- 08:01 AM
- 05/22/13
Boy, talk about a guy who just never had a chance. Between being on the Jaguars and... well, that was pretty much it, actually. Just "being on the Jaguars" killed what could have been a really good career.
posted by Etrigan at 06:55 AM on May 16
The Broncos didn't complain because they had Manning coming in. The Jets didn't complain because they're a bunch of dysfunctional losers.
So basically, Tebow couldn't lead a good team enough to make them (not players nor coaches nor management) want him even as a backup, nor a bad team enough to make them (not players nor coaches nor management) want him even as a backup. Maybe he isn't actually the leader you think he is.
Admittedly, I've never thought much of "leadership" in football, for a variety of reasons, but I can't see Tebow as an exemplar of the form.
posted by Etrigan at 07:27 AM on May 14
Any individual as devoted to religion as he is is taught to constantly spread the word of God.
People are taught all kinds of wacky-ass things in the name of religion, and freedom doesn't mean I don't get to (at least) roll my eyes when they do those things.
Maybe it's the leadership qualities he seems to show when he is on the field and given a chance that can somewhat compensate for his lack of skills.
I can't really speak to whether he shows leadership qualities, but was any Bronco vocal about seeing him go? Has any Jet expressed displeasure at his departure? (I don't remember either of those things happening, but I don't live in either of those media markets, so I wouldn't have heard as much about it as I did about Titus Young getting cut)
posted by Etrigan at 08:17 PM on May 13
He's probably the most polarizing athlete alive today, so strong love/hate on either side is to be expected.
Tiger Woods?
I would argue that Tebow is the most polarizing athlete when it comes to his playing. There are people out there -- I'm related to at least two of them -- who really do think he'd make a great QB, if he found a coach willing to mold a team around him. His evangelical Christianity is also polarizing, but you could take that away and you'd still have that argument over whether he's any good.
On the other hand, no one thinks Tiger Woods is an overrated golfer; he's just a dick. Ditto Ray Lewis, who we all may recall is a fairly off-the-field polarizing figure on this board, but I don't recall anyone who's willing to say he's not a Hall of Fame player. I mean, shit, if you're talking off-the-field polarizing, OJ is still alive.
posted by Etrigan at 07:16 PM on May 13
"Hey, don't blame me, white Christian SEC fans, I'm doin' everything I can here!"
posted by Etrigan at 09:14 PM on May 12
The strikeout-but-not-really scoring rule is one of the Great Baseball Things.
posted by Etrigan at 10:06 AM on May 11
This week in the Oh Are You Fucking Kidding Me statistics race: "[Jose] Fernandez became the first starter younger than 21 to throw at least seven scoreless innings with nine strikeouts and one hit or fewer allowed since Kerry Wood did it in May 1998."
posted by Etrigan at 08:38 PM on May 06
Ricardo Portillo, the referee, has died.
posted by Etrigan at 11:02 AM on May 05
No team has ever won a playoff game after getting rid of Tim Tebow.
Florida's 2-1. Clearly, the Jets just need to give him a degree.
posted by Etrigan at 02:58 PM on April 29
the #1 pick was from Central Michigan, for gods' sake
Hey now. Let's not speak ill of my alma matter.
I wouldn't dare to speak ill of John Locke's school either, but the Chips don't often put guys in the first round.
posted by Etrigan at 03:20 PM on April 27
The same skills you need to be good at something are the same skills you need in order to judge if somebody else is good at that thing.
If that were the case, the Charlotte Bobcats would be on their fourth straight NBA title run.
However, I think you're close -- the same skills you need to be good at something are the same skills you need in order to judge whether you're good at that thing. Jerry Jones isn't good enough at running a football team to even have an idea of how bad he is at it.
I don't get how someone could be as business smart and football stupid as Jerry Jones. He doesn't have the personnel evaluation skills to build an team.
The "cone" in football is incredibly narrower than it is in virtually anything else (even other sports). In no other field of human endeavor is a 23-year-old made into one of the 45 people responsible for the success or failure of a multi-million-dollar enterprise immediately after being one of the 85 people responsible for a significantly less heavyweight enterprise (the #1 pick was from Central Michigan, for gods' sake). Teams expect to be able to cull the approximately 2,000 FBS football players who graduate each year (and that's not even counting the top 100 or so FCS players) into the top 200-plus to draft. There is no team -- hell, there is no coach that doesn't have a Total Draft Bust in the rear view mirror somewhere, and there are very few teams that don't have a Total Draft Bargain who came out of nowhere.
