More Stupid Shit from Deadspin

This post on Deadspin easily wins the award for dumbest post on a major sports blog for the year 2010. Let me sum it up for you:

- Via semi-anonymous tipster, Kazi, Deadspin acquired a picture of (at the time) a midshipman football player who was grinding on a woman of a different race than him (the horror, the horror!).
- Writer(/Editor?) David Mathews decided not only to run the picture because it's hilarious(?), but also provide a short biography of the midshipman in question, including a link to linkedin profile. (hint: no one you know has ever heard of him)
- Mathews concludes by saying:

It seems that [midshipman] is a sharp guy, but he probably won't be running for Congress any time soon. If that's not [midshipman] in the picture, I'd like to send my sincere apologies to [midshipman] at this point.

Some random thoughts:

- What the fuck makes that picture even post worthy? Up until the moment this post went live, no one in America had any idea who this guy was. But now that we have a picture of him grinding on a girl, that's supposed to be funny? What am I missing?
- Just as I asked in my last post: why is his name and biographical information at all important? Is the difference between him being a supply officer vs. a cargo pilot really the difference between a slight chuckle and a belly laugh?
- Why shouldn't the midshipman be running for congress anytime soon, aside from his age? Last time I checked dancing, even of the "freak" variety, is legal and considered acceptable in the parts of the country that allow inter-racial marriage.
- David Mathews tops off this cup of shit by off-handedly mentioning that he can't even verify for sure if it's the guy who he says it is, so he's sorry for being an asshole if it's not the guy who he says it is. But if it is the guy who he says it is, then he's not sorry for being an asshole.

A-Rod + Contrived Brett Favre Analogy = Ray Rotto's Newest Column

A-Rod reaching Favre Syndrome all because he didn't go the distance

An article comparing A-Rod to Favre you say? Doesn't sound like much of a stretch at all.

The Alex Rodriguez perp walk came and went without incident, a well-controlled 35-minute goat-rope that advanced his newly developed image as America's Penitent.

His next hurdle, though, is not whether he can convince the Sincerity Police, or whether he can make his teammates overcome their already well-established reservations toward him, or whether he can still satisfy the fantasy geektroids.

"Sincerity police" and "Fantasy Geektroids." I'm sure there were literally thousands of people wondering if A-Rod had won those two demographics back.

It's whether he can keep us from becoming sick to death of the sight, sound and mention of him.

Which, I'm sure, worries A-Rod a lot because he's always tried to be an omnipresent figure in sports.

Not disgusted; that's another issue entirely, and one you'll have to deal with yourselves. No, we're talking about what is rapidly becoming known as Favre Syndrome -- the reflexive revulsion of the sound of someone's name, voice or presence, or the introduction of same by another party.

I agree about Favre, but what exactly does that have to do with A-Rod?

Rodriguez is about there now, and he is about to get full-blown Favre because he didn't finish the job he has tried to tackle in the past two weeks. He left openings for people to flog his name into a flat gray paste, to the point where his name, like Favre's or LeBron James' or Terrell Owens, will come up on every slow news day, just because.

- Lebron James gets attention because he's arguably the best basketball player ever.
- A-Rod gets attention because not only is he likely to finish as the statistical leader in every major hitting category, but he's also the highest paid baseball player ever.
- Terrell Owens gets attention because he's a great wide receiver...and he's an insane attention hound.
- Brett Favre has been a mediocre QB for 4 of the past 5 years who has gotten tons of attention because of his ridiculously annoying, self-agrandizing retirement antics and the fact that "journalists" like Peter King will not remove themselves from Favre's nuts

A lot of this is determined by the 24/7 news cycle, but a lot more is determined by one of the most pernicious elements of the 24/7 -- the almost junkie-like reliance on a few big names discussed over and over and over again whether or not they've actually done something in the last day or two to merit that discussion.

This is A-Rod's fault how?

I mean, Favre has done nothing whatsoever in the last two weeks except say he isn't playing any more, and yet he is still being media-flogged to the point of national nausea.

