What the fuck is this shit? Fuck you

OK, so, as promised, I'm going to get around to Bill's NBA trade value column.  I'm going to pretend like I didn't go to Grantland to pull its text earlier today and see that the front page story right now is a two-authored piece titled "Who is the Greatest Fictional Basketball Player of All Time?"  I'm just going to tell myself that this is not capital "c" Content that any reader in the world would ever want, and thus that a major sports website would never publish it.  I must have just imagined it.  Nothing to see here, move along to the trade value column.

Actually, that's not quite true.  I'm going to make one other quick stop (that definitely does not involve rhetorical questions about who would win a 1 on 1 showdown between Bugs Bunny in Space Jam and Jimmy from Hoosiers) on the way.  I received a tip about another non-Simmons Grantland NBA article last week, and boy, is it a load of garbage.

Maybe you have heard--in fact, if you pay attention to the NBA, you definitely have heard--that the 76ers are really bad again this year.  For the 2nd year in a row.  Wow, it's so zany that it has to be talked about by everyone.  Anyways, I suppose it's somewhat notable because even though teams are bad for two consecutive seasons all the time, the way the 76ers are doing it is a bit unorthodox.  First, they've now drafted (or traded for on draft day) two players in the last two years who they knew would not play a single minute in the then-upcoming season--Nerlens Noel in 2013 and of course Joel Embiid in 2014.  (And of course, the fact that they acquired Noel on draft day in 2013 is part of what put them in position to be bad enough to draft Embiid a year later.)  That's a move that screams "we are bad and we want to stay bad."  Second, they are shuffling their roster incessantly, stockpiling draft picks and moving various players and assets around without any evident desire for the current team to be anything but a placeholder.

Now, none of this should sound too crazy to you.  In fact, a very prominent "sports" "writer" named Bill Simmons is a big advocate of NBA teams getting shitty in order to get good later, rather than staying mediocre (as Philly was from 2010-2012).  But it does raise eyebrows, and make people say unfunny and unclever things like OMG THEY'RE TAKING A DUMP ON THEIR FANS.  And that outrage can lead to counteroutrage, from analyticsphiles who love the way the team is aggressively pursuing its goal in unorthdox ways.  And that counteroutrage can lead to some asshole Grantland writer trying to write a thinking man's response to the whole situation.  And that response can be, and is, absolutely horrible, trite, and full of WRONG all the way through, but I want to highlight probably the worst part of it, which also happens to be the guy's first point in support of his thesis.  The thesis is that while no one should be outraged about the situation--it's not "insulting" to the game of basketball or some bullshit like that (true)--it IS stupid.

The Sixers’ plan is stupid.

It’s not disgraceful. It’s not wrong. [...]

But it’s pretty stupid.

[...]

That’s my real problem with what the team is doing. It’s not the plan that’s been unbearable, it’s the cult of Sixers fans and media members who insist on mocking the skeptics while they marvel at Philly’s brilliance. 

He's referring to the counteroutrage, and to be sure, both those people as well as the regular outraged people who think tanking is disgraceful can all go eat a dump truck full of dicks.

The NBA system incentivizes losing, they say. Lose to win.  Here’s a GM who’s smart enough to exploit the system for as many chances as possible.

I get it. I really do. The only thing wrong with what Philly’s doing are the people who think it’s some profound approach to basketball philosophy. 

So the ONLY thing wrong is that some of the supporters of what Philly is doing are obnoxious about their support.  Got it.

Just because something is counterintuitive doesn’t make it more intuitive.

Oh, so you were bullshitting a sentence ago.  Really, there is another thing wrong with tanking.  Tell me all about it!

Start with the fundamental idea: lose to win.

And again, I'm not going to cover this whole article.  But I can't not cover his analysis of this first point.

Are We Sure Tanking Actually Works?

Well, yeah, it sure does.  And he'll start to establish right now, but fail to properly fully establish it by cutting off his own analysis well short of completion, because if he actually dug into the topic he'd realize how dumb it is to question whether tanking works.  In order to preserve his pre-determined conclusion he lies.  Allow me to help correct that lie, after he's done saying his bit.

There have been three triumphant NBA tanking efforts. 

And we start with a Simmons staple.  THREE AND ONLY THREE.  NO ONE DENIES THIS.

The first involved the Spurs. When David Robinson broke his foot at the end of 1996, their season crumbled, and San Antonio decided to keep Robinson on the sideline and bottom out. Spurs fans will deny this happened, and I guess you can’t prove it one way or another. But San Antonio landed the no. 1 pick at the end of Robinson’s prime, drafted Tim Duncan, and won five titles over the next 17 years.

This is true.  This is all true.  Good for them.  Fucking Spurs.

The Celtics also tanked in 1996-97. They went all in to get Duncan and came away with Ron Mercer and Chauncey Billups. They didn’t make the playoffs for another five years.

Did they go all in?  Did they?  (No.)  In 1995-96 they were a bad but not horrible team that won 33 games.  Their whole nucleus was under the age of 30.  In the 1996 offseason, their only meaningful move was on draft day, when they swapped first round picks with Dallas (which netted them Antoine Walker) and in that same trade sent off Eric Montross (not a significant contributor to the 1995-96 team; 7 PPG, 6 RPG) while receiving Dallas's 1997 first rounder, which would end up being 6th overall (nice!) and was used to select Mercer (damn).  That was a good trade that definitely can't be interpreted as a tanking move.  That was one of only two trades they made that year, and the other was pretty insignificant.  

In 1996-97 they brought back almost the same roster.  The season end player stat breakdown is very similar to the previous season, with the following changes: 

1) The addition of Walker, who had a great rookie season, going for 18 and 9.

2) 1995-96 top scorer and rebounder Dino Radja (HEY REMEMBER HIM???? JEFF PEARLMAN PROBABLY DOES!!!!) was sidelined for the rest of the 1996-97 season after a knee injury just 25 games in.  The only way this was a tanking move is if the Celtics hired someone to take his knee out telekinetically.  Radja would never play in the NBA again, despite being a 20 and 10 guy the previous season (at age 28), which pretty much tells you whether or not this was a "They held him out in order to tank!" move like Robinson's is alleged to be.

3) 1995-96 sixth man Dana Barros was also limited to only 24 games, presumably due to injury; his Wikipedia page isn't nearly as awesome as Radja's so I'm lacking detail here.

That's really it.  Two important rotation guys got hurt, and a promising rookie stepped in to kind of fill the shoes of one of the departed guys.  The Celtics literally didn't make a single trade during the season.  And that's it?  That's "going all in" to get Duncan?  Fucking hardly.  Add to that the fact that while Mercer was a bit of a dud, they did get Billups, who ended up being a five time All-Star and a possible Hall of Famer.  The fact that he didn't even get to play a full season for Boston before being traded has nothing to do with the argument that THE CELTICS TRIED TO TANK AND FAIL.  First, they barely (if at all) tried to tank, and second, they got a really awesome player anyways.  So even though I hate the Celtics and hate researching their pointless mid-90s transaction histories, you can see why I'm writing this post.  This author (I'm not even going to identify him by name--fuck him) is writing shit.  And I like writing responses to shit.

Boston’s tanking success didn’t come until 10 years later. With a roster built around Paul Pierce and younger players like Al Jefferson and Rajon Rondo, the team was going nowhere. So when Pierce went down with a vague “stress injury,” Doc Rivers and Danny Ainge held him out for most of the second half of the 2006-07 season. A starting lineup that featured Ryan Gomes and Allan Ray 

Can't believe this dingbat passed up a chance to make a "from Allan Ray to Ray Allen!!!!" joke anywhere in here.

finished out the year at the bottom of the league. That spring, they got screwed in the lottery 

Bill, your tears are so delicious!  Too bad they won a fucking title anyways.

and wound up with the fifth pick. Then they got lucky. They turned that fifth pick into Ray Allen, and then Kevin Garnett wanted out of Minnesota, and Ubuntu was born. Boston won a title 10 months later.

Yep.  I'd say that tank job worked, if unconventionally.

The other side of that Ray Allen Celtics deal is what the Sixers are chasing. Seattle stripped its roster in 2007, in part to rebuild around Kevin Durant and (maybe, possibly) in part because the owners were gearing up to move the team to Oklahoma City. 

I'd like to reiterate my intent to kick in the nuts any Seattle fan who is still bitching about this, should I get the chance.  They've been warned.

They traded Allen and Rashard Lewis, and while Washington state was stalling on stadium proposals, attendance suffered — it certainly didn’t hurt that the basketball product became borderline unwatchable (even with Durant). Over the next two years, all the losing birthed a title-contending nucleus that also featured James Harden, Serge Ibaka, and Russell Westbrook. It’s just that they played in Oklahoma City.

