Column

I couldn’t resist a chance to post on this glorious photo Sports Illustrated dug up for their post on famous alumni of March Madness schools. As you can see from the photo, Knight and his jheri curl played defensive end at University of Nevada Las Vegas.

Via Sports Illustrated’s Extra Mustard

Knight was good enough to make training camp for the LA Rams but was cut before he ever played a game. But apparently he returned as a replacement player during the strike of 1987. I wonder what year he cut that curl off though.

You can view SI’s complete ratings of famous alumni here. I was offended that Bob Sager, an alum of my my alma mater, Temple University didn’t rate higher. A few folks said Bill Cosby should have been chosen instead of Saget. If so, he deserved #1. Still Saget is pretty cool. He had us all thinking he was some dopey goody two shoes on Full House, but in reality he’s a caustic potty mouth. GO OWLS.

I know that the subject of paying college athletes has been talked about over and over again and by now, most people who care to study up on the topic have formed an opinion and those who haven’t probably can’t be appealed to. But I still wanted to weigh in on the part of the argument that irks me the most — the whole “it would be too complicated” spiel. 

The main point that folks against paying college athletes make is that it would be too costly and destroy the system. While it’s alarming to know that so many people believe  keeping their favorite tv show around in its current form is more important than treating young people fairly, the idea that people who spend all of their time figuring out ways to make money can’t figure out how to manage it in a way that benefits the athletes too bothers me the most. On top of that, it seems you can’t point out athletes should share in the pot of money they help produce without being asked to explain how you personally think it should be worked out. I don’t need to be a collegiate sports professional to know when young people are being hosed.

As Celebrity Hot Tub said:

Don’t believe for a second that an entire industry of business-minded people can’t figure out a way to give players some share of licensing revenue and keep teams running because it’s impossible. Realize that they won’t do it because nobody wants to make $500,000 a year when you could make a million.

He’s correct. This is not about “can’t” it’s about “want” and all the hemming and hawing about how hard it would be is nothing more than the usual pretend ignorance. What this comes down is what most modern corporate thinking is all about. Anything to make more money even if that means fairness and ethics are an afterthought. I’m exhausted by those practices not just in sports but in every facet of American life.

I know I haven’t blogged about the Superbowl yet so how dare I post about something else. However, I haven’t decided what to write about the game yet and since I have no editor or deadlines I also have no urgency! That’s the great terrible thing about owning your own blog.

This post is about a random clip of Ray Lewis I found from back when The Best Damn Sports Show Period was still on the air. Lewis was a guest they hooked to a lie detector test and asked a series of questions. No, none were related to the murder people keep bringing up over and over. I thought they asked him some good things the one most relevant today being “if you knew you wouldn’t get caught, would you use PEDs?”

I don’t want to give the clip away but he looked nervous as hell. Maybe not quite as nervous as when they asked him about Trent Dilfer, but the faces he was making were HILARIOUS given the current deer antler spray controversy.

Speaking of which, I almost ordered some on amazon. I’m not saying I don’t believe Lewis when he says he didn’t use it. I’m saying whatever Lewis is using that has him looking so fine at 37,  I’m willing to try it as long as it doesn’t affect the size of my penis.

Enjoy the clip! BTW, given how stale sports shows are right now, BDSSP looks pretty progressive in restrospect. 

Rapper 2 Chainz posted this picture to his instagram when he arrived in Hawaii for a concert. Couldn’t you just see him participating in Pro Bowl in some way? Maybe I’m just nostalgic for the Rock N Jock days of old.

The Pro Bowl takes place this weekend and just like every year everyone will discuss how the Pro Bowl sucks and needs to be improved or done away with. Even the commissioner has fallen into this line of thinking saying that if “play doesn’t improve” he will consider scrapping it. 

I used to be a Pro Bowl complainer but I’m not anymore. Now I take issue with the very thought of having players go to work as some time of end-of-season reward for a job well done. Playing football is not the privilege that football players and fans have been brainwashed to believe it is. It’s a job and a very dangerous one. The end of season reward shouldn’t involve a 17th or 18th game for them to get hurt playing.

Also, talking about improving the Pro Bowl is kinda like talking about how you can improve the television show Scandal or Love and Hip Hop Atl. The best thing you could do quality-wise is take it off of television completely. But from a purely entertainment standpoint people are tuning into both trash television staples. I don’t watch Love and Hip Hop for quality television it’s more like “omgggg look at this!”  Sometimes I complain but mostly I enjoy it. 

I don’t think people tune in to the Pro Bowl for the game. In the past, I’ve watched it because it’s the loosest we get to see football players behave. They’re having fun with their colleagues and friends and showing off their amazing speed and acrobatics. The NFL takes itself so seriously sometimes, Pro Bowl weekend is a relief.

In a way, it makes us feel more a part of the game than any other game during the season because there’s such a degree of camaraderie that really shines through since the pressure is low. Threatening them to play harder during the game is just going to make even more guys skip it even though they’d love to have the check, the trip, and a Pro Bowl on their resume.

Improving the Pro Bowl wouldn’t be that difficult. An hour flag football game or maybe even a baseball or basketball game with celebrities a la MTV’s old Rock and Jock, and some great interview/feature segments would be appealing to me and I’m sure many other fans. NFL could even partner with MTV to pull the whole thing off. They could even move it back to Miami where fans could participate even more. 