Let me throw out a wild guess as to why this is? It's crazy; I know, but bear with me:

HE SAID THE EXACT SAME FUCKING THING LAST YEAR, AND THE MEDIA LOVES EVERYTHING FAVRE, YOU FUCKASS

And now, with Rodriguez's latest choreographed mea maxima culpa, Rodriguez is there, too. You hear his name, and you try to duck your head inside your jacket, and it will get worse as the new holes in his story are passed and crowbarred apart.

INT. A-ROD'S HOUSE - SEPTEMBER 2008

A-Rod sits in chair watching Brett Favre footage on ESPN.

A-Rod: Fuck, this Brett Favre guy is stealing all the time ESPN would normally devote to questioning whether or not I have the testicular fortitude to ever win a World Series. How can I get the spotlight on me?

ESPN switches over to a story about Barry Bonds. A-Rod stands up.

A-Rod: By Palmeiro's mustache, that's it. If I admit to taking steroids and then act very coy about the details, the media will go back to raking me over the coals like they have for the past 7 years! Excelsior!

For instance, he has seized on the "I was young and stupid" angle as his ticket out, and we will hear that over and over again in the coming months. We suspect he is trying too hard to give himself the benefit of the doubt here by calling himself an idiot, but the more he says it, the less convincing he will be.

No matter what A-Rod said, he was going to get ripped on for it. Even if he had declared that he did it so he could hit the most homeruns ever, and get to sleep with the most women ever, there would've been people on talk radio complaining:

"WHY DIDN'T HE JUST ADMIT THAT HE'S GAY!? WHAT IS HE HIDING!?"

It's great excuse when you're 10, but 10-year-olds never talk about how young and stupid they are. By the time you're 24, you don't get to haul that one out any more. But he will, largely because he thinks it's better than the alternative, which is "I was young, I did what everyone else did, and I wanted to be better than me." True that is idiocy, but it's also cynicism and condescension. And Rodriguez isn't good enough at either to make it seem like anything else.

1. Everyone's jumped all over A-Rod for saying he was young and stupid at the age of 24, which I think is moronic. He'd been in the MLB since age 18 and had been surrounded by guys doing steroids the whole time with no consequences. Does any one honestly expect him to have had the perspective to be like "Yeah everyone else is benefiting from steroids, but I shouldn't because they'll one day crack down on it, even though there's nothing to suggest that they ever will."

2. Not that it excuses A-Rod for his actions, but Giambi and Pettitte got off way easier for no good reason. Giambi never admitted to anything. Pettitte said he tried PED's once and "didn't like them." Anyone who's ever used any weight training supplement (legal or illegal) knows that you won't see the effect of anything until weeks of use, so Pettitte's story is complete bullshit, but no one cared at all.

But that's only part of the syndrome. The other part is how often we keep hearing about his spring training, down to the last fast-muscle twitch. And we will, because today's news conference left more questions behind because it was managed.

There's clearly nothing A-Rod wanted more than to be hounded by the media for the rest of 2009.

He might have saved himself if he had taken follow-ups, if he had answered every question no matter how trivial or dull-witted, and stayed there for as many hours as it took.

If you honestly believe this, then you're fucking stupid.

Why? Two reasons. One, if you're trying to throw yourself on the mercy of the court, you have to stay for as long as the court wants you. Two, if you want there to be no more questions, answer all of them at the time, or pay the price for deferred maintenance.

And what happens when he says he doesn't have an answer for questions like "exactly how many times did you use it?" "did it affect how many home runs you hit that year?" etc. The reporters say "nothing new here, let's go cover the NHL!"

Conversely, the best way to keep your name in the news well beyond its shelf-life is to limit your availability. Beating the media means giving the media more than it can eat at one sitting, and yes, there really is such a thing.

Just ask TO about how demanding attention from the media is the worst way to get it.

He didn't, because he either didn't want to or because he was advised not to. He thought 35 minutes was enough treatment for Favre Syndrome, and it isn't nearly enough. And now it may be too late.

Brett Favre : A-Rod :: Ray Rotto : Good sports journalism

While We're At It, Cancel EVERY All-Star Game!

