Postgame Spread
You guys hangin' out? I'll hang out.

Friday, February 27, 2009

From the one that cut you    

Nice work from Beyond the Box Score, detailing how one man can get so much out of so very, very little.

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Thursday, February 26, 2009

God U Suck: Martin Biron Edition    



Here's how to assemble the skeleton of a God U Suck post in three simple steps:

1. Ethics FAIL by Mike Richards



2. Goalie FAIL by Martin Biron



3. Video WIN by Some Guy With A Crush On Sidney Crosby



This is old news.... but when this is the news, it's NEVER a bad time.

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Operation Scheyerface    

Good lord, do I wish I'd known about Operation Scheyerface. I might have watched the game!

My favorite, of course, is the one at the end of Jon Scheyer photoshopped upon the famous Duke Baby father's lap. At this point that baby may as well be Maryland basketball's official mascot... the Maryland Duke Babies has a ring to it, no?

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Wednesday, February 25, 2009

NFL Overtime Dilemma: Solved    

Auctioning off first possession in overtime based on closeness to own goal line: great solution, or greatest solution?

For the most part I approve, if for no other reason than because you get to a place where nobody disagrees about who gets the ball. As it is, you can just vent your vag about how unfair it is that someone drove 60 yards on you, as if you didn't have a chance to stop them. This removes that nonsense entirely. You agree to stop someone on their own 12, and if you don't then you face the music unarmed. I like that.

On the other hand, I could see this actually leading to more ties if the ball is in a sufficiently annoying location. And that's a terrible outcome.

If OT is changed at all, I would want to see the removal of the tie in favor of the untimed sudden-death overtime. If college football can go on for five, six, seven OT periods, then there's no reason to argue that the players will be too tired to play longer than fifteen minutes. Presumably the current reason for ending a game in a tie is related to pleasing TV broadcasters, but the NFL seems like the one league that could increase unplanned gameplay and still keep local affiliates happy. Perhaps if OT were monetized above what local affiliates would receive for paid programming, the problem gets solved.

Either way, ties suck, and have nothing but ill effects, like Donovan McNabb talking, and the Eagles making the playoffs. If they can take away the tie that actually makes sense (hockey) then they should get rid of the one that doesn't.

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Saturday, February 14, 2009

Who's Yo Daddy    

Michael Lewis has cast Shane Battier as an underrated, unheralded underdog, just like his other subjects.  But jeez... Battier spent his entire college career on national television getting fellated by the face of college basketball.  Anyone who watched college ball in the late 90s and early 2000s knows Shane Battier and his game.  While his lack of pro recognition still makes him Lewis territory, I don't think the gravity of Battier's newfound underrating makes him a sad story or anything.  Do we really need to give Daryl Morey a medal for agreeing with Dick Vitale?

But it's still a good piece.  Good enough that it almost makes me forget that every charge Battier takes is complete fucking baloney, and that he's a cheating piece of shit.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

F**k Baseball: Hockey Video Of The Year    

From the indispensable Puck Daddy comes this indispensable video. Ignore all the Dan Le Bastard crap, and wait for Randy Moller to start dropping the by-request pop culture references.



I think "WHAT'S IN THE BOX! THE PANTHERS HAVE A TWO-GOAL LEAD!" is my favorite.

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Dreaming of Spring    

yesterday, it surpassed 60 degrees here. Today's in the mid fifties. And today, we get our first shots from Phillies camp in Phlorida.

Take one look at this shot of Chase and tell me you don't feel less seasonally depressed.

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doRA    

So, in lieu of a massive rant about ARod, I'll just link to this piece on slate.com, which lays out precisely the opposite opinion as mine.
In it, he mixes a bunch of banking metaphors, in an attempt to pander to the non-baseball watching audience who are reading his article because, with Obama as president, they no longer have anything to feel wronged about.

Summarizing that piece, he suggests three steps to fixing baseball:

1) punish teams not just players. If a player is found to have taken PEDs, his team is barred from the playoffs.

That is insane, and utterly besides the point. The reason we punish individuals is cause they're professionals. The NCAA punishes teams because it's college, and the burden of responsibility is shared between student and program. Plus, this would nearly guarantee at least one year in the near future where 0 teams are eligible for the playoffs, were baseball to really ramp up testing (which I think they should).

2) Put all PED users on the permanently ineligible Hall of Fame list.

This is myopic as hell. He blabbers about how the Hall isn't just for the best players, it's for the players who demonstrate sportsmanship, integrity, etc... You know, guys like Ty Fucking Cobb? What about all the players popping greenies throughout the 70s-90s? "The world is grey, Jack!" The Hall isn't some virginal, lily white beacon of "all that was once good, and could be again", it's simply a historical record of human achievement. And humans are hopelessly fallible. Let us celebrate their achievements through the lens of our common humanity.

Look, Bonds should go in, McGwire should go in, dorA should go in, and when I take my grandson there someday, and we look up at Bonds' gigantic melon immortalized in bronze, I can moralize about what a cheating dick he was until lil' Alex begs for me to shut up so we can go get a choco taco already.

3) Players shouldn't be eligible for the Hall until 10 or 20 years post-retirement, to better allow history to judge them.

While I suppose that this longer time period might give us better perspective, it would also result in WAY less interesting Hall of Fame induction speeches. I shouldn't have to wait until I'm old and grey to see my childhood heroes (many of whom would have died already) canonized. Also, with modern statistical analysis, it is relatively easy to compare players to the league average, and so make immediate judgements about their ability, regardless of differences between eras. So the only reason to wait 10-20 years would be to judge their moral failings or lack thereof, and I've already rejected that point.

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