March Madness…It’s FAAAANTASTIC!

Ugh.

Wait, that doesn’t cover it….

(Screaming expletives)

That’s better.

I love the NCAA tournament.  I really do, but I find I have a much harder time enjoying it anymore.  That’s because I, like so many of us, gamble on it.  Not a lot mind you, but $15 is $15, I mean that’s at least two trips to Taco Bell.  I watch, and I enjoy the games, but when oh say….Georgetown loses in the second round and I have them in the Final Four, I get a little upset.  Granted part of that is my hyper-competitive nature, but still.  So I wonder now if I should stop joining pools.  Part of me says I should just join ones on-line and see if I can win a new TV or something like that and not put forth any of my hard earned money so I can enjoy the games again.

Nah.  Where’s the fun in that?

I like to think that’s what makes things like the tournament fun.  Sure, Davidson becomes the bane of my existence, but unless they make it to the championship game and somehow beat UCLA, I more than appreciate what they’re currently doing in the tournament.  Now, without the money on the line, would I still watch?  Yes, yes I would.  Would I feel compelled to watch every game I can, check the Internet for scores while at work, and watch the scoreboards at the top of the screen?  Nope.  I would watch a little and if I happened to get a blowout game, I’d flip it and not come back for quite a while which would’ve been terrible because this year, I would’ve missed some really great games.

Which leads me to this…

For once CBS has gotten it right.  I usually kill CBS for their sports coverage (to be fair, I kill Fox too).  In fact, here’s what I wrote last year after round 1 was in the books….

CBS should be forced to give up the tournament.  Seriously.  Now, I’ll give them this, they managed to get the HD mostly right after being pretty average for the Super Bowl and flat out terrible for the GRAMMYs.  However, they insist on keeping Jim Nantz and Billy Packer and that’s just unacceptable.  You want a good play-by-play team?  Put Jay Bilas, whom they get on loan from ESPN every year, and the great Gus Johnson together.  Every game would feel like the title game with those two doing them.  Also, they refuse to break from your game if you’re in a “home market” to go to a better game.  Here’s what I mean:

Being the home of the University of Illinois, Champaign gets “home market” status for any Big 10 team playing in the tournament.  So while Nevada and Creighton played a nail biter overtime game, CBS would not break away from the Wisconsin game in Champaign.  Keep in mind that for the final 4 minutes and all of overtime of the Nevada game, the Wisconsin lead was double digits.  There were people in Madison yelling at CBS to break away.

Ah but then came this year.  CBS did break away from the Wisconsin game, and any other game that wasn’t close, to show you potential upsets or games that went down to the wire.  Well done CBS, well done.

So, yes, I could do what the NCAA wants me to do and not put money on the tournament, but really I think I’ll just be smart from here on out and never, ever pick Georgetown again.

Seriously, what’s a Hoya anyways?

I’m back

I’ve been ridiculously bad about posting lately, and for the roughly 4 people that read this, I apologize.  Work has been hectic and I’ve been training for a 5K run that happens in about a month.  Turns out I’m really not physically built for running.  I run flat footed and it caused a nasty case of shin splints.  My knees get more creaky with each day and now, for some reason, my left hip hurts.  Running, while incredibly effective, hurts.  Regardless, I’m determined to run this race.  I think once it’s over I’ll cut back my running schedule to no more than 4 times per week.  I think once it warms up and they open the pool at my apartment complex, I’ll switch to primarily swimming since there’s no impact on your joints at all when you swim.  Until then, I’ll continue to pack myself in ice on a nightly basis.

On to more important matters… this should make you sick to your stomach.  Yes, the idiotic record industry is at it again.  I have never once in my life been a customer of DirecTV.  Now let’s say that someone figured out how to pirate their satellite signal (who knows, someone may already have), and let’s say that this technology used to steal their signal became fairly wide spread among tech savvy people.  Then, DirecTV understandably says “enough” and finds ways to crack down on people stealing their signal and virtually stamp out pirating their signal.  However, let’s pretend that at the same time, DirecTV’s business model becomes obsolete yet they refuse to change it.  So now they’re losing money and they need to blame something.  Thus they blame the people who pirated their signal, yet their profits don’t increase.  So they decide that everyone must be guilty of this horrible crime against them and get the government to pass a tax that everyone has to pay.  How is it fair that I, who never used their services legally or otherwise, would have to pay that tax?

It isn’t.  So, if people like my parents, grandparents, and countless others who never even knew what Napster was are forced to pay a tax for people downloading music illegally, again I ask, how is that fair?