Ah, the All-Star game. Remember being a kid and being excited that all these awesome players were playing together? Usually a player from your team would be playing there, too! Slam dunk contests, home run derbies, skills competitions... it was worth staying in on a Sunday to watch. Then you grow up and it turned into an excuse for taking a fantastic weekend nap with sports on TV. I'll TiVo Saturday's skills competition because the trick shots will be awesome and Versus might give me another goalie fucking up his hip.
Since the lockout, the NHL hasn't put out a single paper ballot for the All-Star Game and ever since, there's a big stink about people who don't deserve to go to the All-Star Game going. John Grigg is back to explain to us why fans shouldn't vote.

The NHL has reached the tipping point with All-Star Game fan voting. It needs to be scrapped. Now.

This wasn't a problem with the paper ballots because who brought a pen or pencil with them to a hockey game? Well they have the internet on computers now, and you can vote for anybody you want as many times as you want. This year you could also text the name of your team to some SMS short code and it counted as 1 vote for every player from your favorite team. So instead of throttling the input of fan votes down to say, a username/password combo and limiting each of those to a certain number of votes, we should abort the whole thing.

With the league insisting all 30 teams be represented, the game is already watered-down. With only six open spots available on each 21-man roster, allowing fans to determine the starters is akin to letting ice cubes melt in an already weak drink.

Letting fans feel like they have a say in something is SUCH a horrible thing. We shouldn't let fans go to the All-Star game. Instead, they should be forced to watch the game in large common areas with TVs that are tuned to Versus.

A few years back, the NHL got a glimpse of the future when a fan-based Internet campaign almost got journeyman defenseman Rory Fitzpatrick voted in. Conspiracy theorists suggest the NHL manipulated the results to ensure Fitzpatrick didn’t make the grade. The player himself was publicly uncomfortable with the possibility.

What Rory Fitzpatrick said he was uncomfortable with was that he was becoming a sideshow. From the CanWest News Service: ''It could have created more of a stir. I just tried to keep it fun and not stressful. If it got to be a distraction for the team or too much, I might have handled it differently.'' The NHL didn't do anything about the voting system because the Vote For Rory campaign made national sports headlines, and there's no way the league would discourage actions that make ESPN talk about the league.

This season the problem was taken to new heights. Eleven players - all either Canadiens or Penguins, including the yet-to-play-a-game-this-season Sergei Gonchar - surpassed Jaromir Jagr’s 2000 record of 1,020,736 fan votes. And just four teams - Anaheim (three players), Chicago (three), Montreal (four) and Pittsburgh (two) - are represented in the starting lineups for the Jan. 25 event.

My biggest problem this year is that four centers and two right wingers are starting. So left wingers can go fuck themselves. John Grigg cares not about positions, only about team representation.

Crosby led all vote-getters, topping 1.7 million votes. Malkin nearly matched him. The four Habs averaged about 1.4 million votes each. None of the other players with one million-plus votes were named reserves. The Hawks and Ducks starters averaged just 747,000 votes each, but took all the spots in the West.

How dare Montreal fans vote to see their players play in front of them when Montreal hosts the All-Star game this year! It's stupid that there's only four teams represented in the starting lineup. I would imagine that after the first shift, those players will be split up between other lines.

In the old days, chad-punching homers voting with their hearts rather than their heads were the problem. Now the NHL has to fend off computer-hacker homers to ensure roster legitimacy. Luckily, most of the starters are legitimate all-stars, but some are debateable [sic]; some laughable.

And only fans of these four teams were stuffing the ballot box? I'm pretty sure that fans of every team are encouraged by their team to stuff the ballot box. I would even go so far as to say that there are very few people that sat down in front of their computer and thought out the scenario of the All-Star game and only voted for the best players. I don't care who starts, because the actual best players in the league will be named to the team anyways. So I might as well vote for my team's best players.

Jonathan Toews will be good, maybe great. But he’s not yet Henrik Zetterberg, Marian Hossa or Patrick Marleau. Scott Niedermayer is a Hall of Famer, but Duncan Keith and Brian Rafalski are more deserving this year.

Replace an Anaheim player with a Chicago player. That's a smart thing to say when you've completed bitching about how only 4 teams are represented in the starting lineup.

