"Humor" Archive

Let me start by saying I don’t give a damn about basketball anymore. I haven’t watched regularly since 2003. Since my Sixers were in the playoffs for a short spell this year, I will admit my interest is kinda piqued for next year.

I do read about basketball and stay current with what’s going on. What was interesting this year is that Kobe Bryant and the Lakers continually shook off any losses they had this season. Seems like the Lakers and their fans felt they would win a championship no matter how they played. Or as Lakers owner Jerry Buss likes to say, “even if they don’t make the playoffs” he’s still confident they will win the Championship. That pretty much captures the attitude of the Lakers and their fans.

By now you know that the Lakers are out of contention for the Championship,  and I think their “What, Me Worry” attitudes makes the ouster that much sweeter.  I understand not inducing fan panic after 3 consecutive double digit losses, or being 1 in 5 against elite teams before the break, but it seems like after being down 0-2 in their playoff series against Dallas you’d express a little concern. Funny cause I even heard Laker fans saying regular season games coming into the playoffs simply “don’t matter” to their team. I guess they’ve never heard of working out the kinks!

Ed the Sports fan wrote about why people hate the Lakers so much…for me this year it was their Alfred Neumanesque approach to the game and Kobe being the most Neumany one of them all.

Keeping Kobe’s nonchalance in the back of my mind, this Funny or Die spoof of him becomes even more outrageously funny. If you’ve ever wondered what might be going on behind Kobe’s cool demeanor you will love this.

My favorite part of this spoof…

Reporter: Rumors out there that Pau Gasol is going through a breakup, is that true Kobe?

Kobe: What’s that got to do with boxing out and dunking? If I were his fiancee I’d break up with him…cause he’s not boxing out and dunking. I think women find that attractive.

Boxing out and dunking has now officially replaced “the price of tea in china” as my go-to response when people bring up shit I find irrelevant. Thanks Funny or Die.

The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal published opinion pieces by Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell today. Snyder’s piece is notable if for no other reason that it is one of the most terribly-written opinion editorials ever published by a paper of record. Based on the syntactic errors, poor organization, and questionable grammar used in the piece,  I strongly suspect that Snyder wrote it himself, rather than leaving the spin to the professionals. Goodell’s piece, although better written, will raise eyebrows because it’s just so hilariously oblivious.

As you can guess, the focus of Snyder’s piece is his embarrassing lawsuit against the Washington City paper which he accused of false reports. He refiled his lawsuit against the paper in New York and uses his opinion editorial to scold the paper for failing at “fact checking.” The entire piece wreaks of a spoiled little boy having a diction-deficient temper tantrum.

Speaking of spoiled little boys throwing fits, the NFL owners are still hell-bent on squeezing more blood from the 200lb + turnips they pay to crash into each other every Sunday. The latest lockout news is that Judge Ryan granted an injunction meaning that technically players should be able to show up to work tomorrow (though weight rooms may be closed). Of course the NFL is pursuing a stay (to keep the players locked out and off team premises).

The injunction has resulted in a clusterfuck big enough to make any rich white man afraid of the chaos that could ensue as large black men try to figure out if they should bother reporting to work and what parts of those facilities are or should be accessible to them.

Goodell’s editorial aims to lay out a case for why a CBA (and a union) is needed and that players should be aiming to improve the CBA process rather than dismantle it. I found his position to be interesting, since from my vantage point the NFL didn’t really come to the table ready to negotiate, rather with a list of demands that, if not met, would result in a lockout that seemed planned for from day one.

Therefore, Goodell’s support of collective bargaining in lieu of individual player-team negotiations can only be looked at as a last ditch effort to save a process that benefits the owners without admitting that it does, in fact, benefit the owners. That fact should be obvious because why else would a blatantly pro-executive commissioner write such a pro-union anti-capitalist opinion editorial and publish it in the Wall Street Journal of all places?

The funniest thing about Goodell’s piece is that he gives a list of things that would change if there is no NFL union. The bulk of the list (no draft, free agency after every contract expiration) includes things that would essentially cause owners to actually have to make more critical business decisions about personnel on a routine basis. In other words, it is actually to the NFL owners’ benefit to have a union because it takes a lot of the guesswork out of managing a “free market” system. Not to mention, it allows ownership to focus on things like convincing cities to fund their stadiums and the signing of key players rather than getting into the nitty gritty of the entire 52-man roster.