Things and other such nonsense

So it’s been a few days since I’ve put anything up because this week’s been insane with work stuff.  Thus, I’m going to put a couple of things in to one post here.  Most of it’s sports related.  You’ve been warned.

NFL free agency began this week.  I heard an interesting argument on The Score out of Chicago that free agency is ruining the NFL and possibly sports in general.  It’s not a terrible argument, but the host was just slightly wrong.  Free agency has existed in some form since the inception of pro sports, we just didn’t call it that.  Don’t believe me?  Have you ever seen the pictures of Johnny Unitas in a Chargers jersey?  How about Joe Namath with the Rams?  Franco Harris with the Seahawks or O.J. Simpson (remember, before he started killing people he was a damn good football player) with the 49ers?  All those things happened.  Those players weren’t traded, what happened was their previous teams (in order: Colts, Jets, Steelers, and Bills) decided not to offer them new contracts.  However, the players and obviously other teams thought they could still play.  So those teams offered them contracts and the players signed.  How is that any different from free agency?  The way that free agency is ruining sports is that it creates ridiculous contracts.  For example, yesterday former Bears wide receiver Bernard Berrian signed a 6 year 42 million dollar contract with the Minnesota Vikings.  Don’t get me wrong, Berrian can play and we’ll certainly miss him in Chicago, but he ain’t worth 42 million.  That’s what free agency does.  It creates a market that’s vastly inflated which leads to increased ticket prices that keep real fans from being able to afford to go to games anymore.

Spring training started as well.  I like the Red Sox to repeat.  They didn’t do much in the off-season to get better, but they didn’t get worse, and when you’re already the best team in baseball, shouldn’t that be enough?  The Tigers are probably going to be the favorites this year because they pulled a Patriots and became a walking, talking fantasy team, but we saw how that worked out for the Pats.  I think the same thing happens to the Tigers.  Cub fans, stop talking.  You will not win the World Series this year.  Fukudome is not the combination of Ichiro and Hideki Matsui like Lou Pinella said.  If he was, don’t you think the Yankees and Red Sox would’ve been all over him?  Yet neither team offered him a contract.  That says a lot about him as a player.  I think he’ll be solid, but he’s not going to be enough to overcome the massive lack of pitching the Cubs have.  I expect my White Sox to finish third in the AL Central this year.  I don’t think they can overcome the Indians or Tigers unless both teams get decimated by injuries.  I do however think the Sox will play much better this year, but I’m convinced that the bullpen is still trying to kill me.

Finally, I want to make sure you’re aware of an absolute travesty that’s happening in Seattle.  The Seattle Supersonics have been the city’s NBA franchise for 41 years.  They brought home the only professional championship Seattle has ever won.  Seattle is a wonderful city with truly great fans and they’re being screwed in the worst way.  Clay Bennett, an Oklahoma oil man bought the Sonics and, despite lip service to the contrary, immediately began working on moving the team to Oklahoma City.  Don’t get me wrong, OKC deserves a team, they have great fans, but they don’t deserve the Sonics.  Seattle does and only Seattle.  Memphis, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Charlotte have all demonstrated they aren’t basketball towns.  Memphis in particular could move to OKC and frankly, no one would care.  Yet Mr. Bennett will move the Sonics to Oklahoma City and Seattle will find itself without NBA basketball for the first time in 41 years.  The NBA could stop this.  The league has that power, yet they refuse to do it.  Why?  NBA commissioner David Stern is good friends with Clay Bennett.  In fact, Stern inducted Bennett in to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.  See?  Collusion doesn’t just happen in politics.  Why should you care?  Well, because first of all this is a crime and it’s truly heartbreaking.  Second, if it can happen to Seattle, it can happen to anyone.  Not that long ago, L.A. had two NFL franchises, now they have none.  Imagine a world where Chicago has only one baseball team, no NHL franchise, and the Bears play in Milwaukee.  How about the Yankees in New Jersey or the Packers in San Antonio?  Granted, those are extreme examples, but remember that prior to the city of Chicago authorizing the remodel of Soldier Field, the Bears were going to go play in Gary, Indiana.  So while the Packers are probably the only team in all of pro sports that are safe from relocation because they’re owned by the city of Green Bay, literally every other team is open to this.  Is there anything you can do to stop it?  Nope.  Congress spends far too much time pouring over pictures of Roger Clemens at a pool party at Jose Canseco’s house from 1998 like it’s the Zapruder film, yet they won’t step in to help out the city of Seattle.  You’ve gotta love those priorities.