Jean-Sebastien Giguere has a Conn Smythe Trophy and a Stanley Cup on his resume. But he’s had better seasons when he wasn’t named an all-star and is being outperformed by others, especially rookie Steve Mason. Mason, at least, will be in the Young Stars Game, but it would have been fun to see the wunderkind in the skills competition and the big game.

It would have been a lot of fun to watch the kid get lit up by the Eastern Conference's finest.

With that in mind, I offer a solution: Have NHL players, coaches and GMs vote on who should represent the best hockey league in the world at its All-Star Game. Then open the starting-lineup voting to fans a couple of weeks prior to the game.

With that as a solution, what's the point of opening it up to the fans at all? To fix fan voting, limit the number of times they can vote. From what I remember, there was a 25 vote limit per person for the MLB All-Star Game. Make fans vote for every position instead of just voting for forwards. Don't give the fans a consolation prize just because the NHL screwed the system up to begin with.

Make the announcement an in-game event. Make a big deal of it. Keep the starters secret and give them prizes of some kind (Alex Ovechkin. Come on over! You’ve won your very own Segway. Sidney Crosby, you get your own apartment!). Make it fun. With some spontaneity and humor, it could be the NHL’s Golden Globe Awards.

A Segway joke? What is this? Do they even make Segways anymore? Give starters priz - - what the fuck just happened to the article? The All-Star Game is enough of a show as it is. If there's one thing the NHL doesn't need, it's a version of the Golden Globe Awards.

Because, really, who cares who starts the All-Star Game, as long as the best players are there? And since the 30-team rule already makes that difficult, the NHL shouldn’t let electronic ballot-stuffers make it impossible.

That's right, he just spent this whole article complaining about the starters and then at the end, he throws up his hands and says "Oh well!" Then why write this? Why not expand the roster to hold 63 players on each side, and the teams switch every period? The first period is determined by fan vote, the second period is determined by the coaches, players, and GMs. The third period - everybody on the ice at the same time! That'll fix your 30-team rule complaint.

TMTMQR: Gregg Easterbrook Has Apparently Been Huffing Spray Paint Again

You get the feeling that he lived under power lines as a kid or something. He's kind of like an unfunny version of Tommy Boy who writes instead of selling auto parts for a living.

I don't think it would be an efficient use of time for me to cover the dumbest part of this week's TMQ line-by-line. It's about the viability of a college football playoff system. I'll summarize it instead- the distastefully named Gregg spends about 1,000 words breaking down why it would be a bad idea. His thesis is that there are only three possible ways to make it happen, and none of them work for logisitical reasons. If you hold the playoffs before the bowls start (and why the fuck would you do this... the national champion would be crowned before the season ended) then you have to shorten the regular season to get the playoffs underway in November. If you hold them instead of the bowls (seriously, I'm not making this up, he considered this to be one of only three possible scenarios under which a playoff system could exist... eliminating every single bowl) then you just knocked out the postseason opportunities of about 60 teams. And if you do it after the bowls, the season would extend too far into January. Not only are all three of these reasons poorly conceptualized in and of themselves, but he has also failed to consider the possibility that YOU COULD MAYBE HAVE AN EIGHT TEAM PLAYOFF RUNNING AT THE SAME TIME AS YOU HAVE A BUNCH OF OTHER TEAMS PLAYING BOWLS. THEY'RE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. YOU COULD DO BOTH SIMULTANEOUSLY, IT WOULDN'T BE THAT HARD.

The only tough part would be deciding what to do with the bowls which traditionally pit conference champs against each other, like the Rose Bowl. There are two options- first, you can just call one of the first round playoff games the Rose Bowl and hold it in Los Angeles. This messes pretty heavily with tradition and means you can't have the national title game until two weeks after New Years, so I don't think it's ideal. The better choice would be to tell the Rose/Orange/Sugar bowls, "Hey, it's too bad that we have to do this, but it's in the name of having a playoff. You're still going to exist, but you're no longer going to have conference champs. You'll have second and third place teams from your traditional conferences. Sorry, this is the way it has to be." This option messes with tradition too, but to a lesser extent. So that's what I'd do if I were in charge. McWorrrrrrrrld!

