No I Did Not Copy The Onion

With the Super Bowl is over, this week marks the start of a month of pure sports boredom. Nothing exciting will happen this month in the world of sports and you can quote me on that. Rather than trying to write an excruciatingly boring column on the NBA, college basketball, or the NHL, I thought I would make up some fake issues and then argue about them. This will surely be more entertaining than anything that is actually happening.

Fake Issue 1: Tiki Barber winning the Super Bowl MVP

I thought you had to actually play in the game to receive this award (or at least make it out of the Wild Card), but apparently Tiki has a lot of fans in the media, which I guess he is also a member of now. Now you all know that the MVP usually gets some sort of automobile in addition to a trip to Disney World, and this year’s car was a Cadillac. Basically, we should have seen this coming. Remember those commercials where Tiki is driving in an Escalade in Manhattan and talking about seizing opportunities? While you may have thought that that was just some loaner car for the commercial, in reality it was his Super Bowl MVP trophy.

Fake Issue 2: Whether Peyton Manning should have called a timeout in the fourth quarter to film a MasterCard commercial

I would like to thank the ad wizards that came up with this idea. I was confused for a moment as to why CBS cut away to commercial only to come right back to the game, but when I saw Peyton take off his helmet and look straight into the camera, I knew we were witnessing advertising genius. Sure, the Colts might have needed that extra timeout on that last-second drive that may or may not have happened, but Peyton probably earned a lot more money for that spot than he would have earned under his current back-loaded player contract (Did you know he only earned $2.50 per game this season? No wonder he needed to do all those commercials. He’s probably really looking forward to the 2013 season, when he will receive $4 million per play).

Fake issue 3: Awarding the Triple Crown to Barbaro posthumously

Sure, he was a great horse and a true fighter from what I’ve heard, but this is ridiculous. Is horse racing that desperate to stay in the news that they would desecrate one of the most prestigious awards in all of sports? I’m pretty sure Seattle Slew and Affirmed are giving Barbaro a pretty hard time about this up in Horse Heaven (aka the art cabinet in Ms. Stevenson’s first-grade classroom). While this may be good news for Barbaro’s owners, it is not for Triple Crown Productions, who replaced Visa as the sponsor of the races and now has to fork over the $5 million bonus.

Fake Issue 4: Baseball banning the use of non-traditional statistics

This came as quite a shock to all the “stat nerds” and “computer dorks” on the Internet, but Major League Baseball does not have a reputation for being particularly logical. Apparently the old-time scouts still have a lot of power in baseball circles, and they felt their jobs were being jeopardized by people with calculators. I have to agree with these scouts. Any idiot with a spreadsheet can make statistics, but it takes a true baseball man to know if a player has the heart, drive, soul, and spiritual fortitude to be great. While I will now never be able to realize my life long dream of crunching baseball numbers in a cubicle, I know that somewhere out there is an old man who couldn’t identify a radar gun if he was holding it and who has never watched TV that is accurately and passionately identifying the next great crop of ballplayers. Godspeed.

Fake Issue 5: The NBA pretending to change back to the old ball

After months of complaining, the players finally forced the league to get rid of the new-fangled synthetic basketball and replace it with the good old-fashioned cow hide version. What the players didn’t know was that these “old” balls were actually the synthetic ones fitted with several small pieces of leather. I have to commend the NBA on its fiscal responsibility. Knowing that a shift back to the classic ball would leave thousands of unused basketballs sitting in a warehouse in New Jersey (which can’t be donated to anyone because, let’s face it, these balls are like a book that’s been taken into the bathroom), the league cleverly killed a bunch of cows, processed their hides into small circles, and paid a bunch of sweatshop workers to stitch together the new hybrid basketballs. Players can’t tell the difference because they can still feel the leather’s smooth feel on their hands during the game. This Is just another example of why David Stern would make a great US president.

Fake Issue 6: Whether this column should actually address a serious and important sports topic.
Maybe next time.

