Soapbox Time!

I don't want to get off on a rant here... but... (cue Tears for Fears)

For those who are unaware of James Hardy's existence, I can't fault you, but here's your synopsis: he was a highly talented receiver who through some sort of odd sequence of events ended up at Indiana University... set all kinds of records and was a veritable force in that offense, declared early for the draft and was picked up by the Buffalo Bills. Oh, oh yeah, and he also is a world class human being*, as exemplified by this, and oh yes, this...

Some might notice a bit of a "TREND" here... but hey, why not take a chance on this walking disaster? He's tall and can catch a football! It's stories like Hardy that aren't hard to predict, and in fact I'll go ahead and go out on a limb here and guarantee red and blue flashing lights await this individual in the near future, and it'll likely be something that'll be worse than his ol' pa deciding not to press charges despite taking a beating and being threatened with a weapon. It's mystifying how you hear things like "character issues" thrown out about players entering the draft and nobody ever makes too much of a big deal out of it... it's funny how that word covers things like "baby's momma beater" and "father beater" "threaten father with a gun in hometown" type of individual. Hey, congratulations Buffalo! He'll be a tremendous addition to your squad!

Come on over guys and check out my crib!!!

It just amazes me that somewhere, someone is willing to pay an epic failure of a person like Hardy MILLIONS OF DOLLARS despite every piece of evidence that states this guy is destined for a number on his back that is damn sure going to be longer than two digits... it's this portion of sports that causes me to frown as a fan. Where are people's backbones? Integrity? Where's the ability to tell some sleeze-bag like this to go ahead and pull it out his own ass? Sorry James, you sure have all the physical tools, but you're a complete dumbass, we're going to look elsewhere.

The saddest part is that I have literally zero doubt in my mind that this kid will be a colossal problem and likely end up literally hurting someone in the process. In fact, take it to the bank and lock it up, and go ahead and remember I said so when everyone gets "stunned" by the most recent act of violence by a professional athlete.

*Or a complete low-life scum sucking failure who will no doubt be involved in some sort of heinous violent act against a family member or loved one within the next 3 years... you know, whatever works better for you.

Rant off.

A Tradition Unlike... errr where'd it go?!

I want my Masters back…

Let me be astoundingly clear about something: I love the Masters. To be sure, I also love golf, but there are few things that you’ll find golfers to be as passionate about that doesn’t directly concern their game as those four glorious days that give us a window to Augusta… it’s literally the green-flag to spring and for many, the signal of the beginning of golf season.

I must interject a brief aside, if you’ll indulge me. There may be several of you out there who say “Golf?!” and come up with a decidedly not-witty comment that has been used mere thousands of times before. If you don’t like golf, that’s fine, but I’ve found most people who don’t enjoy the game fall into two categories:

1. They’ve never actually attempted to play
2. They’ve played, learned that it was actually difficult, and decided not to like it because, brah, I don’t suck at anything… (other than life of course)

Those of you who don’t like the game or don’t pay attention to it need not read on.

There, now that that’s settled, allow me to climb up on my golfer’s soap-box for a moment here. Let’s get one thing painfully out in the clear: The Masters sucked this year. There, I said it. Flat out sucked. Trevor Immelman deserved to win, and I don’t want to take a thing away from him. Champ’s not one of those front-runners who has to see a “name”win to enjoy the tournament, those guys can go pull it out their ass for all Champ cares (coincidentally, many were likely intently watching the Red Sox Yankees “rivalry” this weekend as well…). What I wanted to see was good golf and some competition. We got neither. The one brief bit of relief I had was the fact that Tiger wasn’t gift wrapped another major due to some dude choking on applesauce all day long while The Striped One played nothing better than par golf. Tiger Woods demands respect, but I HATE watching him win that way. On a day where the winds blew, the eventual winner tied a dubious record… highest final round score shot by the eventual champion: 75.

That doesn’t cover the scope of the suckitude of this tournament however, in a four day stretch where the low score was 67 and the final 20 players on Sunday couldn’t break par, there was a detached and very distant feel to this tournament. There were no roars on Sunday, there were no back nine charges, there were no low scores from a few groups ahead of the leaders to add intrigue and excitement to this competition… this from a tournament that was world renowned for: “The Masters doesn’t start ‘till the back nine on Sunday”. Ack. Some will blame the wind… but that’s a scape goat here. It’s not as though the place was on fire for the first three rounds, and there were fantastic conditions to be had out there. What did we get? A bloodbath… which isn’t what the Masters used to be about. Suddenly the Masters and the folks in those green jackets have caught a case of USGAitis… and it reeks. I do not enjoy the U.S. Open, it’s not entertaining for me to sit there and watch train wreck after train wreck on a tricked up and artificially toughened forgettable track in the summer sun. Leave that garbage to the USGA.

The Masters is above that, its tradition is so interwoven with the holes and the players who have made them memorable that to trifle with them to the extent that the people down there have has robbed the tournament of much of its magic. NOBODY CARES that Augusta yielded under par scores because it was still a course that demanded and rewarded solid golf and shockingly: yielded exciting golf. The people at Augusta have gone too far with their changes. The course is too long and they have combined this length by making the greens no more receptive, adding cuts of rough where none previously existed, and essentially turning the track into the U.S. Open dressed in green sheep’s clothing. Which is vomit inducing.