Why am I wasting all this time with my bullshit ideas for how to have a college playoff? Now I just sound like a less retarded version of Gregg. The point is, he is a zilch for thinking that "eliminating every single bowl" is one of only three ways a playoff system could exist. Let's just get to the rest of the article in actual cut-and-paste format.

In 2003, NFL teams averaged a combined 42 points per game; this year they're averaging 45. One additional field goal per contest just does not seem like a monumental change. (Excuse me -- the average is 44.7 points per game this year. Everybody's using the pseudo-precise decimal place.)

There is no pseudo-precision involved in decimal points. In fact, that couldn't be more false. Decimal points are all about actual precision. You want an example of pseudo-precision? Well, you could just say that NFL teams are combining for 45 points a game when that isn't actually true. That would be pseudo-precision. Why are you so afraid of any number that's not an integer, Gregg? What dark secrets from your past could explain why tenths of a second and tenths of a point twist your panties so much? What are you not telling us? Did your father run away with a decimal point when you were a small child, leaving your mother to raise you and your 1.5 siblings all by herself?

Re: Minnesota's 99 yard touchdown play on Sunday night against the Bears, which happened because Chicago CB Charles Tillman incorrectly thought he had safety help with Vikings WR Bernard Berrian:

Tillman made a killer mental error about the coverage scheme. Usually mental errors result in short gains; this one resulted in a 99-yard gain. Reader Mario Salazar of Monterrey, Mexico, suggests Tillman's boneheaded play was an example of TMQ's Law of the Other Shoe: When something bad just happened (Chicago getting stuffed on fourth-and-goal), beware that something even worse will happen on the next down.

Gregg has outdone himself in his relentless pursuit of anecdotal bullshit. The Law of the Other Shoe. Wow. You know, that law definitely makes a lot of sense. Except when it doesn't, like when a team forces a turnover but then subsequently turns the ball right back over. Or when a team gives up a touchdown, but then takes the ensuing kickoff back for a touchdown. Or when... or when... or when..., etc.

In this year's NFL draft, three Arkansas running backs were chosen: Darren McFadden and Felix Jones in the first round, Hillis in the seventh. Hillis has outgained Jones this season, 285 yards to 266; he is on pace to outgain McFadden, who has 405 yards.

It's well known that Gregg loves... nay, is fucking obsessed with players that were drafted late or not drafted at all. So this little stat is the kind of thing that gives him (at bare minimum) a partial erection. Only problem with it: if Denver hadn't lost five other running backs to injuries leading into week 12, Hillis would probably have less than 100 yards. And if McFadden or Jones played for the Broncos, they would probably have somewhere in the 500 to 800 yard range. But hey, why get bogged down in thinking or using your brain when you can just be really excited that a relatively untalented guy is benefiting from other players' injuries and getting a lot of reps in a good offense.

Also- did you know that there are some players in the NFL who are really good, but have been cut at one point or another for various reasons? The horror, the horror.

More college football baloney-

If Boise State gets no FedEx envelope from the BCS, a fantastic matchup would be Boise State versus Ball State in the Humanitarian (although as the likely MAC champ, Ball State is committed to the Motor City Bowl). Both are currently undefeated, and to the football purist, such a game might be more attractive than several possible BCS pairings.

Why would a purist rather watch this game than, say, Penn State/USC or even Utah/Texas? Why? And what does being a purist have to do with it? Because both these teams are undefeated, that makes the game better than the BCS games? If you want to say some fans (not purists... again, what the fuck does being a purist have to do with anything other than style of play) would find this game equally attractive as some of the BCS games, that's fine. Where does the "more attractive" label come into play? Here's a brief list I've assembled of how to get into Gregg's heart (and pants, if you're into that kind of thing):

1) Be an NFL player who was undrafted or got cut at some point, even if the cut was purely for salary cap reasons
2) Be a college team that isn't that well-known or heralded for a variety of reasons, including (and especially) if you play in a weak conference
3) DO NOT BE PASS WACKY. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT BE PASS WACKY. THAT SHIT IS WORSE THAN MURDERING KITTENS. ONLY TRADITIONAL, BALANCED OFFENSES THAT ARE NOT IN ANY WAY "WACKY" ARE ACCEPTABLE.
4) Oh, and the same "worse than murdering kittens" standard applies for punting. At any time, in any game situation. Do not punt. Ever.
5) And if you're losing by more than three, you're not allowed to kick field goals. Down 7-0 with ten minutes left in the first quarter, facing a 4th and 15 from the 30? And you're running out the field goal unit? Wow, you might as well forfeit right now. Clearly you're not trying to win. You're just trying to avoid the shutout. Pussy.

