The only thing worse than being a power-crazed asshole like Roger Goodell

is wrongfully accusing Goodell of being an asshole when he actually wasn't. Enter Deadspin's resident guy who probably lived under power lines and ate a lot of paint as a kid, Barry Petchesky.

Quietly, the NFL fined Carolina's Tyler Brayton $15,000 for setting a moving screen on an Atlanta gunner last week. That's less money than Alosi, and no suspension, so the NFL's consistent record of inconsistent punishment continues.

This would be biting and timely criticism- if only the NFL had actually been responsible for Alosi's fine suspension. Unfortunately they weren't. The Jets made that call. Alosi situation: Jets applied harsh internal discipline; NFL elected not to do anything further. Brayton situation: NFL stepped in and applied tepid discipline; we don't know what the Panthers would or would not have done. Yep, it all adds up. TIME FOR OL' BARRY THE WHISTLEBLOWER TO LET THE PUBLIC KNOW HOW RIDICULOUS THIS IS!

Nice try though, Barry. It's bad enough that you often shit the bed when you write an editorial post. The least you can do is try not to also shit it when you're just doing a quick throwaway "breaking news" post. But living up to that standard would require you to know stuff about the subject you're covering, so I guess we're both shit out of luck.

If you bother to click on the link, please note that none of the first 30 or so Deadspin comments point out this pretty obvious error. But hey, at least they all managed to either 1) make a lame pop culture reference 2) make a lame joke about how bad the Panthers are or 3) make a lame joke in an attempt to agree with Barry's commentary. Thanks Deadspin! You continue to be a holding pen for snarky, unoriginal douchewads.

And for the three of you out there wondering whether or not this blog should be in the business of attacking no-name bloggers who are definitely not part of the MSM: I don't know what to tell you. It is what it is.

TMQR tomorrow. Maybe.

Don Banks needs to spend a few more minutes thinking out his Snap Judgments

From Don Banks latest Snap Judgments column, comes this:

If we're talking about strictly the most valuable player in the league, how can you argue that anyone means more to his team than Matt Cassel does to the Chiefs?

Anyone who knows how to say the "Phillip Rivers," "Tom Brady," or "Peyton Manning"* instantly has a better argument than any Cassel for MVP advocates.

For serious, Matt Cassel is, by just about any metric, a marginally above average quarterback. At best, he's the third most valuable component on his own team's offense behind Jamal Charles and Dwayne Bowe. Meanwhile, Rivers, Brady, and Manning are far and away the most important players on their team's offense and are better than Cassel in every metric.

*I don't necessarily think those should be the top 3 finishers in the MVP vote; those guys are both in the same conference as Cassel and obviously more valuable at his position than him.

We saw what [The Chiefs] were without [Cassel] last week at San Diego, when Kansas City produced just 67 yards of offense in a 31-0 loss.

Brody Croyle is awful, but there's no way that the dropoff between Cassel and Croyle is as profound as the gulf of talent between Rivers, Brady, Manning, and their respective backups.

But in Sunday's 27-13 Chiefs' win at St. Louis, Cassel helped keep his club in first place in the AFC West, throwing for 184 yards and a touchdown

With numbers like that, they might as well just rename the MVP award: "The Matt Cassel Award for Best QB EVAR!!"

With Cassel back, the Rams (6-8) couldn't just key on the Kansas City running game like San Diego did.

The Rams stink. The Chargers don't.

The result was the Chiefs (9-5) rumbled for 210 yards rushing, with Jamaal Charles leading the way with 126 yards and a touchdown on just 11 carries.

MVP = Most Valuable Player-who-hands-the-ball-off-on-nearly-every-play

Somehow Barry Petchesky looks like the bigger asshole in his attempted takedown on Favre

Everyone hates Favre and all the attention the end of his streak has got, and Deadspin writer, Barry Petchesky, had a typically dipshit postmodern take on it. The passages that most annoyed me were these:

Cal Ripken played in 2,632 straight games. That number would be unthinkable in football, because it's football. If Ripken properly stretched his hamstrings, his only opportunities for injury were the odd play at the plate or a runner trying to take him out while he turned the double play. That's baseball: guys tend not to run into each other.

