helps, I'm pretty sure the owners of Augusta National both ride bicycles while doped and touch children in wholly inappropriate ways.

Here you all go... something out of left field:

http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/8292542/stephen-domalewski-left-brain-injury-settles-metal-bat-suit


Yeah... people will sue anyone for just about anything.  :oh_i_see:

I hate metal bats. They've already deadened them in college baseball because they were killing people. I don't think anything about them is good for the game.

Except economics.

They can make a safer version. It needs to trickle down. That's why they got sued and settled.

Because wooden bats break, they're just not possible to use for youth leagues and stuff, far too expensive. There's a better option out there I'm sure, just waiting for someone to invent it.

I just had a patient's mother pay for treatment in $1 bills......  :oh_i_see:

Might want to disinfect those.

How nice were her tits?

Ummm, yeah.  I'm sure there's plenty of ass sweat on those bills.

Answer the question!  :awesome_for_real:

I wouldn't have picked that out as her profession, no.

Sweet!  My dad just sent me a basketball that was signed by all the members of Kentucky's national title squad from last year, including Anthony Davis, Terrence Jones and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist.  That was unexpected.

Pics please! That's neat.

I'll get one when I get home from work.  He also sent me a limited edition Louisville Slugger commemorative bat from the title, which isn't signed but is also cool.

Here's the ball:

(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8290/7858342256_e5bdc291f7_z.jpg)

And a couple of views of the bat:

(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8445/7858342704_123b3a845a_z.jpg)

(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7256/7858343238_b2f635408b_z.jpg)

They aren't the best photos, but apparently my iPhone hates me.

The ball is really cool. Have you considered getting one of these? (http://www.amazon.com/Collectible-Deluxe-Acrylic-NBA-Basketball/dp/B00416T5WS/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1345923940&sr=8-5&keywords=basketball+display+case)

I figure I probably ought to.  I just got it the other day though and haven't really had time to think about it. 

Sweet Caroline cut by Penn State.... (http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8308423/penn-state-nittany-lions-cut-sweet-caroline-game-days)


Seems a might bit overkill to me.  But, then again the first thing I think of when I hear the song is getting into a shower with a 12 year old boy.

...

(Recorded music is an abomination in college football anyway. You have a band, they're there for a reason.)

I absolutely agree.  I guess I thought that the band was playing it.  But then again I didn't read the article really closely.

You know it's a bad time for US sports when ESPN is putting up a lot of Euroloeague soccer on the front page.   :oh_i_see:

That's why baseball should end this weekend for the regular season imo.

Everyone's played about 130 games, we could start the playoffs and it would make great ratings while we dealt with the crap week of college ball and the week before the NFL.

This^^

Regular season should end in August. September-October (no baseball in November please) should be reserved for post-season. And the post-season should be expanded to best-of-9 series.

It would make baseball distinctive and take away NHL claim to most extensive playoff tournament, steal thunder from NFL/NCAAF season opening, grant more excitement to small/mid market teams, and fits more in with modern pitching staffs and organization rosters. Yes, the purists will grieve over expanded playoff field, but that nut has already been cracked -- and the current setup is a travesty -- not so much the new single elimination wildcard game, but the best-of-5 for divisional round is insufficient.

Hey baseball owners, do you want to give up the income from 16 of your home games? No? Didn't think so.

EDIT: And as a fan I don't want less regular season games myself. As far as I'm concerned they could play all 12 months and I'd be happy.

13,000 people supposedly showed up to watch the Indians play the A's yesterday in cleveland. That's pretty typical for teams that aren't northeastern powerhouses or aren't in the playoff talk at this point.

Besides, NFL owners seem to be able to make it work with about 500-600k fans a year that support a payroll of about $120M. They run 10 games with the preseason included.

The worst team in the MLB draws about 1.5M fans a season. Are you telling me they can't adjust ticket prices and amenities to support that same payroll? Think about the variable costs of just opening the stadium during a shitty season end. Do they actually even MAKE money on those last 16 games? Maybe about 30% do that are in the running. I'm guessing the rest barely break even.

NFL ticket prices are shamefully high because of it. Stuff like $20 bleacher seats make it a lot more possible for a wider group of people to attend games. So no I don't think it would be a plus at all to adjust prices up and reduce the number of games. Even those 13,000 ticket games are going to be moneymakers for them, and you'll also end up asking season ticket holders to pay the same amount for 16 fewer games; that's a good way to get your season ticket holders to tell you to fuck right off.

That 13k pretty much is just season ticket holders that didn't bother showing up.

Hell, I'm a season ticket holder in Atlanta, and I'd prefer not to go to regular season games in September. That's football season.

Do stadium numbers even mean shit any more?  Isn't it all about advertising dollars?

In baseball, the entire payroll is driven by attendance, unless you are the Yankees. It's like that because there's no cap. In other sports, not as much.

They absolutely do, at least for baseball. You can see it in the financial documents that were leaked for a few teams a couple years ago. A couple examples:

For a top-end example: 2009 Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles Anaheim Whatever: ~$100 million in ticket receipts, ~$15 million in concession sales. Meanwhile stadium operations cost them $16 million. (This is about half their revenues overall.)
For the team in probably the shittiest situation in baseball at the time: 2009 Florida Marlins: ~$21.5 million in ticket receipts, $2.5 million in concessions against $7 million in stadium operations.