Absurd Specificity Watch: In the Chicago at Minnesota collision, it wasn't clear if Minnesota tight end Jim Kleinsasser got the ball across the plane of the goal line. Referee Bill Leavy huddled with the replay assistant and announced, "The ball will be spotted at the quarter-yard line." A quarter of a yard is 9 inches.

Let's play a game called "Fill in the blank to complete the popular cliche that is for the most part true and valid." Are you ready? Here goes:

Football is a game of _______.

Do you need it again?

Football... (pause)... is a game of _______.

Think about it. Is there really actually any space between the one yard line and the goal line? If you stare at a field long enough, Gregg thinks you will conclude that there is not. There is the one, the goal line, and an untouchable void between them which cannot be understood or discussed for any practical purposes.

Why, Gregg? Why are you so terrified of small measurements? Can you imagine him trying to follow a receipe for baking a cake? "Two and a half teaspoons of baking powder- that's ridiculous. What a bunch of pseduo-accuracy. I'm just going to dump a couple scoops in and see what happens. Three quarters of a cup of oil? What are you, fucking nuts? Does anyone actually think there is an amount of oil that can exist which is greater than zero cups but less than one?"

Seriously, fuck this guy with a parking meter.

Buck-Buck-Brawckkkkkkk No. 2: With Baltimore leading 13-0 on the final play of the first half, Cincinnati kicked a field goal from the Ravens' 4, rather than use the final snap to try for a touchdown. The Bengals went on to be clobbered 34-3. Cincinnati entered the game 1-9-1. What do you have to lose? Go all-out to try to win! It was obvious bumbling coach Marvin Lewis was more concerned about keeping a shutout off his résumé than trying to win.

No. That is not obvious at all. You just made this up, because you hate punts and field goals. There are literally hundreds of coaches at all levels of football that would have done the same thing, for a wide variety of reasons. Maybe a handful of them would do so because they wanted to avoid a shutout. I would contend, however, than a much larger number of them would do it BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT IT GAVE THEM A BETTER CHANCE OF WINNING THE GAME IN THE SECOND HALF.

When the Cincinnati players saw their coach quit on the game, they quit too.

I don't think the problem was whether or not Lewis quit. I think the problem was that the Bengals are really, really bad and are depending on the worst QB in the league.

Sportsmanship Watch: Taking possession in New Orleans territory with a 23-20 lead, 1:30 remaining and the Saints out of timeouts, the Buccaneers simply knelt to end the game. Taking possession at the Bills' 14 with a 10-3 lead, 1:30 remaining and Buffalo out of timeouts, the Niners simply knelt to end the game.

Apparently we're now equating "being ahead by one score or less, and then doing that which guarantees you will win the game with little to no risk" with sportsmanship. Sportsmanship is kneeling out the clock when you're winning by 30, you clod. Not when you're winning by 3.

Weasel Coach Watch: When Auburn was "only" 4-2, Tommy Tuberville fired offensive coordinator Tony Franklin; the boosters were in an uproar because Auburn was not winning by huge margins. Auburn went 1-5 for the remainder of the season, its sole win over cupcake Tennessee-Martin. TMQ predicted the Weasel Coaches of 2007, Bobby Petrino and Rich Rodriguez -- acquired by their schools at substantial cost in money and lost prestige -- would not combine to go .500. They didn't come close; Arkansas and Michigan combined to finish 8-16. Considering the incredible advantages in recruiting power and gimmick schedules possessed by these programs, a couple of orangutans could have coached Arkansas and Michigan to a combined 8-16 record.