I'm not saying that Jerry Jones isn't bad at personnel evaluation, but very few people are good at it, and there's significantly more luck than skill in even the best drafter's history.
posted by Etrigan at 11:01 PM on April 26
This is a team that just gave Tony Romo a blank check. They don't really think they need anything as badly as everyone else does. They're the Cowboys, after all. They're always one or two unlucky breaks away from the Super Bowl.
posted by Etrigan at 09:09 PM on April 26
I'm in favor. The home-plate collision is one of the worst (on-field) things about baseball.
Doesn't hurt that the Tigers won anyway.
posted by Etrigan at 07:46 AM on April 25
Ah, okay. And the discount would be applied in the form of rebates, rather than at the pump, so they could just say, "Yeah, your rebate was $50,000 for this month" rather than the $100,000 it should have been.
posted by Etrigan at 01:46 AM on April 20
Can anyone explain what the fraud here was? It says the company was shorting other companies on rebates, but what sort of rebates are we talking about? Was it money they promised and then didn't deliver?
posted by Etrigan at 06:00 PM on April 19
You call it dark humor. I call it poor taste and insensitivity in a day and age of so much senseless violence.
Find us a day and age that didn't have so much senseless violence; or for that matter, a topic that can't possibly offend anyone.
posted by Etrigan at 08:47 PM on April 15
They probably want Guinness Book recognition for Kim Jong Il's single-round golf record of 18.
Danger Mouse did it in 2.
posted by Etrigan at 11:43 AM on April 05
Let's very much not make this into an MRA discussion, please.
posted by Etrigan at 11:27 PM on April 04
Goddammit, now I have to like the Falcons?
posted by Etrigan at 05:19 PM on April 04
Maybe they're fans of the Big Show.
posted by Etrigan at 10:24 AM on March 31
It's only a matter of time before Jones coaches the team.
He doesn't?
Obviously, I'm not in the room, but I'd be amazed if Garrett never got a speech to the effect of "I'll let you call 90 percent of the plays, and you get a vote on player hires and fires, but don't ever think you run this team."
posted by Etrigan at 10:08 AM on March 30
The perfect picture for that tweet on his Twitter page, too. "Really?"
posted by Etrigan at 09:55 PM on March 29
See, this is what I was talking about with Flacco, only far more obvious -- the Cowboys think they can convince the rest of the team that they need to play up to their QB's level, and that level is proven by the fact that he's a $100M QB.
posted by Etrigan at 06:13 PM on March 29
Bears offer Urlacher $2M, Urlacher says G'bye.
posted by Etrigan at 09:09 PM on March 20
The Elvis Dumervil Debacle II: The Finger-Pointery.
posted by Etrigan at 08:28 PM on March 16
Terrell Sinkfield may have demolished the (non-Bo Jackson) record for the 40 at the Minnesota pro day.
posted by Etrigan at 02:31 PM on March 10
Frankly, I consider this rank optimism. Two outcomes in which the world is not brought to an end by the introduction of the designated hitter to the National League? Ridiculous.
posted by Etrigan at 10:17 PM on March 06
...and an hour-long evening show hosted by Regis Philbin.
[record scratch noise]
posted by Etrigan at 08:48 PM on March 06
Part of me wonders whether it's more about marketing: having someone who can be a face of the program for selling stability and the future. After all, if you dump a bunch of money into a QB, he has to be able to at least imbue some confidence in the organization right?
There's a certain amount of circular logic in this, though -- it's as easy to say "This $120 million contract shows that the Ravens management has confidence in Joe Flacco to be the QB of the future" as it is to say "Ravens management wants to sell Joe Flacco as the QB of the future, so they give him $120 million."
I don't think it's quite doubling down on a bad bet, but there's some level of "See! He must be good! Look at how much money we're giving him!"
posted by Etrigan at 06:10 PM on March 05
The optimistic part of my brain is saying, "Maybe these teams that are asking have realized what a huge fucking marketing bonanza it would be to have the first openly gay player, but they know they can't, like, recruit one."
That part of my brain is often wrong.
posted by Etrigan at 05:19 PM on March 01
Regarding the quote from Bender's link, there's no way the fan heard the crowd beginning to roar, turned towards the field in response and then was struck by a scorching foul ball.