OK, given OKC's whole one Finals appearance and zero titles with that nucleus so far, I wouldn't call that tank job "triumphant" (and sticking to that insane standard is really the only way he can get 25% of the way to justifying his point, so it's kind of funny to watch him tacitly abandon it here).  But it was certainly successful.  Now, I expect he'll start listing any of the other many, many teams that have gone from bad to good thanks to emptying their team of good players and gunning for a great lottery pick.

In other words, the only recent examples of tanking to a title come from two teams that already had franchise players and used one bad season to rebuild on the fly. 

Oh?  That's it, is it?  I almost forgot--THREE AND ONLY THREE.  First of all, as I just mentioned in that excessively lengthy parenthetical in my last paragraph, the Thunder don't have a title, no matter how much HOOP NERDS who NERDGASM all over the place when RUSSELL WESTBROOK dunks GOSH YOU HEATHENS DON'T PROPERLY APPRECIATE RUSSELL ONLY HOOP NERDS LIKE US DO want to award them with a title.  Second of all, holy shit, are you serious?  THAT'S your standard for figuring out if tanking works or not?

The Cavaliers tanked like dogs to get LeBron in 2003, sending away their top three scorers from 2001-02 (Andre Miller, Wesley Person, Lamond Murray) for peanuts during the 2002 offseason.  In his first seven year run with them, the team would make five straight playoff appearances, losing once in the conference finals and once in the Finals.  That's not "triumphant," I suppose, but fuck, what was their other option?  Build around Miller, Person, Murray, and 2002 draftee Carlos Boozer, and try to compete with the Lakers/Spurs that way?  Fuck you.  Give them a chance to do that sequence over again and they'd tank like they did 100 out of 100 times.  

The Nuggets also tanked (I'm not going to get into the details, but believe me, they tanked) throughout 2001 and 2002 to land Carmelo in that 2003 draft.  They then made the playoffs for ten consecutive seasons (after going to the playoffs twice in the previous twelve seasons) and came thiiiiis close to a Finals appearance against a mediocre Magic team in 2009.  Same story--not triumphant, but fuck, they wouldn't change anything about 2001-2002 in hindsight.

So, no titles for either of them.  Hey, how about this?  The Bulls were a playoff team in 1980-81, and a bad but not horrible 34 win team in 1981-82 (which went through three coaches, and then switched again during the 1982 offseason).  Then during the 1982-83 season they trade HOFer Artis Gilmore, still in his late prime, for nothing (yes, Dave Corzine is nothing), along with several other player-for-pick trades.  Then, during the 1983-84 season, ANOTHER new head coach (their sixth in four seasons... sounds a bit tanky to me) decided that Reggie Theus, who had scored 23.5 per game the previous season, should come off the bench.  He would be traded for nothing that February.  The Bulls still somehow managed 27 wins, but had the 3rd overall pick, and then took Michael Jordan.  Now in this case, shit, they actually DID have a good alternative--I'm not going to research it, but I bet a lot of fans were pissed that they traded Gilmore and Theus for peanuts in back to back offseasons.  Trying to win a championship with those two guys isn't exactly the worst idea.  But given how things worked out, again, I think the Bulls were happy with their choice.

I'm not going to go on like this for every single great player who was drafted by a team that obviously tanked to at least some level of significance.  (More than the 1996-97 Celtics tanked anyways.)  But you get the point.  This writer is an asshole who is annoyed by people on the internet and his preferred method for dealing with them is deciding that because they are annoying they must be wrong.  Well, trust me: I am both annoying and right all the time.  It's not that hard to do.  Where were we?  Oh yeah, back to the end of this little F-minus explanation as to why tanking is stupid.

That’s why it always made the most sense for a team like the Knicks to sit Carmelo and lose as much as possible this year. You never know what can happen. For everyone else, there’s a chance you could be the ’97 Spurs, but there’s a much better chance you will be the ’97 Celtics. 

"Be careful, everyone!  If you tank, you might only end up with a top 25-ever point guard!"  Now, terrible syntax in that sentence aside, I will grant this point: tanking does not guarantee that you will draft the greatest power forward ever the following June.  But it's sure as hell a lot smarter than NOT tanking.

The only recent example of a full-scale, multiyear tanking success story comes from a team that quite possibly used that strategy to kill basketball in its own home city. That’s the dream.

Yeah, good logical implication, fuckhead--if your team tanks, they'll probably end up leaving town.  Totally.

I’m not saying losing deliberately is a horrible idea, 

You kind of are though!

but it’s OK to look at the history before we call it brilliant. 

Cool, just did.  It's not "brilliant" per se, it's just smarter than NOT tanking, and the way it is done may or may not turn out to have been brilliant post hoc.  Maybe what the Sixers are doing is a brilliant tank job, or maybe it's just an average tank job.  But just because HOOPS NERDS who care about the Sixers or are otherwise complimentary of what the team is doing are shitheads doesn't mean you can just ignore history.  

If the Sixers are going DEFCON: TANK for several seasons in a devious play to maximize the probability of landing a title nucleus … shouldn’t it matter that this only really worked three times in 20 years? 

I like the 20 year cutoff thing.  Helps you avoid that whole Jordan issue.  Also, if tanking "didn't work" for the Cavs or Nuggets, I'd hate to see what results they would have come up with during the 2000s had they tried something else.

Is this plan really that devious?

It's not devious, it's just a good, solid plan.  And the rest of this article is just as bad.  Fuck yourself, Grantland staff writer guy.  Grantland is the worst.

Trade value column forthcoming.  No, seriously.

Bill fixes the Lakers, tests my patience (part 1)

Stand back, folks.  Genius at work.

I know a Celtics fan should never try to help the Lakers. 

/record scratch

Yes, I hope you are already annoyed, as I was when I first clicked here and saw this opening sentence.  What's that, Bill?  You're going to fix the Lakers?  You benevolent soul!  How nice of you to bestow your mountains of wisdom upon your readers, but more importantly, upon the front office of the Lakers, who undoubtedly were waiting with bated breath for this column to appear and save their offseason.  If Bill wasn't full of himself, he'd be full of nothing at all.

I know I should bite my tongue. 

No!  Don't refuse to help, Batman!  Gotham NEEDS you!

I know I should hope Jimmy Buss keeps ruining his family's team, I know I should be hoping that they'll kowtow to Kobe and make the Lakers juuuuuuuust decent enough to be irrelevant, and that a decade of Blowtime 

lol pwn3d

would be my best possible outcome here.

Jesus, he even turns the success or failure of a sports team with tens of millions of both fans and haters into his own little me-fest.  Bill, tell us, what's YOUR best outcome for George Zimmerman trial?  What's YOUR best outcome for the 2014 midterm elections?  Your readers are dying to know.

But here's the problem …

As you already know, the problem is that he's such a fucking genius that he can't possibly hide his talents under a bushel basket.

I love making fake NBA trades, figuring out blueprints for franchises and determining the fastest, most efficient ways to save them. 

I AM THE VP OF CAWMAWN SENSE!  THE MAGIC WILL RUE THE DAY THEY PASSED ON EMEKA OKAFOR TO DRAFT DWIGHT HOWARD!  

That's just who I am. I'm a weirdo. 

#humblebrag

I have a folder of iPad bookmarks called "NBA Nerd" that features links for the ESPN.com Trade Machine, HoopsHype's NBA salary page, ShamSports's NBA salary page, Basketball-Reference.com, Hoopdata.com, PER leaders, and the NBA Transactions Archive. 

Gosh, guys, I'm such a NERD, aren't I?  What with the way I know everything about the NBA, and how it works, and how to make every team better?  What a NERDY thing to do, right?  

/Bill watches Twitter feed, patiently waiting for validating Tweets telling him he is awesome and not a nerd to roll in

I'm like a cross between the Wolf, Olivia Pope and Jerry West. 

OK, I admit I had to look up who Olivia Pope is.  It's great that Bill can reference "Scandal" (undoubtedly one of the top 150 shows on TV right now), but what the fuck do public relations and image management have to do with any of this?

Or I like to think that I am. Again, I'm a weirdo. 

I'm a nerd, but not a NERDY nerd!  Right, guys?

I genuinely enjoy hypothetically fixing broken NBA franchises. Even ones I can't stand. So after Dwight Howard completed The Indecision 

Sweet joke, I like the idea of contrasting the excitement surrounding LeBron's choice with the relative calm surrounding Howard's, except that it took Howard no longer than it took LeBron to decide, so the joke makes zero fucking sense.

and fled Kobe's clutches for the sanctity of barbecue, luxurious strip joints, no state taxes, lower expectations and low-key media pressure Houston, 

LOL!  Another home run of a fake struck text joke!  The 2% of writers who are good at these must be annoyed with fuckups like Bill who butcher them all the time.

I found myself clicking on the Lakers' salary page just out of curiosity … but then my wheels started turning … and one thing led to another … and suddenly I found myself helping the Lakers. 