That's completely retarded. By Barry's definition, any baseball player that goes on the DL is one of the following:

1. A fool for not stretching that day.
2. The world's biggest pussy.
3. A vile sinner who angered God enough to be struck down by a freak accident on the baseball field.

Hit by pitches, the grind of playing games almost every day for six months, fielding hazards, etc. are not valid excuses for taking a day off or going on the disabled list.

And let's face it: quarterbacks in the 21st century are a lot closer to kickers in the punishment they take than they are to linemen, or even skill positions or the secondary.

Textbook false dichotomy: linemen, skill position, secondary players are contacted on every play whereas QB's and kickers are not. Therefore, QB's are like kickers. QED to everyone who hasn't seen the end of this awesome video, or people who don't know that Aaron Rodgers has now suffered two concussions in thirteen games this season.

Rules have been changed to protect them. Flags are thrown on those hitting them at the slightest provocation.

Try telling that to Ben Roethlisberger's nose after it was disfigured on an illegal hit by Haloti Ngata which went uncalled.

Between sacks, QB sneaks and making the occasional tackle after an interception, Brett Favre probably received full contact on 5 plays a game.

And this is why Barry Petchesky is a bigger asshole than Favre. Say what you will about what a self-absorbed prick Brett Favre is, but you really can't question that he's tough as shit. The guy was the 5th most efficient passer last year at the age of 40, after having torn his biceps tendon the previous season. I don't care what anyone says, that is fucking nuts. Of course, he did only receive "full contact on 5 plays a game," so I guess it was all incredibly easy in hindsight.

Is This Petty? Perhaps...

But I sure do hate Phil Rogers

What an everloving tool. Let's see how long it stays that way before a copywriter changes it.

Just another example of how college football brings out the worst in everyone

Fans. Administrators. Journalists. Broadcasters. Heisman voters. They're all reduced to complete fucktards every year by some kind of issue stemming from college football. This year it's the whole Cam Newton thing. Well I guess I probably shouldn't have included fans on that list I just made- NCAAF fans are complete fucktards year round regardless of what's happening in the world of their sport. But I just wanted to make it clear that they, too, are affected by this mostly unimportant debate about did he take money, was he eligible, etc. (I say it's unimportant because of the degree to which college football is rotten to the core. I'm guessing that Newton was, in fact, ineligible this year. Who cares? Every team in the FBS probably had five ineligible players this year. Every SEC team probably had ten.) Anyways, let's let Kevin Scarbinsky from the Birmingham News give us his $.02 about what it means that 100ish voters left Newton off their ballots.

Remember the Moral Majority? That conservative political action group of fundamentalist Christians led by the evangelist Jerry Falwell? Lobbied for things such as prayer in school and against things such as the Equal Rights Amendment?

Founded in 1979, it had a nice run until it dissolved in 1989.

Topical.

At least it lasted longer than Urban Meyer.

Despite how strongly I feel about Urban Meyer-specifically that he is the biggest piece of shit we've seen in the last ten years in the world of sports-that's a lame joke and I refuse to so much as chuckle at it. Also, this is instance #1 of Auburn Superfan Scarbinsky wearing his colors on his sleeve. Because, you know, that's good journalism and such.

Unfortunately, we've discovered recently that the Moral Majority has an illegitimate offspring whose passion is college football.

Call this outfit the Moral Minority.

It's a single-issue group whose sole mission was to make sure that Cam Newton didn't win the Heisman Trophy by the biggest landslide ever.

Please.

Write more single sentence paragraphs.

Any Bill Plaschke can tell you that they're a great way to get your point across.

People notice your sentences.

Mission accomplished.

Exactly.

Also, isn't it great to imagine him conceptualizing this? "Hmmm. I'm upset that some Heisman people didn't vote for Newton. I hate how they're trying to take this stupid moral stand. What's my intro going to be? How can I cleverize the ever loving shit out of this?" (Five seconds pass.) "Got it. Moral Majority reference. Boom. WAR EAGLE."

O.J. Simpson's records for highest Heisman point total and largest Heisman margin still stand.