It might have been popped up. I can totally imagine the crowd roaring and just turning your head and BAM death from above.
posted by Etrigan at 08:16 PM on February 28
Yeah, I'm with ChinaGrover -- there shouldn't be a blanket "Nope, you were in a ballpark, therefore any injury is your own fault" rule. That said, I hope the jury finds for the defendant and Rountree gets nothing. And that said:
Boise Baseball warned that a decision against it could open the door to lawsuits by amateur and professional athletes "voluntarily playing sports like baseball, softball, basketball . . . despite the fact that there are inherent risks to these sports" that are known and consented to by players.Oh, shut up, Boise Baseball. Just shut up.
posted by Etrigan at 05:35 PM on February 28
Now signed through age 40 and, if you can believe a commentor at ESPN, next year his cap hit will be lower than Mark Sanchez.
I can believe it. He's got financial security forever, so he's looking squarely at his legacy at this point. If it means better people around him to tie his ring count with Montana (and Bradshaw, but... yeah), he'll play for less than he might be "worth."
posted by Etrigan at 08:22 PM on February 25
Yeah, I was just gonna say what rcade said. It's not fear, it's just an alignment of priorities -- just like how the guy who reports sports on your local news is unabashedly a fan of the local teams, except that in ESPN's case, the local teams are the sports themselves (and, to a lesser extent, the leagues).
posted by Etrigan at 05:32 PM on February 24
The baseball in Nevada thing is really the only thing that I found surprising/odd.
IIRC, the only professional sports teams in Nevada are minor-league baseball -- the Reno Aces and the Las Vegas 51s. As far as college teams go, Nevada (nee UNR) football is only intermittently good and UNLV basketball hasn't been important for a while. I am a little surprised that soccer (Latinos) or basketball (Mormons) aren't bigger, but baseball makes sense.
posted by Etrigan at 11:03 PM on February 22
Well, at least you're admitting that there actually were other female NASCAR drivers before Patrick and not calling her the Sandra Day O'Connor of the sport. That's a step.
But back to the point that she's overhyped, is Patrick so much better than all of those other women that they deserve to fade into the background of sports history like Sam Bowie?
posted by Etrigan at 07:49 PM on February 19
Patrick is competitive against the very best and that's a major accomplishment in itself.
Is she better than Sara Christian? Janet Guthrie? Shawna Robinson? Patty Moise? Johanna Long? At best, you can make an argument that she might be as good as any of them, but she hasn't yet made it into the top five of female NASCAR drivers by any metric except "Did they ever win a pole at Daytona." She's just the most famous one. To borrow a phrase, she made headlines for some reason...
posted by Etrigan at 06:00 PM on February 19
"Oh, huh, Canada has a Dan Hawkins coaching t-- Holy shit, it's Dan Hawkins."
posted by Etrigan at 05:31 PM on February 19
See, you don't type fast enough. Because you're a girl.
posted by Etrigan at 04:45 PM on February 19
Yes, and amusingly, steelergirl said it.
posted by Etrigan at 04:21 PM on February 19
I don't disagree, but when people isolate Danica from, say, Dale Earnhart Jr. (who's been polled as the most popular driver in NASCAR for 10 years), or a number of other marketable athletes from other sports whose popularity outpaces their performance and insist on tying her particular popularity to other pretty females like Anna Kournikova, there's not a very good case for this being about anything but her gender and how good looking she is.
Well, yes. Given that I have said over and over again that her popularity is because of her gender and how good looking she is, I agree that this is about her gender and how good looking she is.
I, in particuar, isolate Patrick from Dale Earnhardt Jr. because we never talk about the latter. Is he overhyped in proportion to his actual performance? Absolutely. But he has come up fewer times in SportsFilter's entire history than there are comments in this thread (and half of the time, it's in this exact comparison). He's not overhyped here. He's not even hyped.
I'm not suggesting all the criticism is sexism...
It read that way to me. Or at least that it was all either criticism or looksism.
posted by Etrigan at 02:43 PM on February 19
Danica races exclusively with men, achieved a result, and stands out because she's the ONLY woman in the field. Do you not think that has at least a little intrigue to it that people might be interested in?
Intrigue, yes. But -- again -- grum's framing of "Despite some believing that she's only in NASCAR because she's a 'relentless self promoter'" and "At some point, the backlash because of her commercial appeal and gender will become a quiet drone in the background." throws down the glove that any criticism of her and failure to be Super Excited is sexism and/or anti-pretty-looksism.