LISTEN TO ME TALK ABOUT MY CREATIVE PROCESS!  YOU ARE CURIOUS ABOUT IT!

I couldn't resist. Within a few minutes, I was inadvertently hatching a plan that even Rachel Phelps would consider shameless.

My guess is he writes his columns without the specifics of any of the references filled in (just the general ideas), then just has a team of unfunny writers complete them like a mad-lib.  This one: "scheming villain from an 80s comedy."

In the NBA, you want to be either really good or really bad. You never want to land between those two "reallys" for long. You don't want to be squeezed into the no. 8 seed or keep finishing 12th or 13th in every lottery. Basically, you don't want to be the Milwaukee Bucks. (Cut to every Bucks fan nodding vigorously.) If you can't compete for the title, why not bottom out in the most flagrantly offensive way possible?

This "you don't want to be mediocre, you want to be good or shitty" thing is one of his frequently mentioned ideas that I actually agree with.  Thought I'd point that out since most of the ideas about how sports works that he mentions all the time are complete monkey shit.  Of course, all that means is that he probably stole this one from someone else.

Of course, that's something the Lakers have never, ever done. They picked first in the 1979 and 1982 drafts (Magic and Worthy) by fleecing laughingstock franchises of their draft picks — not by being the laughingstock franchise. They miraculously turned Vlade Divac, three cartons of Marlboro Reds and a pound of phlegm into a raw high schooler named Kobe Bryant. 

Given the success rate for guys drafted out of high school, I think it's a better idea to look at that trade as "something that could have gone either way, and happened to work out really well" rather than "DRAFT DAY TRADE OF THE CENTURY."  I mean, 12 teams passed on Kobe.  One of them took Todd Fuller.  It's not like he was an earlier version of LeBron going into the draft.  Now, let's be fair--the intended meaning of the word "miraculously" up there is actually ambiguous.  He could mean what I've suggested here, that he thinks it was miraculous that the Hornets took that deal, or he could mean that it was a miraculous turn of fortune that that high schooler picked 13th overall happened to become one of the 20 best players in NBA history.  Here's the thing: this blog is not in the business of giving Bill the benefit of the doubt.

They landed Shaq, Kareem, Wilt and Dwight for a variety of reasons, the biggest being that (a) they're the f-ing Lakers, 

IT'S NAWT FAY-UH! says the guy whose team once won a title by landing KG and Ray Allen in exchange for Al Jefferson, spare parts and two picks in a mediocre draft.

and (b) celebrities love Los Angeles (we'll get to this). 

Says shameless starfucker Bill Simmons.

Since they moved to Southern California in 1960, they've won 63.3 percent of their games, appeared in 25 Finals, missed the playoffs just four times, and never won fewer than 30 games. They haven't picked higher than 10th with their own pick since 1975, when they selected Dave Meyers second and promptly traded him in a megadeal for Kareem. No professional sports franchise has been this consistently good for this long: not the Yankees, not the Canadiens, not the Steelers, not anybody.

I don't know, I think the Canadiens' stretch from the early 40s through the early 90s where they missed the playoffs two times, won twenty Cups and lost in the finals seven other times comes pretty close.

But desperate times call for desperate measures. Their best player is hitting Year 18 and rehabbing from the worst sports injury an older player can have. 

Nice bit of invented medical knowledge there, impressing many of the mouth breathers who read him regularly I'm sure.  HEY GUYS AN ACHILLES TEAR IS DEFINITELY WORSE FOR OLDER PLAYERS THAN AN ACL TEAR OR A BROKEN SPINE, SPORTS GUY SAID SO

Their second-best player just ditched them. 

Look, Earl Clark didn't "ditch them," OK?  Free agency is a part of the business.

Their third-best player becomes a free agent in 12 months. 

Shocking to see the guy driving the "Gasol for Lakers MVP" bandwagon admit that he wasn't better than Howard last season.  I'm sure that if you taunted him about it a little, you could get him to write 4,000 words on how Gasol and Nash were the only Lakers "who really played like they had a little Daniel-san in them" last season.

Their fourth-best player turns 40 this season. They can't improve one of the league's worst supporting casts because they're patently terrified of being a repeat offender in the luxury tax. 

The NBA's luxury tax is so punitive, even the Lakers won't pay it.  MLB's is so punitive, even the Yankees won't pay it.  Finally, the owners have found a way to stop salary growth and keep more of that yummy delicious revenue in the team bank account.

Their coach is realistically two years away from taking over the Minnesota Lynx or the Pepperdine Waves. And they need to sell the illusion of hope to their fans, which means they need to save as much cap space as possible for LeBron, which means they can't add ANY contracts that expire after next summer.

Look, I hate Lakers fans with all my soul, but I don't really think you need to sell "the illusion of hope" to them.  It's not like they're downtrodden and ready to give up on their team at any minute.  They're spoiled twatballs who have seen their team win five titles in the last fifteen years.  If a good deal came along this offseason that helped them improve their team for the next three or four years, but cost them a shot at signing LeBron next summer, I think they'd get over it in about a day.

Fact: This year's Lakers team will be undeniably worse than last year's Lakers team … a team that didn't make the playoffs until Game 82.

Fact that only a genius could figure out: 154 games combined from Howard and Kobe is way better than ~50 games combined from Howard and Kobe.

Fact: This is bleak. Really, really bleak.

Fact: Using this device to drive home your points makes you a total asshat and a shitty writer.

Fact: I have had enough of this shit for the night.

Uh Oh, Someone Taught an Idiot a Big Word

Those who are stupid enough to watch NFL Live at 1 in the morning for no good reason (read: me) know that Trent Dilfer is in a dead heat with Ron Jaworski for being the analyst who most obnoxiously overuses the word "football" as a qualifier/adjective. By which I mean that whenever he's discussing highlights, they're always about football players making football plays on football fields for their football teams in a football game, etc., rather than players making plays on the field for their team in a game. You know what I mean.

Well apparently some asshole at ESPN, knowing that Trent is a guy who likes to sound smart but in reality is too dumb to tie his own shoes, decided to teach Trent the word "dynamic." Now, I know what your next question is. And the answer is no. No, they did not teach him the word's meaning. Just the word itself- which sounds pretty long and smart when you say it. Go ahead, just say it now. Listen to all those syllables. You sound like someone giving a presentation at a big corporate meeting, with a big posterboard with some pie charts and bar graphs behind you on an easel! Dynamic pie charts and bar graphs.

So I'm sitting here, wasting my night listening to Trey Wingo try to be even more annoying than Stuart Scott, and in about 10 minutes of color commentary Trent has used "dynamic" approximately 750 times. Teams are dynamic. (They're dynamic football teams, in fact.) Players are dynamic. Schemes are dynamic. Game plans are dynamic. Audibles are dynamic. Hell, even some coaches and referees are dynamic. The way certain guys tackle or run routes or block is dynamic. He even referred to someone's explosiveness as dynamic. Is that possible? Can you have explosiveness which varies in nature and is capable of changing and progressing while taking on different forms? Anyways, thanks to this anonymous word-spreading asshole (or perhaps a "365 Cool Words!" daily calendar) and Trent, everyone and everything in the NFL is now dynamic. This blog and all its readers might as well be considered dynamic at this point. Nothing would make Trent happier.

AP Writer Thinks He's the Next James Joyce

Sometimes I'm just cruising around teh interwebs, not intending for find material for FireJay, when I stumble onto garbage like this (from the AP rundown of the Missouri/Marquette game today):

For four unbelievable minutes early, Kim English turned the basketball court in Boise into his own private Idaho.

During two excruciating free throws late, it was his personal little pressure cooker.

Jesus Christ, did Bill Plaschke tell him to write like that? Hey, asshole: just tell us what happened during the game. Don't try to be all fucking fancy and clever. There's a reason you're working the AP sports beat. It's because you're not good enough to get a better gig. If I want to hear a poetic and flowery take on the game, which I don't/won't, I'll tune in to "Around the Horn" tomorrow.

Oh, and "My Own Private Idaho" sucked.

Bill Simmons strokes his massive ego

Simmons, today, answers his ["readers"] questions (you'll see the reason for the brackets and quotes later) in a gripping and always on-topic mailbag column.

If you believe any of the value-laced statements I made in the last "paragraph," well, you haven't been reading this blog long enough.

Travis, from Minneapolis, Minnesota asks Bill: "Q: I would like to nominate you, Bill Simmons, for a new Sports Czar position in the Obama cabinet. It's a position that's needed in government, no? You're the only one who can save this country from future sports missteps."

SG: Travis, I accept your nomination even though I lack the legal background, the authority and the connections. With 10 weeks to fine tune my platform before President Obama officially takes office, here's a rough draft of ideas I'm kicking around. Some of them have already been mentioned in this column; I just wanted to get everything in one place. Feel free to send me any additional suggestions. On the first week of 2009, I will post a complete platform for my bid to become the first Sports Czar.