Gotta hand it to the Juice. He's hard to beat at the ballot box, inside or outside a jury room.

See, that's mildly funny. Where was the heart attack reference in his earlier swipe at Meyer? That could have saved the joke.

As he should have, Newton did win the 76th stiff-arm statue Saturday night as the best player in college football, running away from the other finalists as if they played defense for South Carolina.

Instance #2 of colors on the sleeve. Take that, other team that my team beat this year. My team is better than you.

The third Heisman winner in Auburn history won every voting region, even the West, the home of the three other finalists.

Lolz to that. Wow, can you believe that Newton was able to win a region that contained voters who ostensibly are bigger fans of not one not two but THREE other candidates?!?! Amazing. Good thing there weren't five or six other candidates from the West, though. No way could Newton still win the region with that many other players dividing up the hometown votes.

Of the 781 ballots that contained Newton's name, 729 of them - a whopping 93 percent - put him in first place. That brings up a question for the 24 voters who placed Newton second and the 28 who put him third.

What were you guys thinking?

They're probably Oregon, Stanford, or Boise fans. Or conference loyalists from the Pac-10 or WAC. Unanimous Heisman winners are kinda hard to find because of biases like those.

By any measure, Newton's victory over the runner-up, Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck, was a landslide of Reaganesque proportion. But if you're keeping score at home, do the math. There were 886 ballots returned, and 781 of them had Newton's name on them.

That means 105 voters did not vote for him. They didn't vote for him in first place, second place or third place. They didn't vote for him at all.

This seems like a good time to clarify why I'm writing this post in the first place. I don't have a strong stance one way or another on what those 105 voters did. On one hand, I think that's a pretty lame way to make a statement, especially since the #1 most important thing voters are supposed to decide on is: who is the best player in the country? Plus, shady as it looks, he was officially cleared by the NCAA. So that's got to count for something when you're checking boxes on a ballot. On the other hand, I think the Newton snub voters have a point if their statement is supposed to be directed at the NCAA rather than Newton himself. The NCAA is a huge piece of shit. So anything which calls attention to that fact, which this kind of does, is fine with me. Additionally, the Heisman mission statement talks about players having integrity, or some shit like that, so I suppose that's a leg those voters might be able to stand on. Anyways. The whole reason for this post is: say what you want about those voters, either way. But don't say it like this asshole does. He's a fucking dunce.

They didn't overlook him. It's impossible to overlook a 6-foot-6, 250-pound quarterback who led the SEC in rushing and the nation in passing efficiency, who's harder to grasp than smoke and harder to stop than a runaway cement truck.

Hooray for purple prose. Also, it's hard to tell whether or not this whole sentence is supposed to list the reasons Newton was the best choice for the award, but if we assume it is, I didn't know measurables were now something we voted on. I hate it when announcers/sportswriters are talking about some player who's really good and the first thing they list is the player's height or weight. Whoop-de-shit. I know that Matt Ryan is 6'5". I know that James Harrison is 250 lbs. of muscle and steroids. I know that David Eckstein is 5'3" and 80 lbs. You don't have to keep telling me. Measurables have little to do with those players' abilities. Unless you can measure the size of Eckstein's heart, of course.

So the holier-than-thou 105 omitted him, which means they tried to send a message to him or about him.

Welcome to the Moral Minority.

Thanks for remaking your lame and antiquated reference.

They argued that they wanted to preserve and protect the Heisman, as if it were the Nobel Peace Prize.

Well, as far as college football awards go, it kinda is the Nobel Peace Prize.

They said they wanted to prevent the Heisman from being returned to sender for the second time in five years.

That's reasonable. Sure, the NCAA cleared Newton for now (so that he wouldn't be taken out of the SEC or BCS title games, which would probably cost the NCAA a lot of advertising money both now and in the future), but what if they change their minds a few years from now? Kinda makes the award look a little less shiny when you keep giving it to people who shouldn't have been allowed to win it.

Their argument: What if the NCAA cleared him too soon?

My counterargument: What if you smeared him too soon?