Read This Column Instead of Studying

Since it’s finals time, I should be studying, and this column won’t be printed for another week, I thought I would address some random points that I’ve been kicking around. You can call this the Thanksgiving Leftovers Column. [TM or SM (I’m not sure, since I haven’t taken Trademark yet. Can you even trademark a column title?)] To help you skip over the topics you don’t want to read about, I’ve conveniently labeled each paragraph with a clever heading. Enjoy!

MLB: Awards Given to People Who Don’t Deserve Them

There is nothing more inane than debating who should win the MVP or Manager of the Year awards. Ryan Howard may have single-handedly saved the game of baseball somehow by playing atrocious defense and not leading his team into the playoffs, but I don’t think he should have won the MVP for that. Similarly, Joe Girardi should probably not have won Manager of the Year after his team finished under .500 and didn’t make the playoffs. Who cares if they were playing a bunch of rookies? Apparently those rookies were pretty good, and since the Marlins fired Girardi, they don’t really seem to think too highly of his managerial skills. Since I was under the impression that baseball (and basketball and football and hockey) were team sports, we should probably give out an award for the best team. We could call it the league championship, and the teams with the best records would play each other at the end of the season.

NFL: Announcers on TV say clichés a lot

I read Phil Simms’s book on exposing football myths awhile ago and agreed with most of it. He railed against the use of clichés by broadcasters, such as saying the quarterback threw into triple coverage. This is misleading, since teams seldom if ever cover one player with three defensive players. Rather, they have players cover specific “zones”, and sometimes, there are three players in one “zone” where the quarterback happens to throw the ball. I believe this defensive scheme is called zone coverage, and it has become quite popular lately. Any credibility Simms had in my eyes after reading this chapter fell by the wayside after he repeatedly used the very same terms in his broadcasts. I am only left to conclude that this book was probably written by a ghostwriter and that Simms’s contributions only amounted to some post-game quotes that the author read in an old newspaper article. Since every broadcaster seems to be doing this, I think we need a new term to describe what happens when a quarterback throws to a receiver who is being covered by a corner with safety help. We could call it “single-and-then-one-of-the-safeties-came-over-to-help-after-the-pass-was-thrown coverage.” While it’s a bit of a mouthful, I think football fans will appreciate the more accurate commentary.

College Football: BCS Champion Still Not Crowned

USC probably beat UCLA on Saturday which means they are probably playing Ohio State in the BCS National Championship game, and sports columnists probably spent the last few days arguing whether this is fair. Some people will say “We need a playoff system,” while others will say, “Every college football game is a playoff game.” Both points are pretty valid, and if we simply combine the two arguments, we would have our solution. Make every game a single elimination playoff game. If a team loses any game, its season is over. When we are left with only one undefeated team, we will crown that team the national champion. The downside to this plan is that this will only encourage teams to schedule cupcakes to maintain their undefeated record. The simple solution to this problem is to kick all the 1-A crappy conferences into 1-AA. The winner of the 1-AA title would get to play as an independent in 1-A the following season and could stay there if they finished the season with more than 8 wins. Another problem is the season could be finished pretty quickly if the best teams lose early. To solve this problem, every losing team would keep playing for the chance to be crowned the number two team. We would then have the number one and two teams play at the end of the season — Oh wait.

NBA and NHL: Yes, the season has started

Unbeknownst to many of you, the NBA and NHL seasons have been up and running for the past two months, and we have all witnessed some exciting things. The Knicks already equaled their entire win total from last season and also somehow got Eddy Curry to lose 40 pounds, stopped Steven Francis and Stephon Marbury from taking 80 shots each a game, and kept Isiah alive well into the second month of the season. They may one day figure out how to win three games in a row, and when that happens, watch out. Over on the ice, someone told the Buffalo Sabres that they didn’t actually win the 1999 Stanley Cup, and they are pretty mad. Someone also told the Anaheim Ducks that there won’t be a fourth Mighty Ducks movie and that they no longer have the word “Mighty” in their name, and they are also pretty mad. In response to these turns of events, both teams have gone on a tear, racking up 40 points a third of the way into the season. You’d better hope that they don’t have any more of their preconceived notions of reality shattered, or they may never lose another game. EVER.