Sarah Palin has a better chance of finding work in an Obama administration that Bill Simmons.

Creations: A college football playoff system; a uniform boxing organization; a better trophy for the World Series; championship belts for the defending NBA champs that they must bring to every game;

Championship belts for NBA players only being applicable in years after the Celtics have won the title. Also, this is stupid.

a hierarchy of alcoholic beverages for baseball celebrations (cheap beer, then good beer, then cheap champagne, then good champagne); an NBA expansion team in Seattle, effective for the 2010-11 season; a no-exception three-city rotation for the Super Bowl among New Orleans, Miami and San Diego;

The other 29 NFL owners, you guys can go screw yourselves.

a full-length indoor basketball court in the White House, with all games involving Obama televised on NBA TV; a purple Masters-type sports coat for the winning March Madness coach (presented to him by last year's coach as Jim Nantz orgasmically looks on);relegation for Major League Baseball (a 30-team league with the bottom two teams forced to move to Triple-A for a year).

Just because that would have meant Tampa would have been in Triple-A much of the past decade does not mean this suggestion has any merit.

Eliminations: The backstroke, butterfly and breaststroke events in the Olympics; baseball managers cannot wear uniforms anymore; no more seat licenses, NIT or Tony Siragusa; no NFL division champ can make the playoffs unless it wins nine games; no more three-man booths except for Van Gundy, Jackson and Breen; the bullpens can't empty during a baseball fight; no NHL ticket can cost more than $75;

Whatever.

no tax write-offs for season tickets, but you CAN write off luxury suites;

This is devoid of sense. Assuming you're in an Obama administration you'd theoretically be more interested in benefiting the middle class as opposed to the wealthy. This would be a great way of doing that.

no more sideline reporters unless they agree to dress like Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman";

What, Erin Andrews doesn't do it for you?

no more cell-phone calls by spectators during sporting events (you can only text); no more sunglasses in the World Series of Poker.

Restructures: The NHL will disband eight teams, move a few more to Canada and form 11-team conferences in the United States and Canada; Fox's No. 1 team for baseball broadcasts will be selected in a vote by the users of foxsports.com;

What makes you think readers of foxsports.com are any smarter or more prescient than FOX executives?

the Nets and Bobcats will merge and move to Vegas next season (and become the Las Vegas Dice); the Utah Jazz and New Orleans Hornets will switch nicknames; Gus Johnson will be promoted to CBS' lead play-by-play guy for March Madness and the Final Four; Buffalo residents can purchase the Bills in a public trust (like how Sconnies own the Packers);

Cool. Glad you thought of all these.

all "live" sporting events will be shown live again and not on a brief tape delay,

Does this actually bother anyone?

and if anyone out there can't handle hearing an occasional F-bomb, then don't watch live sporting events;

You're advocating people not watch sports? Good tactic for keeping your job at ESPN.

a three-game exhibition season for the NFL with two regular-season bye weeks (not one); the entry fee for the WSOP will be raised to $25,000; two rounds for the Home Run Derby and that's it; H-O-R-S-E for NBA All-Star Weekend; ESPN Classic's budget is tripled; the Olympics and World Cup will happen every three years (not four).

Out of curiosity, how would the olympics going every three years work? The "Summer" Olympics would be every 1.5 years, and the "Winter" Olympics would be the other every 1.5 yeras, making the Summer Olympics not so summer-y every other go around?

New rules: No pregame show will be allowed to have more than four people (except for NBC's "Football Night in America," which will shift to a "Hollywood Squares" format); if you purchase a player's jersey and that player is traded within 12 months, you can return the jersey and buy a new one for half price; incoming college freshman recruits don't have to honor an NCAA scholarship if their sleaze-bag coach ditched them after he signed them;

I realize there are various sleaze-bag college coaches who ditch recruits. But, to deem every coach who ever switches jobs in order to advance his career a sleaze-bag, because he screwed over the three to five players he handed a free college education is going a bit far.

all professional owners either have to sell their team before they turn 80 or before they start looking like a sea monster;

Bud Adams owns the Tennessee Titans. The Titans are 9-0, and are one of the best two teams in football if you ask any of the national writers. Bud Adams is 85 years old.

a forced agreement where the NFL Network is carried by all cable systems;

It's like $2 a month, and there are like 14 people in the country who can't get it. Probably warrants the attention of a presidential staffer.

baseball fans get to vote on the entrance music for their closers; golfers have to carry their own bags for the PGA Championship; the "Real World/Road Rules Challenge" will replace the Australian Open as tennis' fourth major (with the top six male and female tennis players competing against MTV cast members); no more 20/20 flashes on sports radio shows (we move to a 30/30 flash);

Seriously?

the U.S. Olympic basketball team cannot have anyone over 25 years old;

Yes, I agree. Watching Kobe and Dwyane play for the U.S. totally sucked.

David Halberstam's "The Breaks of the Game" must be re-released; Chris Rose will be liberated from "The Best Damn Sports Show" and given a better show; Tropicana Field is immediately blown up; Isiah Thomas will replace Donna Orender as the commissioner of the WNBA, effective immediately.

As a kid in law school, I'd love to be the WNBA's chief legal counsel were this to happen.

Michelle, in Atlanta wants to know: "Q: Is it possible for a heterosexual woman to have a man-crush on a guy? What would you call that? I have a man-crush on you."

What. The. Hell?

A) This can't be a real question from a reader.

B) If it is, it has no business in an article on the worldwide leader's website.

C) Not to be Bill Simmons for a second, but, odds that this is Simmons just throwing a question out there just to stroke his own ego and make himself feel like a player, 6-5.

To answer your question, a heterosexual female cannot have a man-crush on a heterosexual male. It's just a crush. You might rationalize it as a man-crush, but deep down, you want to jump my bones.

No woman wants to do what you just said. Not even the Sports Gal.

Michael, in Knoxville wants Bill to know: "If I could have sex with someone's writing, it would be yours. Thank you."

You know how I know this is entirely made up? Gay people don't live in Tennessee. People who make references like "Michael" just made, in Tennessee, get shot.

In response to a question about a potential Titans / Giants Super Bowl and what the line might be, Bill writes: What I don't understand is why people don't trust Collins; he has been the league's most consistent QB this season. It's not even close. I think he's legit for this reason: He has the right pedigree, only his career was derailed for whatever reason -- immature, drank too much, partied too much, didn't want it badly enough, wasn't tough enough, lost his confidence, maybe even all of those reasons -- and now he's settled into a better place in life, which you can see in the way he carries himself, leads his team and gets better in big moments.

...

If you don't like Tennessee's Super Bowl chances because of Collins, you need to find a better reason. You really do.

I don't like Tennessee's chances of winning the Super Bowl because they're quarterbacked by Kerry Collins.

I don't like Tennessee's chances of winning two tough AFC playoff games because they're quarterbacked by Kerry Collins.

Jeff Fisher thought Kerry Collins was so good, and so consistent, that Fisher had Collins start the year as a backup to Vince Young.

If you'd have asked Jeff Fisher three months ago whether he'd have liked Tennessee's chances of winning the Super Bowl with Kerry Collins as their quarterback, he'd have told you, off the record, no. Not at all.

Kindly die in a fire, Bill.

Journalism 101

Not every observation that technically makes sense is clever enough to become a lead-in. This is a lesson CBSSportsline's Scott Miller has yet to learn.

Look, I don't want to be overly presumptuous here and tell Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Mike Huckabee their business.

But you want a real way out of this slumping housing market and looming recession?

Easy. Attach the prime interest rate to the homes of National League third basemen. That'll fire up the real estate market and get things moving again.

Because Scott Rolen and Troy Glaus got traded for each other. And Miguel Cabrera got sent to Detroit, and Ryan Braun is moving to left field. So yeah. They're all changing real estate in one way or another. I get it!

You can kind of see Scott's thought process here. Hey, politics are on the minds of many Americans because it's a presidential election year! So if there's any way I can make a really loose tie-in between a political issue and something happening in sports, I should, right?

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnno.

I'm Sorry Everyone, but Jay Wants Attention Again

I know, it's stupid. But like the 2-year old who doesn't get to play on the big boy slide, he won't stop crying for attention until someone gives it to him.

I guess we might as well do the honors for him. Jay?

The End: Bears better off losing

You are a Chicago-based columnist saying that your sports teams are better off losing. This is not the first instance of something like this happening. No team in contention for anything is ever better off losing, Jay. Ever.

A victory over the Vikings would have brought some false hope. At least now it’s clear that the once-proud Bears are in dismal shape

I wonder what Mariotti would be like as a Denver columnist.

Sept. 25, 2007: "Rockies tease city by arousing playoff hopes with another meaningless win."

Oct 4, 2007: "Rockies off to good start in playoffs, but better they lose now than later before they realize they aren't more than just an NLDS team."