So there's a wide range, but it is big, big money and they're pretty much all making at least some money this way. No way do they walk away from that.

Interesting.  I'm shocked.   :awesome_for_real:

LA's a shitty example though. Like NY, they very much have the population to be in the top 10 for not only one, but TWO franchises should they choose. Short of carpet bombing the stadiums, they are going to draw people no matter what. In fact, there has never been a time in the last decade where the NY and LA teams didn't at least have one franchise in the top 5. In 2006, all 4 teams were in the top 5 in attendance.

A better example of where attendance drives payroll would be Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, or Seattle.

I think it would be fine if the had the same games and just started the season a little earlier.  Weather might be an issue in some locations, but hey, these guys make millions of dollars per year so should be able to suck it up and play.  Ending the season now would probably really boost attendance for another reason-  in most locations school has started and parents are going to be much less likely to drag the kids out of school for a game in the first month of school.  They would probably think differently if it was the playoffs though.

Americans love "playoffs".

In the old MLB divisional/league setup (pre wildcard), when you had to finish 1st to play in the postseason there was still some interest in where your team placed (i.e, as a Pirates fan, even if they didn't win the division, I still rooted in September to be a "spoiler" or finish ahead of Mets, Phillies, Cubs, etc.…). With a wildcard setup, most games in September are entirely meaningless now.

The same reason that ties/draws are an anathema -- if there is no winner/loser, it is unfulfilling -- but we'll watch just about anything where there is a "winner advance", "loser eliminated" contest -- even ESPN 8 lumberjack competitions to see who can cut down a tree the fastest. ;)

They could compress the season more if they played more doubleheaders (or really any... do they even do doubleheaders much anymore?).

Doubleheaders are typically for makeup games.  Also, eight hours of baseball is supremely demanding of athletes, especially when it's in the middle of a four-game series.

This is like the exact opposite of true. Far, far more games were meaningless in September under the old system.

Hell, most Cubs' games later than June have been meaningless for 90% of my lifetime.  :why_so_serious:

It's interesting that Billy Gilliespie is doing the same shit at Texas Tech that got him fired at Kentucky (http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/8321914/mutiny-texas-tech-coach-billy-gillispie-draws-complaints).  And now he's suddenly so sick he has to go the hospital for an ultrasound (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/basketball/ncaa/08/31/billy-gillispie-hospitalized.ap/index.html?eref=sihp).  Sounds ultra fishy, to me. 

And......let's talk about the hypocrisy of the NCAA for a bit.  UNC not hit with any sanctions regarding obvious academic fraud (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/michael_rosenberg/08/31/UNC-NCAA-academic-fraud/index.html?eref=sihp). 

That is... unfortunate.

That op-ed was very, very poorly written.  Shame on you, SI. 

Was there any reason as to why the NCAA didn't pass ruling?  Is at an academic thing versus an athletic thing?

It's essentially a blog post from SI.com.  What do you expect, the New York Times?  The subject matter is still appropriate and he was asking the right questions.

I'm constantly reminded that writing gets worse every year.  I keep pretending it's not the case when I teach.

I agree though, certainly the right questions.

I think that a big part of the "writing getting worse every year" problem is that we have the internet.  People have the ability to write and put things on the internet basically for free, whereas in years gone by they would have to put things in print at huge expense.  Therefore the need for copy editors has basically died, thus leading to freelance guys putting up stuff unedited.  I would wager that 90% of the articles like this that get put up get nothing other than a cursory glance from an editor.

I'm not trying to derail into hurr durr copy editing, but how much of overall writing style gets critiqued from copy editors?

My big qualm with folks on these sites is coupling vitriol with news that elicits the same vitriol...if the article is about a guy locking his daughter in the basement for years, it's obviously disgusting and horrendous.  No need to beat me over the head with it

Well in this case, something despicable occurred and it should have been looked at more closely.  The situation probably deserves a little additional editorial vitriol. 

See, I view that as a GOOD THING.

I agree with you, Haemish.  Hence why I posted the barely-above-blog-level article. 

So apparently Tyler Hamilton (former bike rider and doper) is launching his new book soon. It includes grave accusations against pretty much everybody, but especially against his former chef, Bjarne Riis, and manager of the current Saxobank/Tinkoff (Contador rides for him). Riis apparently put Hamilton into contact with Fuentes (infamous for being the key stone in a doping network - uncovered in the Operación Puerto debacle), and encouraged him to use blood doping, as it was untraceable if done right. All the time Riis have denied to have ever known Fuentes - an unlikely event since their paths would most likely have crossed at least once, as they often attended the same races. Fuentes as a doctor for several teams, and Riis as bike rider and later on manager of his own team. Quite damming!

And so the former doping rider turns into a culture-carrier of the sick win-it-all-no-matter-what culture and turn younglings into dopers - a circle most likely to continue, if nothing is done. Disgusting.