In other words, with his piece, Goodell accidentally reveals just how LITTLE owners have to do under the current system to make a profit-save for that one time every few years when the CBA is up for debate. Not sure who Goodell is trying to appeal to with this argument. Ultimately, as a fan I don’t give a shit how much work Arthur Blank or Joe Banner have to put in to making the Eagles and Falcons successful as long as they achieve that goal.

This section was pretty eye-opening to me:

In an environment where they are essentially independent contractors, many players would likely lose significant benefits and other protections previously provided on a collective basis as part of the union-negotiated collective-bargaining agreement. And the prospect of improved benefits for retired players would be nil.

Is this the NFL that players want? A league where elite players attract enormous compensation and benefits while other players—those lacking the glamour and bargaining power of the stars—play for less money, fewer benefits and shorter careers than they have today? A league where the competitive ability of teams in smaller communities (Buffalo, New Orleans, Green Bay and others) is forever cast into doubt by blind adherence to free-market principles that favor teams in larger, better-situated markets?

Here you have the commissioner of the NFL  basically admitting that without the union the NFL and its ownership will not in any way  seek to promote fairness or equity. I mean, how fucking bold is that shit? Goodell explicitly states that should players have to negotiate completely as independent contractors he and the owners are almost certain to offer them little to no protection and blame it on the dissolution of the union. This proves that the NFL and owners are more concerned with short term revenue than maintaining the total health and longevity of the sport.

It also shows that there remains little interest in having owners be responsible for the decisions they make e.g. how much to pay a particular player at any given point of time. This is one of the reason NFL owners wanted a rookie wage scale.

Stacked up against each other, I’d say both Goodell and Snyder do a great job of showing us what’s wrong with the National Football League. In terms of who’s worse, I give the title to Goodell because his leadership has helped set the stage for the Snyders of the world to conduct business however they see fit.

I’m not gonna lie, I laughed at this parody. I think we can officially retire  Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yellow” now.

Congrats to the Packers. They lost key players to injury in the Super Bowl and still managed to pull out a victory.

LEAD UP AND PRE-GAME

Let’s start out by saying, I don’t give a damn about the Super Bowl unless my team is playing. I just watch because I love football. The Super Bowl becomes even more of a production every year. Now we’re up to two full weeks of Super Bowl talk all around mainstream media plus a weekend of stories and interviews and flashbacks etc.

I do enjoy “some” of it. But now that the NFL has replaced baseball as America’s sport, the level of attention paid to the Super Bowl from all spheres has become overwhelming. So much so, I really didn’t pay much attention to most of it.

As far as the pre-game was concerned, I get making Super Bowl a distinctly Americans event-we love holidays and nostalgia. But this year’s Super Bowl was full of unwelcome and uncomfortable propaganda. All sorts of lines about “freedom” and “independence” read by players, coaches, and military men and women, among others. It felt like it was airing on the history channel, only the Fox News version where there are colonies and colonizers but no small pox blankets or slaves.

In fact, they actually talked about the colonies. Awkward. The tone of pre-game production wasn’t my cup of tea. I suggest the NFL keep the history references to a minimum unless they’re referring to the evolution of the game.

The National Anthem And Whatnot

In a show of shameless promotion, Fox decided to have Lea Michele from the sitcom(?) “Glee” sing “America the Beautiful.” Unfortunately, it sounded ugly. Too bad the NFL doesn’t have any Canadian expansion teams, cause that would have been a good reason to drag Tamia out to sing “Oh Canada.” ANYTHING would have been better.

Christina Aguilera’s rendition of the Star-spangled Banner was simply awful! She oversang, messed up the words, and looked like a goth blob. Most people who sing the anthem choose to pre-record. That eliminates these sorts of embarrassments. But alas she sung her rendition live. I’m sure she wishes she had a time machine.