Oct 11, 2007: "Webb an embarrassment as Colorado sneaks away with a win. World Series remains a pipe dream, however."

Oct 23, 2007: "Wake up and smell the reality. These Rockies are no match for the Boston juggernauts."

Oct 28, 2007: "Told ya."

MINNEAPOLIS -- Now America understands why the Bears are the NFL's newest crash dummies -- or, I should say, the segments of America that wasted their lives watching Monday night.

Note: Watching a football game that comes down to the final 2-minute drill is a waste of life. These games are totally uninteresting. Also, sports suck.

After the latest collapse, three men gathered on the ESPN set. One was Emmitt Smith. Another was Adrian Peterson, who might break Smith's all-time rushing record, smiling as he was serenaded by lingering fans with the obvious, "Yo, Adrian!"

But I was more interested in the guy sitting with them. Hey, Steve Young, can we talk you into quarterbacking the Bears? Yes, at your age?

Oh yeah, that's totally a professional joke. Every fucking idiot Chicago fan has been saying this type of thing for 2 years now. "Hey, my son should be the new Bears QB, am I right guys?" Haw. Haw. Haw. How do you have a job?

False security doesn't stop the bleeding. It only creates a pseudo comfort zone that shouldn't exist at Halas Hall, where the Bears officially are stuck in the NFL past tense and need a significant offseason overhaul. Much as a victory might have warmed the civic bones on a cold December night, really now, what would it have accomplished?

Excitement. Satisfaction for every guy on the team. Derailing a division rival. Keeping the playoffs as an outside possibility. Achieving the goal of winning, the only reason that the team went onto the field instead of just forfeiting beforehand. Gee, I don't know, Jay? Why do sports teams try to win?

What did loss No. 9 teach us?

That Kyle Orton is not a legitimate starting quarterback and has a bigger neckbeard than a future, which I already knew before he made a horrendous throw to downtown Duluth on 4th-and-1 to end a late threat.

Jay, you're brilliant! What foresight! You knew that a guy who has a career 59.5 passer rating that plays as a THIRD STRINGER for a team stereotyped by not having a good quarterback is not, let me emphasize this ladies and gentlemen, not, a legitamate starting quarterback!

That the defense played well against the explosive Peterson but is finished as a dominant force, which I already knew before Brian Urlacher stopped writing his blog and woke up for the ESPN cameras he so adores.

And....get this guys. Jay knew that the football team that has let up the fourth most yards per game in the NFL is not a dominant defensive force! Maybe he isn't so stupid after all! Let's get rid of this blog, or at least retitle it.

That Devin Hester is the most exciting athlete in sports but also the most perilous to his team when he grips the football like a lunchbox, which I already knew.

A kick returner that has trouble catching/hanging onto the ball puts his team in a perilous situation? ESPN should really consider getting you onto that "Around the Horn" show.....

That this team makes stupid mistakes, which I already knew before Peanut Tillman's unforgivably unnecessary roughness penalty (which led to a Minnesota field goal), Fred Miller's roundhouse swing at Jayme Mitchell (which killed a drive) and a Garrett Wolfe holding penalty (which shortened a good return in the final minutes).

Pompous, insightful Mariotti continues to hammer home that he KNOWS the things that casual fans observe every fucking game. This better not keep going on much longer....my sarcasm is waning.

Oh, I can hear the giddy amnesiacs now. The Bears made the Vikings sweat, which can serve as a confidence builder for 2008.

What giddy amnesiacs think the team will say to itself next year, "Hey guys, we can do it! Remmeber last year when we were 5-8 and almost beat the 7-6 Vikings? If we can do that, we can do anything!"

Apparently Jay thinks that there are dumbass blowhards out there stupider than he is.

Bad news about that, Jay.....

So It was for the best that they lost, if only to subdue the would-be nonsense that their future isn't so shaky after all.

Again...if the Bears win, they become 6-8. The difference between 6-8 and 5-9 is not enough to change anyone's opinion about how "shaky" the Bears future will be.

The Bears, of course, need a quarterback, as they have for most of their existence, with the Donovan McNabb dream still flickering for serious fans after Orton stumbled in his first start in two years. The Bears also need a running back, a revamped offensive line and probably a receiver assuming Bernard Berrian signs elsewhere, which makes sense with his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, prowling in the hallway near midnight. The Bears will need to address the likely departure of Lance Briggs (another Rosenhaus client), problems in the secondary and whether Urlacher -- who was great -- still can be a consistent, healthy season-long monster.

All of which, you understand, is pretty easy, given Jay's excellent advice in "Offseason Sports Team Management For Dummies". Here are the main principles.

1) Sign every free agent. It don't matter what he costs, kids.
2) Trade for everybody good. You don't need to consider contracts or what you're giving up. Just beat the other teams to your guy!
3) In baseball, you have to make "bigger" moves than the team on the other side of town to be considered a success, NOT (and this is a common misconception) the moves that maximize the use of your resources.

When Peterson slipped past a blocked Briggs and scored to give Minnesota a seven-point lead with 10:50 left, tell me: Did anyone think Orton could win the game? He had a couple of impressive moments in the first half, but he was seen flipping his helmet on the sideline when the offense turned sickly in the second half.

Yes. I thought Orton could win the game. It was a possibility. There was a chance that he would repeat the impressive first half moments. And let's not forget that the ball was being moved pretty well before that fatal interception on Kyle's final 40-something yard bomb.

How many times do I have to say it?

1273. I don't even care what you're about to say. I bet you'll repeat it 1273 times.

Rex Grossman can't play. Brian Griese can't play. Kyle Orton can't play.

You were singing a different tune about Griese earlier this season, but more to the point....

What is your goal in saying this? What should the Bears be doing? Do you think there's some other quarterback they could be playing right now? What kind of insight can you offer that the loud, fat 45-year-old at the game sitting behind behind me can't? This isn't a sports column. This is just a bitchfest.

I'll end with a legitimately funny quote that Jay the Entertainer put in this column about Lance Briggs.

Briggs is accused by the mother of his 3-month-old baby of not paying sufficient child support and getting at least two other women pregnant.

"I have had an open-door policy toward parenting," Brittini Tribbett, 21, told the Sun-Times. "Lance has apparently had an open-pants policy toward paternity."

Nevermind. I'm not ending with that. I just read the last line of the column.

This season was dead before it started.

Shut the fuck up. Seriously. Shut the fuck up. This is a team that went to the Super Bowl last year and only had one major loss in the offsesason, middle-of-the-road running back Thomas Jones (who, by the way, has been worth a whopping 7.5 more yards per game and an astronomical 0.2 more yards per carry this year than perpetual scapegoat Cedric Benson was before his injury). How can you POSSIBLY, in a million bajillion years, say that this was a season that was dead before it started??? Are you fucking claiming that before Sunday, September 9, 2007, that this Bears team had ZERO chance of going anywhere???

It's a fucking disgrace that words you type hit the presses in any newspaper, let alone the second biggest newspaper in one of the biggest cities in the United States of America.

Why Bother Supporting Your Claims With Evidence or Explanations? That Takes Too Much Time

CNNSI.com's Stewart Mandel is mad about this year's BCS bowl matchups. He's sure they're all going to suck. I strongly disagree, as I think every game except USC/Illinois will be close and entertaining. (See below for some probably-going-to-blow-up-in-my-face predictions vabout them.) But that's not why I'm writing this. I'm writing it because Stewart flagrantly violates arguably the most basic rule of analytical writing. I'm pretty sure I learned it in 4th or 5th grade: if you're going to write about your opinion, you have to say why you hold that opinion. See, that's the format. First you make a point. Then you give some kind of evidence that justifies that point. Mandel gets lost somewhere between those two steps, and the result really pisses me off.

Meanwhile, you'd be hard-pressed to find too many fans who would describe this year's other BCS matchups (besides the title game) as "compelling."

Virginia Tech, No. 3 in the final BCS standings, is playing Kansas, the No. 2 team in the Big 12 North. No. 4 Oklahoma's reward for beating the No. 1 team in the country Saturday night (Missouri) is to face a West Virginia team that lost to 4-7 Pittsburgh the same night. No. 5 Georgia went from an anticipated title date with Ohio State in New Orleans to the undercard a week earlier against Hawaii. And do you think USC's Carroll, whose teams have made mincemeat out of their previous Big Ten Rose Bowl foes, is losing much sleep over those Illinois game tapes?

Little to no analysis is given as to why these games supposedly won't be good. Apparently because Kansas lost to Missouri they are terrible. Meanwhile VaTech's disastrous performance against LSU is conveniently ignored. Sure, it was like three months ago. It was also by 41 points! Forty fucking one! West Virginia lost to 5-7 Pitt, so they're ostensibly unworthy of lining up against Oklahoma. Sure, OU lost to 6-6 Colorado. But that's totally different. Georgia/Hawaii is going to suck, uh... because... Georgia thought they were going to play in the title game, and now they're not. (Nevermind that just like Kansas is the #2 team in the Big 12 North, Georgia is the #2 team in the SEC East.) The USC/Illinois matchup, well yeah, he's got me there. Probably will be a blowout. Still, that's three cheap shots taken at three BCS games with absolutely no justification. None.