When you remember the Masters what do you remember? You remember Nicklaus shooting a back nine 30 for the ages in 1986, you remember Ernie and Phil dueling with eagles and birdies in ’04, you remember David Duval throwing it away down the stretch, you remember Mark O’Meara making birdies on the last two to win, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player doing likewise, the greats playing great golf. Seve, Woosnam, Ben Crenshaw, the list goes on and on and on. I’ll tell you what you don’t think of: a bunch of guys trying to put band-aids on rounds and just get into the clubhouse… that’s U.S. Open type garbage right there.

Don't plan on seeing these reactions on Sunday anytime soon...

There’s a ridiculous and nasty venereal disease going around the sport of golf right now concerning the word “par”. “We must protect par!” has long been the cry of nobodies and dweebs at the USGA, and now with the artificial and unnecessary tricking up of Augusta National, we’re starting to see the effects of this kind of hysteria. Par is just a goddamn number, that’s all it is, a number, and an arbitrary one at that. What I want to see is exciting golf, I want to see players dueling down the stretch, and I have not a single care in the world whether that duel takes place at 15 under or 1 under or even 3 over. We got none of those things Sunday, because we’ve got courses now that don’t allow players any opportunity to do anything other than get lucky, and they are covered up with stupid words like “demanding”, “exacting”, and “a challenge”. They are none of these things, they’re contrived and stupid. Anyone can make a golf course hard by growing the rough for a couple of weeks, saying par 5’s are par 4’s and making the fairways as wide as your hallway. Augusta has started to show the early symptoms of this ridiculousness and the tournament has suffered the consequences for the past two years.

Augusta was different, it was a great course that provided great moments… but in its current configuration it’s in grave danger of losing that, and that’s a shame. When sporting events forget what they are about and begin to focus myopically on insipid details, they run the danger of alienating those that have made the event what it was in the first place…

Champ… out.

Pack It In Boys, It's Over!

Beauford's up with the sun and gone with wind. Doing his thing as a travelin' man, headed for those Hollywood nights in those Hollywood hills... maybe not, but it sounds good and if it's good enough for Bob Seger, it's damn sure good enough for us.

Now then, let's get right to it! Champ ain’t much for bragging, after all I hate rude behavior in a man, won’t tolerate it. But methinks we might have found ourselves a bit of an exception here…

With something just north of seven rotations of the second hand around the clock face left in the first half of the Kansas and North Carolina semi-final, the rock chalk jayhawks emphatically pushed their advantage over the Tar heels to a… ahem… “healthy” 28 points, thus prompting Billy Packer to sigh/cry/mumble the following: “this game is over Jim”.

Again, that’s a bit more than 7 to go in the first half, and the analyst has just chimed in with: “this game is over”. I’m sure the CBS van was thrilled.

Now then, never mind that this game still had over 27 minutes remaining in it, and never mind that at times this season North Carolina had gone on 94-3 runs in a span of a little under 5 minutes or that teams have pulled of similar comebacks before (Duke / Maryland and Kentucky / LSU come springing to this writer’s mind)… no sir, that was all ACC spokesman and resident North Carolina cheerleader Packer could take. His team (and let’s not pull punches here, Packer loves him some Tar Heels, and why not, I am no geographer, but Wake Forest isn’t too far on down the line from UNC) was being beaten so badly, that if it hadn’t been for a combination of made free-throws by UNC and Bill Self’s charges inexplicably ceasing to feed the ball down low, I have no doubt that the halftime score would’ve read something in the region of 852-12.

In fact, if the camera had been on the trenchant sob, I’m sure there would’ve been a fling of the hands in the air and a slow movement of forehead toward table. I would pay for that footage with the finest of meats and cheeses in the land, good people. The only truly sad part about this whole exchange was that Jim Nantz didn’t have the wherewithal and the cajoles to rip Packer to shreds… particularly when North Carolina did its best category five tornado impression on the entire state of Kansas and its followers in the early goings of the second half… but hey, that’s CBS and booth chemistry!!! Gotta love it!

Now for the braggadocio, although taking any credit for this is like saying I was right about predicting the sun rising today… that notwithstanding, on with the back-patting! Friday:

“Next? Billy Packer will ruin the TV watching experience of these games for an entire nation of curious observers and die-hard fans alike. There is no bigger wet-blanket in sports than Packer, who hates what basketball has become, hates today’s player, and loathes anyone who doesn’t understand the intricacies of a “box and 1”… oh and did I mention that he is quite possibly the biggest ACC shill of all time? Everyone jumps on Vitale’s case (rightly so), but Packer is even worse. Packer makes me hate basketball, he is as uninspiring and boring of an analyst as I can imagine, and he literally can slow the game down because he brings negative energy to the table.” Packer came through in every regard didn’t he??

You know what the worst part of all of this is? The not so inane fact that Billy is a GOOD analyst at times, he makes good points regarding the actual game of basketball, but his demeanor and the way he lets it affect the way he calls things, ESPECIALLY with an ACC team on the court in front of him, well he just ruins it. If you happened to watch the rest of that basketball game on Saturday, you’ll know that the rest of the evening was spent by Packer talking about UNC 90% of the time, and Kansas for approximately 10%... followed again by him somehow taking credit for knowing that Kansas would win in the end… It was, suffice to say, ghastly. I certainly hope that all the Jayhawk fans were able to get their own radio guys on in some fashion and mute the TV.

And with that, enough basketball pour moi, if you listen closely you can hear the sweet dulcet tones of whistles ringing out over the crack of pads across the country... spring time is here, rejoice!