But great ideas for improvement can only come to fruition if the NFL rids itself of the notion that an extra assignment at the end of a job well done is a reward for an employee.  Then they can focus on creating an experience “with” the players that  satisfies both the guys and the fans. 

Last year, after the Eagles and Falcons seasons went approximately nowhere, I was one of the ones rooting for a Harbowl. The thought of two teams with physical defenses playing each other was too tempting for me to resist. This year, I get my wish, although I’m less happy about it because this was supposed to be my Falcons’ year. But this year the matchup is also more exciting because both the Ravens and 49ers are strong on both sides of the ball. This Superbowl doesn’t just promise a defensive war of attrition, it has the potential to be a football cirque du soleil.

But as with any Superbowl, it’s never about the game itself. This is the time of year when football fans reluctantly share their favorite thing with people who don’t know shit about it. And this year, with Beyonce performing at half time, you’re sure to endure more conversation about her outfit than the accuracy of Flacco’s deep ball.

If that’s not enough non-football stuff for you, we have two weeks of non-football media playing the SEO game and feverishly working to post stories for a general audience that the football audience has already read. And that’s great because it opens the door to more fans joining the NFL cult full time. I just hope that people can find more stories to explore than Jim and John Harbaugh being brothers and Ray Lewis retiring. Because, for me, those two stories might be the least interesting.

Disclaimer: I love the Harbaugh story. I think it’s great and fantastic that one family produced two people with elite positions in the same industry. Howwwwwwweverrrrrrr, there is a A LOT of nepotism in the National Football League. So much that I’m surprised that two familial head coaches haven’t coached against each other yet. Surely a father-son Superbowl will follow. A lot has been made the past few weeks about how minorities are still being largely excluded from the coaching ranks. And watching all the brother-brother-father-son duos in the NFL is just another reminder of how exclusive a club this football shit is. For that reason, two brothers coaching against each other feels anticlimactic. Two BROTHAS coaching against each other would be more exciting at this point.

I am absolutely a fan of Ray Lewis and he deserves the acclaim he has received. Howwwwwwweverrrrr Lewis has done an EXCELLENT job of marketing himself as many things — motivational speaker, elite pep talker, best middle linebacker ever, emotional and spiritual leader… He’s also cornered the market on being both intimidating and wildly attractive at the same time and based on how many children he has various women have rewarded him for that as well.  Due to those facts,  Lewis is celebrated on a daily basis. And even though he was suspected and cleared of witnessing a murder and trying to cover it up, that case has also added to his mythos and notoriety so that even when that trial is the subject of conversation, the story always comes back around to what he’s accomplished since then.  SB doesn’t present some singular chance to celebrate Ray Lewis because it’s all been done already.

I have some ideas on other things to write about. 

• Bernard Pierce, RB, Ravens. Pierce is a fellow Temple Owl (which is mentioned every single damn time he plays and I don’t know why but I still like it). Drafted in the 3rd round he was thought to be the back up back up to Ray Rice. Meaning, yeah he might play, but mostly Ray Rice is gonna play until he gets hurt. Pierce has shown himself to be a dominant force and finished the season at # 5 in Pro Football Focuses’ rankings for “elusiveness.”
• Ed Reed goes home to New Orleans for his first Superbowl. If there was ever a football player I want to meet it’s Ed Reed. When Bill Belichick talks about Reed he is talking FOR ME as well so just read this and picture me nodding my head. In all the years I’ve followed Reed’s career, despite being one of the most thoughtful and amiable interviews in the league, I have never eva eva eva eva seen a long form profile on that man except ONE in Sports Illustrated from 1995 or something. I’d like to see the media rectify this. All week leading up to the AFC Chip game Reed refused to talk to anyone. There are no videos or transcripts on record for him. So he may not be willing to sit down for anything, but if he is, that’s a great get for some crafty person.
• Colin Kaepernick’s eyebrow-raising personality. I think that with the success of Kappanick (not a typo) and Russell Wilson, and RG3 and Cam Newton you have to talk about the emergence of zone read QBs and teams. Or, as the media likes to simplify, teams that run the QB. That’s important. So is the not-quite-appropriate racial dissection of a guy who is half black and adopted by a white family with a birth mother who doesn’t understand the word “no.” But I think the media can go deeper here and find out what kind of “guy” Kappanick is. There is a distinct way this guy communicates with teammates at the line, after plays and in practice that is special. He is also  in touch with his black side despite not growing up in that environment in some rather distinct ways that I’d like to be nosy about. I don’t know what I think of Kappanick yet, but there’s a story here and I want someone to get it.
• David Akers. Akers spent the bulk of his career getting cheated out of money by the Philadelphia Eagles. Then he actually literally was cheated out of money in some sort of pyramid scheme in which he may have lost the bulk of his savings. The rub on Akers is that he misses kicks in big games, although I’m not sure that the read on that is quite accurate. Akers is no Billy Cundiff. What is accurate, however,  is that he’s missed a lot of kicks this season probably in part due to a surgery he hid until recently. That led to a kicking competition and a risk of getting replaced by Cundiff. Akers reaction is needed. Most of the time kickers are ignored, but Akers is an interesting study and he’s heavy into martial arts and good on camera.

Right this minute I realized this post is too long and probably should have been two posts. So I’ll stop here and return with ideas in another post…I think. LOL