But wait, there's more. Mandel then has the nerve to conclude his diatribe with this completely outrageous endorsement of the "plus one" quasi-playoff plan. (I have no problem with the "plus one," I just have a problem with this shitty, unexplained logic.)

Imagine, if you will, the potential bowl lineup if such a format existed. Right now, rather than lamenting the colossal letdown of this upcoming postseason, we'd be salivating over, say, an Ohio State-Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl and an LSU-Virginia Tech rematch in the Sugar Bowl -- with the added excitement of knowing two of those teams would meet each other the following week.

Oh, OK. Ohio State-Oklahoma, unlike West Virginia-Oklahoma, would be making us "salivate." Because apparently to him, it's abundantly clear that OSU is way better than WVU. Or they match up more salivation-inducingly with Oklahoma. Or something. How are are we supposed to know if he can't take the time to explain? Same for LSU-VaTech. Earlier in the article he described the OSU-LSU championship game matchup in this fashion:

Whichever team, Ohio State or LSU, wins the Jan. 7 title game, there will be a significant faction of the public that questions its legitimacy.

Now, we just add two more two loss teams and one more game and everyone should magically feel 100% better about the legitimacy of whoever ends up being crowned champion. Sounds totally reasonable. Not only that, but the matchups suddenly go from being boring to "thrill a minute," "plan your evening around this," "be careful not to shit your pants" exciting. Huh.

Is all this crap self-evident, and I'm the stupid one for not being able to see it? Or is Stewart Mandel just full of crap, and trying to make an argument for the plus one game without utilizing any logic or support whatsoever?

Oh, and before you accuse me of hypocrisy because I'm ripping Stewart for not explaining himself while failing to provide my own explanation for thinking the actual BCS games this year will be exciting: (Obviously these are outrageously simple at best but at least it's better than what Mandel does)

USC/Illinois: Yawn. Stanford over USC gets more ridiculous every time I think about it. Illinois beat Ohio State because no one could tackle Juice Williams. USC won't have the same problem.

LSU/Ohio State: Stewart never says this game won't be exciting, just that it won't definitively settle all debates about who should be #1, so I don't think I need to say much. LSU's loss to Arkansas exposed some of their weaknesses, but Beanie Wells is hardly Darren McFadden. They're clearly going to be the underdogs, but OSU's defense is pretty awesome. Should keep things interesting.

Georgia/Hawaii: This is exciting on the surface because just like last year's Fiesta Bowl, it's a high scoring WAC team matching up against a traditional powerhouse. So I'm excited about that (as anyone should be, at least on some minimal level) no matter how imbalanced the matchups on the field look. In any case, Georgia is probably going to win, but I'm not sold at all on Mathew Stafford. He misses a lot of open guys. Colt Brennan is the shit and he showed it against Boise State. Knowshon Moreno and Thomas Brown should rack up big yards, but the game will be played indoors and on fieldturf so the Warriors will be moving the ball as well. If Brennan has time to throw Hawaii's going to put up at least 35. Can Georgia match?

Kansas/Virigina Tech: Obviously, Kansas is really going to struggle to score much. Fortunately they have a very underrated defense that's going to hold VaTech's offense in check as well. Kansas CB Aqib Talib is a bad man and future NFL starter. I've seen four Hokie games this year and they don't seem to have much at the offensive skill positions. Tyrod Taylor gets a lot of snaps considering he sucks. Brandon Ore crumples as soon as he gets touched half the time. If Kansas makes too many mistakes early, it could get out of hand, but I think Todd Reising is capable enough of not coughing up the ball that it should be interesting well into the second half.

West Virginia/Oklahoma: Since they seem to be on national TV every single weekend, I've seen WV absolutely embarrass several teams this year. Sure, they haven't played a team like Oklahoma, but as long as Pat White is healthy their offense can move the ball on anyone. Oklahoma is, of course, dangerously good in their own right. Stupid Bob Stoops. Stop looking so smug already. I can't explain WV's meltdown against Pitt other than to say it was a rivalry game, Pitt got up for it, and Westy choked. But like I already mentioned, I also watched Oklahoma absolutely shit the bed against Colorado in October. Bad games happen. If Westy doesn't have a hangover from the Pitt disaster (which is likely given that they have a month to forget about it) they're more than capable of beating the Sooners. Will they? Probably not. But it's going to be a good game as long as White doesn't get knocked out.

I will probably look back on this and laugh at myself 6 weeks from now, after LSU blows out OSU, Georgia blows out Hawaii, Oklahoma blows out West Virginia, VaTech beats Kansas like 4-0, and Illinois/USC turns into a triple OT thriller. Sigh. Such is the wonderful world of sports predictions. That's why we here at FireJay like to stay away from anything that resembles original ideas and instead spend all our time hating. I'm really going out on a limb here, I hope it doesn't come back to bite me too hard. Remember, all I'm claiming is that these games will be interesting and fun. That shouldn't be too much to ask for.

I am a real American, fight for what's right, fight for your life!

It's been a little bit since I hockeyed everything up a bit here, so let's get right to business.

Daryl Reaugh... what a jackass. Usually I just link to a post out of common courtesy, but you really need to take a look at this post. There's a picture in the post. It's Daryl Reaugh with Mike Modano. For starters, Modano is in the Stars' home jersey, which clearly spells out for the home town fans that the team plays in Dallas. But who really posts a picture of them standing next to a player like that?

But wait... there's more. He types, too!

Lovely ceremony last night for #9. He was showered with love, and praise, and admiration -and gifts, lots and lots of gifts. By the end of the night I figured all that was left was for his chat-line buddy President Bush to commission a fourth head at Mt. Rushmore.

(1) Are chat lines still operational? From what I remember, the last ones died out with young coeds singing "Pick up the phone!" at me at 2AM. Now all I see at 2AM are midget brothers flipping houses.
(2) Chat lines were guys talking to girls, right?

Oh, and then the one glaring omission:

(3) Holy shit, he thinks there are three people right now on Mount Rushmore.

This guy is making hundreds of thousands of dollars to make terrible comments about hockey for a national television station. He knows that Mt. is the abbreviation for "Mount." Three. A five year old says that sort of thing and gets on CBS. Perhaps he should get on the singles chat line with Modano and Bush to get his head put up there next to Modano's. But it only gets worse.

And to that end, where would you rank the Stars great American amongst Greatest Americans?

I don't have him higher than Lincoln, or Reagan, or Walt Disney...but I do rank him above Lucille Ball, Dr. Phil and Michael Moore.

I really love the sport of hockey. I moved away to college based on how close the place was to my team and the fact that they accepted me. I would never mistake a great hockey player as some sort of American hero.

Mike Modano has done nothing great for America. And for that matter, what exactly did Walt Disney do that was so great? Honestly, this guy has the mind of a five year old.

Am I the only one who found it strange that the NHL didn’t have a representative at the ceremony?

Yes, you are. He leads the country in scoring. It was a classy move by the organization. There is no need for anybody from the NHL to be there.

Turns out that the classy, and newly minted Hall of Famer, Jim Gregory was going to come but due to the league’s own limits on the length of pregame ceremonies (15 minutes) Stars officials had to say thanks but no thanks. (Apparently these same time limits were not in place during Mark Messier’s 45 minute retirement epic at MSG, but hey, who’s counting, and besides, that was just a cab ride not a flight during Thanksgiving).

Whenever Mike calls it a career I'm sure the Commissioner will find the time and muster the energy to get to Dallas, just as he did for Al MacInnis in St. Louis last week.

Teams can ask the NHL for more time before the game for a ceremony. It happens all the time. But the NHL is overlooking the Stars! They care for the Rangers more because they are in New York City, just like NHL HQ! It's a conspiracy! Burn them!

And a minor note - when Al MacInnis retired in St. Louis on April 9th, 2006, the NHL didn't have a representative. Gary Bettman only showed up for the tribute to Al going into the hall of fame and having a statue commissioned in his honor. Which Daryl Reaugh only knows about because he was sitting in the press box working for Versus, presumably playing on his GeoSafari and learning state capitals.

Presenting: An Idea So Stupid, It Could Only Be Formulated With The Combined Efforts Of Two Different Easterbrooks

First of all, in case you haven't noticed, I've added a "Blog Popularity Tracking Meter", courtesy of ballhype.com, on the left sidebar. Ballhype is a monitoring site that serves as a pretty effective barometer for what's readable and sucks among about 3,000 sports blogs. I added their ranking display thingy so that all twelve of you (that's right, we've cracked double digits) can numerically follow FireJay's downward spiral into sub-mediocrity. As you can see we're listed in the mid 600s right now. With your help, I'm confident we can drop below the 1,000 mark by the new year! Everyone chip in. Together, we can make this dream come true. Look out, whoever's in 3,000th place. FireJay means business.