Much as I hate weasel coaches, especially Rodriguez, I think it's worth noting that these coaches were not hired to win a national championship in 2008. They were hired to build successful programs, something they have both done before. Maybe we should wait and see where they are after more than 12 games before being sure that they're both total and abject failures.

On an extremely closely related note, I don't hear TMQ shitting on "Little Nicky Saban" at all this year. Strange. I wonder why not? About a year ago, he was saying the same thing about Saban that he is about Rodriguez and Petrino here. Again, I hate weasels like Saban, but Alabama didn't hire him to win a national championship in 2007. They hired him because he is good at what he does, and is relatively likely to lead them to a national championship at some point during his tenure. Like maybe even as soon as a month from now.

Hey, speaking of being good at what you do, you know who isn't? Gregg Easterbrook!

Is FireJemeleHill.blogspot.com still available?

Is there a word for someone who contrives an angle on a story just for the sake of writing about said angle? No? From now on, it will be referred to as Jemele Hill'ing. Re: The WNBA Fight:

Tuesday night's bench-clearing scuffle between the Los Angeles Sparks and Detroit Shock proved women can be just as boneheaded as men in the thick of intense athletic competition.

Progress?

Absolutely.

You cannot be serious, right? This has to be the build up to some sarcastic put down of the women involved in the fight, yes?

The fight, which, by the way, isn't the WNBA's first, showed that squaring up isn't a man thing. It's a sports thing. It's an athlete thing. It's an I'm-so-ticked-off-that-Candace-Parker-just-drilled-me-in-the-chest-and-the-refs-didn't-notice thing.

Aside from the whole why should these players be lauded for behaving badly thing, when you know that Jemele Hill would've torn down NBA players for doing the exact same thing:

Who the fuck gives a shit? You even said yourself it's not the first fight in WNBA. This WNBA fight is not some sort of feminist awakening.

In its way, this is a revelation for women's sports. I've long been sick of the halos and pristine white robes put on female athletes.

Until the next WNBA fight, when you will then turn, and blame David Stern for fostering a culture of violence in the WNBA.

In real life, athletes lose their tempers and use bad language. They're flawed. Female athletes aren't an exception.

You often rip on male athletes for being poor examples for today's youth. Now you're heaping praise upon female athletes for acting the same way. You are a wizard when it comes to logic.

Of course, I'm not knocking those female athletes who take being a role model seriously, but sometimes the image of female athletes is so sanitized, polished and packaged that it's nice to get a reminder that women don't always fit inside some annoyingly perfect little box.

But at the same time you are lionizing women who acted the exact opposite of those who take being a role model seriously.

If anything, we should greet the Patrick and WNBA incidents as our opportunity to show that gender should be a nonissue when it comes to boorish behavior.

Seriously, what the fuck are you talking about?

If the Mahorn incident occurs between two men, it's a nonissue.

The Mahorn incident occured between two women, and it's still a nonissue.

No one accused Alonzo Mourning of assault when he used Jeff Van Gundy as a mop in that infamous Heat-Knicks brawl.

That's because Jeff Van Gundy grabbed onto Mourning's leg on his own volition. This would be like saying "No one accused that Boise State player of rape when he proposed to his girlfriend after the 2007 Fiesta Bowl."

It's interesting how differently we look at boorish behavior when gender is involved. The reaction to women fighting is usually a mixture of astonishment and fascination.

Whereas when Baseball fights break out, fans yawn and try to sleep because they're so utterly bored by the proceedings.

We treat girl fights like a novelty, when they shouldn't be seen as such. News flash to those still using sticks to create fire: Female athletes are just as competitive as men and when some are pushed to the edge, they'll exhibit the same lack of control.

What is your fucking point? We get it; women athletes sometimes act like assholes. This is news to exactly 0 people.

Leslie said this to ESPN about Tuesday's melee: "This is not the way we want to represent ourselves and the WNBA." For most athletes, that's true. But it's not always a picture-perfect representation. It isn't for men. It shouldn't be for women, either.

Ms. Hill, what you just wrote is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever read. At no point in your rambling, incoherent article were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in the webosphere is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.