While you may think that the above observations are pretty superficial and based only on me looking at the league standings, I can assure you that you are 100 percent correct. Now go back and finish your outline, 1Ls (2Ls and 3Ls, you can go back to sleep).

Ramblings of a Lazy Sports Writer

Those of you who are dedicated readers of Left-Wing Lock (all 7 of you) might be wondering how I manage to come up with a column topic for each issue. Maybe you think I have an astute awareness of the pressing issues facing the sporting world or maybe I just write about whatever headline is currently on ESPN.com.

Good guesses, but you’re a bit off. You see, being the industrious law student that I am, I don’t have the time to come up with any topics at all. Once I get a topic, I can bang out a column pretty quickly, but the initial idea takes a lot of thought. Rather than take the exorbitant time to do some research on a unique issue, I ask my friend, who we’ll call “AJ,” for some ideas.

This has always worked well in the past, and I see no reason why it shouldn’t continue. When talking with AJ this week, he wasn’t as cogent as he usually is; so, as a result, today’s column will feature several themes that I don’t feel like expounding in a full column. Now that you know my secret, please don’t tell my editors. They might decide that I am just an unnecessary middleman and let AJ write the columns himself.

Crosby v. Ovechkin
All you hockey fans out there no doubt have been following the development of NHL super rookies Sidney Crosby of the Penguins and Alexander Ovechkin of the Capitals. While Ovechkin entered the league in relative anonymity, Crosby was projected as the first overall pick when he was only 15. Has he lived up to the hype? As of the Olympic break, young Crosby has 65 points (28 goals, 37 assists), compared to Ovechkin’s 69 points (36 goals, 33 assists). Not that big a difference, so which player is actually better? Both teams have mediocre records, but Crosby is surrounded by a far greater level of talent. Let’s also not forget that Crosby is living with one of the greatest players of all-time, Mario Lemieux, while Ovechkin is sharing a DuPont loft with a Georgetown 3L. Not exactly an ideal mentoring situation.

From my limited observation of each player, I will give the edge to Ovechkin. Crosby is one of the guys with a “tremendous work effort.” That’s all well and good, but this isn’t high school. Anyone can be a hard worker; it’s quite another thing to have natural talent, and Ovechkin has Crobsy beat in that department. At a recent Caps game, they showed a countdown of Ovechkin’s Top 10 goals. Needless to say, there was a common theme throughout each highlight, and it usually involved Ovechkin skating the length of rink around every other player.

Finally, Ovechkin made the Russian Olympic team, while Crosby failed to make the Canadian squad. Even though Canada is fielding the best team in the history of sports, the fact that an 18-year old with only half a season of professional hockey experience could not make the roster says to me that Crosby is just not that good. Advantage: Ovechkin.

[Paragraph Removed to protect anonymity]

Quail Hunting
So by now, that guy Cheney shot is probably dead. Aside from this whole event showing us that Cheney should not be trusted with a shotgun, let alone President Bush (Political commentary in a sports column? I’m not above such things), I now finally have an excuse to talk about my long-hidden passion: quail hunting.

To me, the only thing lacking in mainstream sports is the opportunity to kill something.

That, and food.

Luckily, the sport of quail hunting combines both into an amazing and delightful experience. Cheney is quite an astute man if he counts quail hunting as one of his hobbies. Any idiot can go hunt rabbits or bears or mountain lions, but it takes real skill to hunt a smallish bird, bred in captivity, and then released into the wild.

Some would call this shooting fish in a barrel; I call it shooting quail in an open field. Potato, potahto. The quail is also the inspiration for the most powerful superhero of all-time, Quailman, who, as we all remember, saved the world countless times from Dr. Klotzenstein, the Rulemeister, and RoboBone.