Speaking of the anthem, Americans will bet on anything, and by anything I mean the over/under on how long it would take Aguilera to finish the national anthem. The two big gambling sites bodog.com and Bookmaker.com clocked the time differently (1:53.7 and 1:54.2 respectively), sending the online gambling world into a frenzy.

I may or may not be exaggerating.

HALFTIME

I thought the Black Eyed Peas did a good job but they put quantity over quality, opting for a effect-driven show rather than a talent-driven one. 500 dancers and I don’t even know how many songs were in their medley-7 maybe? They also bought out both Slash and Usher. I thought both were great, but Fergie’s singing wasn’t as good as it normally is and the songs jumped genres and had no real flow.

But luckily I like their party music, so I jigged a little and was satisfied for the most part. I think if you like BEP, generally speaking, the performance was good, if you don’t it was a tragic mistake.

Kind of hard to please anyone who’s seen Michael Jackson and Prince perform at halftime.

THE GAME

The first quarter simply wasn’t competitive. The Packers ran over the Steelers scoring two quick touch downs. The rest of the game was much better, but turnovers and dropped balls pervaded it making the energy a bit uneven.  Still a a good game overall (probably not in the top 10 of those I’ve seen in my lifetime though).

I remain kind of in disbelief that defensive titans Harrison, Polamalu, Farrior, and Clark made very little impact on the game.The Packers Defense played well-they looked confused for a bit after CB Charles Woodson left the game with a broken collar bone, but eventually pulled themselves back together and continued to apply pressure.

Ben Roethlisberger made some crucial errors and turnovers including 2 interceptions. The Packers converted Steelers’ turnovers into 21 points, and I think that really tells a lot of the story. Rodgers looked to be heading into his normal bad-second-half routine that he’s had throughout this year’s playoffs but it didn’t last very long. He really put together a good game.

RODGERS VS. FAVRE

I think it would be a nice gesture if Favre called Rodgers personally to congratulate him. Favre has been a hard act to follow in terms of winning the hearts and minds of fans. But as you can see from Rodgers’ play this year and Favre’s stints with the Jets and Vikings, the Packers made the right choice in sticking with Rodgers.

I’m sure Packers fans will have no problem coming to terms with this now that that they have another Lombardi trophy to show for it. Besides, after only 3 years they have a QB that gets to be in the ranks of the “chosen ones” that analysts shower with deference and positivity. A land where no black man shall ever live. Just one more thing to celebrate.

DEPRESSION

I do watch other sports; however football is the only sport that matters. The lockout that is looming is like a dark cloud over my life. Speaking of life, unfortunately, with football season over I have to get one.

I’m glad that the combine is coming up soon because that’s always a good time, well, to me anyway.

Even though the season is over I will still be busy on this blog. It’s in the process of being redesigned and I’m working on some special projects to introduce that will make next football season even more fun for me and hopefully for my readers as well.

According to Sports Illustrated Peter King and a few others, the NFL called all 8 remaining teams and put them on notice about trash talk. This feels a little like when your teacher would say if Mike doesn’t get quiet none of you are getting ice cream. Then you’re left to wonder why the fuck should Mike’s loud mouth stand between me and two delicious scoops of pecan praline?

We all know that the Jets are the primary trashtalkers, so this move by the NFL was obviously a roundabout way of shutting them down.

The Jets are a bunch of *insert racially insensitive term that conveys shucking and jiving.* Starting with the Coach they’re just very annoying on a whole. Most of us noticed how annoying they were LONG before this week. But perhaps this week with comments from Bart Scott, Antonio Cromartie, on top of Rex Ryan’s usual diarrhea of the mouth it was all just too much.

I’m sure the NFL is sensitive to the fact that the playoffs draw in more casual fans of the game which makes them pay more attention to news coverage. I get that they don’t want people to think that this is all the game is.

HOWEVER

Football isn’t a pretty sport. I would expect men who violently run into each other and get sewn up on the sidelines like soldiers on a warfield to talk a little trash when feeling confident. I mean we can’t all have split personalities like the soft-spoken and downright chirpy  hitman Troy Polamalu.

Besides it’s not the Jets fault that the media is feeding into their plan to have them focus on the trash talk rather than endless non flattering comparisons of Sanchez to Brady or harping on the 45-3 shut out.