What I'm saying is that it's possible for someone to think, "'Achieved a result' doesn't mean she's actually a good driver, nor does it mean that she doesn't get more press because she flaunts her looks."
posted by Etrigan at 01:19 PM on February 19
3/45ths, to be precise.
posted by Etrigan at 11:08 AM on February 19
She also got the press that every Daytona pole position winner gets (national press)
If you're determined to believe this, I can't stop you, but there are different levels of "national press." One annual line on the ESPN home page and a blurb in USA Today aren't the same thing as the blitz that Patrick has received -- take a look at the "auto racing" topic on this very website and tell me how many Daytona pole stories we've ever run.
posted by Etrigan at 07:44 AM on February 19
Patrick won a race at the highest level (Indy Car Japan 300). Kournikova never won an WTA event in her career.
She won two Australian Open doubles titles, but I get your drift. Regardless, I'll stick to my comparison. I think that Patrick's notoriety is more because of her looks and her willingness to flaunt them than her ability. The idea that winning one race and one pole position proves that her detractors must be misogynists is ridiculous.
she's not even the first female NASCAR driver to win a pole position.
That's not what the article says:
No, the article says, accurately, that she's the first woman in the Sprint(/Winston) Cup to win a pole position. Shawna Robinson won one in the Busch(/Nationwide) Series.
posted by Etrigan at 09:45 PM on February 18
Face facts. It's because she's a woman. Everything else is bullshit. She's attractive, personable and talented. Give her credit for taking on a man's domain.
I do give her credit for that, but I also believe that she's on the level of Anna Kournikova. She's not the first female NASCAR driver -- she's not even the first female NASCAR driver to win a pole position. The current crowing over her "accomplishment" is like how commentators in college football talk about "bowl game records."
Yes, there's a backlash against her because she's a woman. But there's also a backlash against her because she's getting largely undeserved press because she generates pageviews. Don't lump all of us in the same backlash.
posted by Etrigan at 08:39 PM on February 18
At some point, the backlash because of her commercial appeal and gender will become a quiet drone in the background.
Will that be before or after her "Career Wins" statistic isn't grammatically incorrect?
posted by Etrigan at 03:56 PM on February 18
Was reading something the other day saying that in 20 years soccer will have surpassed football as the number one sport in America.
I think we may be approaching the 40th anniversary of that projection (though with soccer replacing baseball back then). Basketball will replace football before soccer does.
posted by Etrigan at 02:57 PM on February 17
Are you certain that's the case in a country that speaks a different language and has a different police and judicial system, insomnyuk?
I mean, I think it probably does mean domestic violence of some kind, but I ain't ruling out the possibility that something got lost in translation.
posted by Etrigan at 05:59 PM on February 14
Balkan/Baltic
I make that mistake almost every time.
The easy way to remember it is that one is a simmering cauldron of ethnic tension, and the other costs you $60 in Monopoly.
posted by Etrigan at 05:52 PM on February 12
(I had to try so hard not to use professional-wrestling terms and jokes.)
posted by Etrigan at 01:13 PM on February 12
Therefore, the Ravens benefited from breaking the rules and could therefore be considered "cheating".
Yep. I'm pretty comfortable at calling that cheating too.
posted by Etrigan at 10:01 PM on February 07
I would say that planning to break the rules is cheating. The vast majority of penalties are heat-of-the-moment things, but saying ahead of time, "Okay, if this happens, we're going to break the rules," is a violation against the very concept of sport. Like Hack-a-Shaq.
posted by Etrigan at 07:29 PM on February 07
Congrats, YYM.
Nate Silver is dead to me.
posted by Etrigan at 07:18 PM on February 04
1. 49ers
2. Under
3. Joe Flacco
4. Ray Rice
5. Anquan Boldin
6. Colin Kaepernick
7. Bernard Pollard
8. Ed Reed
9. Aldon Smith
10. Doritos
11: 47.3
12: 44
posted by Etrigan at 06:03 PM on February 02
2. Play the Super Bowl on Saturday instead of Sunday.
Why?
posted by Etrigan at 06:38 PM on January 30
I live in Detroit, so I'll just say "Yes. Zero."
But I do hate it when any athlete gets mangled like that. Hope Rondo recovers quickly.
posted by Etrigan at 04:48 PM on January 27
Sorry, I missed that Eli would be there. I meant Peyton.
posted by Etrigan at 08:38 AM on January 27
SportsFilter: The Thursday Huddle
The Chip Kelly backlash makes it to the Oregon Legislature.