In other news, I love picking on Gregg Easterbrook, also known as the TMQ. So what could be better than picking on an idea that he included in last week's column, but actually originated with his brother Neil? "Yeah, it's me... NEIL." (That's an inside joke for Dan-Bob, Chris W, and anyone else who has seen the best movie ever made.) That's right; I'm about to present to you one person's absolutely atrocious idea, but in the words of another person who is notorious for coming up with equally atrocious ideas. It's a double whammy. This whole two-for-one phenomenon is almost as fun as watching Ryan Leaf's younger brother stink up the joint as Dennis Dixon's replacement at QB for Oregon. I get to laugh at the person who's proposing something dumb, but I also get to laugh at the unquestionably dumb person they're related to who's bringing this proposal to light. So much fun.

I've copied and pasted the whole original segment just so we can all be totally sure just what the Easterbrooks are advocating here. It's a little long but stick with it. It'll pay off, I promise.

Pay Them With Educations: On Nov. 11, Michael Lewis argued on the New York Times op-ed page that since football factory colleges are rolling in money, Division I football players ought to be paid: "In 2005, the 121 Division 1-A football teams generated $1.8 billion for their colleges. If the colleges paid out 65 percent of their revenues to the players [the share paid to NFL players], the annual college football payroll would come to $1.17 billion." Distributed across the 121 Division I schools with 85 football scholarships each, that would come to about $114,000 per season per big-college football player.

That big-college football and men's basketball players should be paid is a perennial contention. TMQ thinks the idea is wrong on these scores: First, the players already receive tuition, room and board, which is hardly an inconsequential form of payment; second, paying college players would ruin college sports, thus killing the golden goose and ending the money flow. The real scandal of big-deal college sports is not that the schools are keeping the revenue, it is that they are keeping the revenue without educating the players. With a few sainted exceptions such as Stanford and Boston College, graduation rates for Division I football and men's basketball are atrocious. Colleges recruit players and exploit them to generate money, but don't make them attend class or ensure that they learn. The players use up their eligibility and come to the rude awakening that no professional career awaits -- fewer than 2 percent of Division I football players ever receive an NFL paycheck. At that point, the players understand they need a college education to succeed in life, but by then the scholarship is exhausted and the university has moved on to taking advantage of the next round of suckers.

Thus Lewis' article gives me an opening to repeat the reform proposal made by Official Brother Neil Easterbrook, a professor at TCU -- for every year a Division I football or men's basketball player performs, he receives an additional year of tuition, room and board at the school. That way, when NCAA eligibility expires and the player realizes no NFL or NBA payday will ever happen, he can buckle down, get serious about studying and obtain the college education that will help him advance in life. Neil's rule would ensure that Division I football and men's basketball players are not used up and tossed away by the sports-factory schools; would create a strong incentive for those schools to be serious about teaching their athletes, so they graduate on time and don't represent extra years of costs; and would create a campus presence of once-star players who didn't make the NFL or NBA and are now at the library studying, radiating the message that you'd better study. How about it, NCAA? Why not use your billions of dollars to set up a system that would allow revenue-sport athletes who have brought you cash and glory on the field to remain in school until their degrees are complete?

Everyone get that? So basically, the Easterbrooks are following this chain of logic:

1) Currently, the NCAA doesn't give colleges adequate incentives to entice them into helping their athletes graduate on time
2) Something should be done!
3) Let's give every athlete that competes for a year an extra year of tuition, room, and board in order to give them the best odds at finishing their degree (even if it takes them 8 years to do so)

Point 1) is fine and definitely true. Many nationally prominent colleges have pathetic athlete graduation rates. Point 2) is therefore obviously true as well. And then... everything falls apart and breaks into a million tiny wrong pieces.

Now, I'm no economist. But Gregg and Neil have proposed an incentives-based plan. And I do happen to understand a thing or two about incentives. You see, sometimes there is more than one party involved in a societal problem. Sometimes an issue that demands action from a ruling body, such as low NCAA addressing low student athlete graduation rates, exists because of more than just one factor. I appreciate what the Easterbrooks are trying to do here. Colleges that don't seem to give a shit about their players are omnipresent in today's sports-oriented college culture. Giving them reason to prod their players through the system instead of just abandoning them once their eligibility runs out makes a little bit of sense. But have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, those players have just as much to do with low graduation rates as the institutions do?

TMQ regularly bemoans the commercialization of college football and the culture that has been erected around it. It's the primary reason he's such a big NFL fan by comparison. And if you read him regularly, you won't have any trouble agreeing with me when I say he seems to long for the days when players at this level were students first and athletes second. Well, can you imagine a more effective incentive to prevent them from doing nothing more than the absolute bare minimum in the classroom than to tell them: "Hey, it doesn't really matter what you do in school while you're athletically eligible. You'll have an equal number of years after that ends to finish your degree. As long as you don't fail out, who gives a shit what you do in school while you're playing? You can always go back and fix things, at no cost to yourself, later on." What a joke. Sure, since those extra years would end up taking up a chunk of the budget for the schools, they would have a vested interest in keeping athletes from utilizing this plan. But in the end, who's in control of what kinds of grades and credits students earn: the school they attend, or the students themselves?

I concede that this plan would probably increase overall college athlete graduation rates. Were it instituted, a fair number of former football and basketball players in their seventh or eighth year of school would eventually end up with diplomas that otherwise would never have been obtained. But this would take place at a terrible cost, at least in the minds of someone as "old school" as the TMQ: the cost of basically giving student athletes a free pass to do whatever they wanted while playing out their eligibility (as stated, so long as they didn't completely fail out). How he looks past this obvious flaw in Official Brother Neil's plan is beyond me. Maybe he assumes that giving colleges the incentive to graduate athletes on time (lest they have to extend scholarships past eligibility) will somehow magically cause the schools to spur the athletes in question into action and cause them to complete classes at the same pace non-scholarship athletes do. I can guarantee with 100% certainty that this would not happen. I very recently spent four years in college. During those years I met and interacted with hundreds and hundreds of other students, many of whom were on athletic scholarships. I can promise Gregg this: if you give almost any college student the option of doing something productive now, or doing nothing now but with the guaranteed possibility of doing that exact same productive something later at no additional cost, they will take the latter option almost without exception.

Long story short, if all the Easterbrooks care about is raising graduation rates at any cost, I guess this is a somewhat worthwhile plan which would probably experience very limited success. I highly doubt it would be utilized by the vast majority of "failed" revenue sport athletes (those who didn't end up going pro once their eligibility ran out) who didn't already get their degrees on time. But that's just my opinion. More importantly: on the other hand, if, as I strongly suspect, the Easterbrooks care about altering the culture of NCAA student athletics and encouraging players to get in the classroom and behave like everyone else rather than people that are at school to do nothing play sports and party, this is the exact opposite of a good idea. As graduation rate statistics show, many of them already feel they have little incentive to learn. Why remove that incentive entirely?

I Can't Believe I'm Dignifying This With A Post

It's shooting fish in a barrel. But as usual, when it comes to this particular quasi-journalist, I just can't help myself. From Bill "My ESPN.com Profile Picture Makes Me Look Like A Used Car Salesman" Simmons's 2007-2008 NBA Preview:

As far as I'm concerned, Duncan is the greatest power forward ever and the most underappreciated superstar since Moses Malone. But what if KG rolls over him in the NBA Finals? What then? Doesn't that open the door for a lifetime of, "Yeah, Duncan was good, but if KG had his supporting cast, he would have won seven titles!" arguments? Just the chance that we might settle this once and for all makes me happy. I love when things get settled. You know, kinda like how the "Brady vs. Manning" argument was settled over these past 11 weeks.

Really? We can put that one to bed now? Great. I'm all for it. I mean it's not like before their showdown a couple weeks ago Manning had won the last three matchups between the two, including last year's AFC title game. Or that Manning has a higher career yards/attempt, completion percentage, and quarterback rating. Or that even with how good Brady's been this year, that Manning still has thrown more TDs per game over the course of his career.

Am I saying Manning is definitely better? Absolutely not. Assuming he doesn't get hurt, Brady's 2007 is going to end up being better than Manning's 2004. Brady has thrown fewer interceptions per game during his career, has won more of their head to head matchups, and trails Manning only slightly in those three metric categories I listed above. (7.7 vs 7.2 yards per attempt, 63.9 to 63.1 completion percentage, and 93.9 to 92.9 QB rating.) What I AM saying is that the issue is not "settled." It probably never will be, even after both guys wrap up their careers. Who's better, Montana, Marino, Elway, or Favre? Depends on where the person you ask grew up. Montana has the rings, Marino has the yards (not for long, admittedly), Elway was great for years with a terrible supporting cast, and Favre has the TDs. Although I'm from Colorado, it's hard for me not to choose Marino after his performance in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. But if you want to say there's a clear cut winner in that debate, you must have invented some kind of "magical impossible debate settling machine" that you should patent and start selling. Lord knows I'd buy one.

Anyways, barring unforeseen circumstances, in about 10 years we'll throw Brady and Manning into the debate. People from Indiana will all hype up Manning and people from New England will hype up Brady. People from Northern California, Colorado, Florida, and Wisconsin will disagree. The argument will escalate. Someone will imply (or possibly state directly) that they had sex with someone else's sister. The first punch will be thrown. Bar stools will be broken over heads. Beer bottles will be shattered on pool tables and used as stabbing weapons. The bouncers will kick everyone out so that the fracas can continue in the street until all but one person is arrested or killed. The end. But still, even that one person won't be right. It's just not possible to "settle" that debate.

And don't get me started about how Brady has more rings than Manning. There's exactly one reason the Patriots won those three Super Bowls and will probably win this year's. He goes by the name of Tedy Bruschi. (Did you know he had a stroke and missed part of the 2005 season, but ended up making a triumphant return on Monday Night Football? I heard that somewhere. What a fuzzy, warm, cuddly story! Where was ESPN when this happened? They really dropped the ball.)

Final "food" for thought (food, because it's Thanksgiving... GET IT?): Who had/has the better supporting cast? 2004 Manning or 2007 Brady? You've got Harrison, Wayne, Stokely, Clark, E. James, and a great offensive line versus Moss, Stallworth, Welker, Watson, some capable RBs, and another great offensive line. If you're Bill Simmons, this debate has already been settled. If you have a brain, it's just another great unanswerable question.

A Rant About Addition by Subtraction

The Big Lead is reporting that Rick Reilly is leaving Sports Illustrated. Assuming it's true, what a fantastic turn of events for the publication! I really enjoy SI. In general I think it makes for great dentist office waiting room reading material. But I've always maintained that the one way they could make it even better would be to stop filling up the back page with mindless drivel made up of single sentence paragraphs and puns that wouldn't make the cut for Laffy Taffy wrappers. I'm OK with puff pieces; but his come off as heiniously preachy. And there may not be a better example anywhere in sports journalism of someone who is not nearly as clever as they think they are. More than anything, I would describe his style of prose as awkward. Seriously, Rick. You're a travesty. His nephew went to my high school, so they got him to speak at our fall athletic banquet my sophomore year. I'm happy to report he is even less entertaining in person than he is in print.

The sad part: popular opinion/conventional wisdom on this is going to be that it's a "big loss" for SI. In fact, The Big Lead says so in different words in their post. Are people like this reading the same Rick Reilly as I am? Just because hordes of stupid people love something heartwarming doesn't make it good. (See: popular comic strips, such as "For Better or For Worse" or "Baby Blues") There are literally a hundred sportswriters out there who, given the kind of access Reilly has to big time athletes, could do a waaaaaay better job than Rick. I'm already looking forward to reading the work of whoever replaces him. The kind of people who think Reilly won't easily be replaced are the kind of people who think Jay Mariotti is clever and informative.

weekly gregg easterbrook report

nothing too extraordinary going on here; just a belated review of what the TMQ had to say earlier this week. as usual, there's at least a little bit of baloney. (check the "gregg easterbrook" label if for some reason you find this entertaining and want more.)

this first part is not sports related, but so hilariously cliched from a "crusty old guy who complains about kids and their rock music" angle that i have to include it.

Now think what has happened in technical and artistic trends in the 50 years since 1957. Scientific endeavors have made fantastic strides in quality, complexity and significance. Consumer product quality has increased dramatically -- new cars are packed with features unknown in 1957 yet are far safer and more reliable, and the cell phone in your pocket and the computer you're reading this on, to say nothing of the Internet it's transmitted over, would have been viewed as supernatural by the engineers who built Explorer I.

At the same time, the quality of art has plummeted. There hasn't been a musical of artistic merit to open on Broadway in many moons -- right now, it's all vapid dreck. (In fact, I think the show "Vapid Dreck," based on a remake of a remake, opens at the Brooks Atkinson soon.) And although good books are still written, what truly great novel has been produced in the past decade or two? Fifty years ago, technical stuff was buckets of bolts and art was splendid; now, the technical stuff is splendid and the art is in poor repair. This tells us something -- I just wish I knew what.

here's what that tells me- you're old, and no longer appreciate new art because it's scary and unfamiliar to you. i hope to god i have the kind of forum gregg has in which to express this exact same (inevitably held) opinion once i'm old. i bet writing this kind of thing in his columns really helps his blood pressure/arthritis/aching back/other old man ailments.

later, some of easterbrook's trademarked WRONG clock management analysis (if you're familiar with him, you know he writes something dumb like this basically every week):

Bills note 1: Leading 17-14 with less than three minutes to play, the Ivies faced third-and-short and threw incomplete, stopping the clock. At the end, the Jets reached the Buffalo 38 before turning the ball over on a desperation play. Had the Bills simply run up the middle for no gain on their final snap, the clock would have expired with the Jets far from Buffalo territory.

no. no no no. you don't know that with any certainty whatsoever. i don't even have to explain why this is wrong. anyone with a brain and a basic understanding of football knows exactly why.

some ridiculously misguided thoughts about running up the score:

Florida, Rutgers Punished by Football Gods: Every college season has an Upset Saturday, and it fell last weekend for 2007. Top-10 teams Florida and Rutgers were upset almost immediately after displaying poor sportsmanship by running up the score: Oh ye mortals, trifle not with the football gods. Reader Jeffrey Camp notes that against hapless Norfolk State, Rutgers showed terrible sportsmanship by calling all three of its timeouts in the final minute of the first half, frantically trying to score again before intermission -- although Rutgers was ahead 45-0 at the time. Camp asks, "Aren't Knights supposed to be honorable and chivalrous?" Reader Chris Shirley notes that when leading Tennessee 49-20 in the fourth quarter, Florida still had Tim Tebow on the field and still had him throwing deep; leading 52-20 with first-and-goal with less than two minutes remaining, Florida could have taken a knee to end the game, but instead, Urban Meyer had his charges pound the ball into the end zone to run up the final score to 59-20. As Tuesday Morning Quarterback often notes, running up the score is little-bully behavior that evinces lack of character. And it always comes back to haunt you because when the pressure is on, little bullies fold.

yes, running up the score is generally kind of lame (particularly against a non-conference opponent, like in rutgers' sitaution... i can sort of see why florida did it because they were playing a hated conference rival). no, that last part about "little bullies fold[ing]" is not legitimate analysis. i'm too tired to do this right now, but i guarantee if i had fifteen minutes to burn i could find plenty of instances in recent college football history where a team ran up the score at some point in the season, and went on to win multiple "high pressure" games later in the season. hell, i bet plenty of national title winning teams have run up the score on opponents. this is like saying "this mean kid i knew in middle school who used to beat me up and take my lunch money broke his leg in a skateboarding accident. it just goes to show you: people with no character always break their legs in skateboarding accidents."

finally, one of the worst explanations for a team's dominance i have ever read:

What is [patriots offensive line coach dante] Scarnecchia's secret? It's so, so simple, yet few NFL teams understand it: New England offensive linemen never stand doing nothing, watching the play. On a shocking number of NFL plays, there is at least one gentleman simply standing there doing nothing at all, and often that gentleman is an offensive lineman. New England's offensive linemen never stand around doing nothing. More than anything else, never standing around doing nothing is what separates the Patriots from the rest of the league, and this approach pays the most dividends on the offensive line.

i beg, you please pay attention to the offensive line on a reasonable number of snaps in the college and non-patriot NFL football games you watch this weekend and see if this analysis is anywhere close to correct. (hint: it is not. i'm going to go out on a limb and say the patriots are good because they have a fantastic coach, fantastic coaching staff and fantastic players. but go ahead, check out some other teams this weekend for yourself and see if easterbrook's theory holds water.)

This helps explain why Belichick has such great luck with retreads and unknown players. He takes players who were in environments where people were standing around, or where success was judged by individual stats rather than team outcomes, and puts them in an environment where no one ever stands around and team outcomes are all that matter.

wow... more anecdotal bullshit, please! i really don't think this attempt at an explanation for new england's success has enough of it. if i thought easterbrook would reply to me, i would email him about this and ask for a complete explanation and some objective evidence. but i know he wouldn't and i'm lazy anyways. needless to say- there is no way to prove this. none. there's not even a good way to sort of start going about the process of beginning to establish that it might be the case.

thanks gregg, see you next week! and hey, could you please put more science fiction blurbs in the non-NFL parts of your column then? i really feel like you're not covering enough of that crap.