Awesome, logical response. If the Moral Minority (we'll call them the MM- it just sounds right) is wrong: Cam Newton still wins the Heisman. The voters kind of look like judgmental assholes. NCAAF continues as before. If Scarbinsky is wrong: Cam Newton should have never been eligible for the Heisman. It is eventually taken from him. Auburn's SEC (and National?) title is vacated. Everyone involved looks like a total asshole. There are reasons the MM are being lame- this is not one of them.

Better to base your vote on the facts, as most of us did.

Like the fact that Newton is harder to tackle than smoke. And that he's 6'5".

Also- it is a fact that Newton's dad solicited money from Mississippi State in exchange for Newton's services. It is also a fact that doing so is an NCAA violation (see NCAA bylaws 10.1(c) and 10.4) if Cam Newton was at all involved or aware of those negotiations. And finally, it is a fact that the NCAA's ruling regarding Cam's eligibility is hilarious. Apparently Cam had NO IDEA what his dad was doing; he was never in any way aware of any pay-to-play negotiations regarding the school he would end up transferring to. When his dad told him "Son, I'll talk to MSU for you," he though pops was just going to ask about what kind of food the dining halls serve and if the girls are purdy or not.

The Moral Minority's rush to judgment was mirrored Saturday by the 12-member panel of the Football Writers Association of America that chose an All-American team that included two quarterbacks. Neither of them was Newton.

The FWAA named Boise State's Kellen Moore as its quarterback and Michigan's Denard Robinson as an all-purpose back.

IT'S NOT FAIR! BOO HOO! WAR EAGLE!

The Football Writers, though, had no problem naming Oregon's LaMichael James as their All-American running back, despite the fact that he was arrested on domestic violence charges, pled guilty to misdemeanor harassment and was suspended by his head coach for the season opener.

Here's what he didn't do: violate NCAA rules by trying to get a school to pay him to transfer there. Obviously James is an asshole. He's also an asshole who is (probably) still an amateur athlete.

Just goes to show. Some football writers can't spell hypocrisy. Others have trouble defining it.

If all members of the FWAA were required to abide by NCAA rules, and then all of them broke those rules, and then refused to elect Newton to their All-American team, yeah. That would be pretty hypocritical. Just goes to show you that some sportswriters named Kevin Scarbinsky have trouble defining hypocrisy. I think the word he was looking for was "inconsistency," and even then, it wouldn't be correct.

This is the second FWAA snub of Auburn this year. After stripping USC of its 2004 national title, the Football Writers declined to award their trophy to that season's No. 2 Auburn, leaving the title vacant instead.

Christ, is this guy a Patriots/Red Sox/Celtics fan or something? Stop bitching already. I'm sorry it feels like the world is against you. Get over it.

You have to wonder. When Auburn beats Oregon in the BCS Championship Game, will the FWAA give Gene Chizik its precious Grantland Rice trophy the next morning, as is the custom?

More colors on the sleeve. In a pretty assholish tone, too. Note the sarcastic use of "precious." I think Auburn is a better team than Oregon and will probably win the title game, but if they don't, hoo boy, this dude is going to hear about it from me. I'm going to taunt the shit out of him via email. Because like the title of the post says, college football brings out the worst in everyone. That includes me.

Or will they keep it until Auburn is certified as 99 44/100 percent pure by the NCAA, the FBI, the CIA and Interpol?

You can't be too careful about these things.

Ask the Moral Minority, which now has a tiny victory over Cam Newton.

All he has, big picture, is a very large trophy.

Basically his closing argument is the equivalent of yelling "SCOREBOARD" at another team's fans after your team has beaten theirs. Awesome. I hate Kevin Scarbinsky, I hate Gene Chizik, I kind of hate Cam Newton, I especially hate the NCAA, and I hope Auburn loses to Oregon (both of whom I kind of hate) by a million points in January.

Most of all I hate college football fans because they're the party most responsible for the hype and excessive attention that fuels mindless bullshit like this article and the events surrounding it. If your favorite sport is college football, there is an 80% chance you are a complete waste of skin. (That number jumps to 99% if your favorite team is in the SEC, Big 12, or Big 10.) Go tape a knife to something and run into it. I'll be over here hoping and praying that the NFL doesn't skip the 2011 season due to labor problems, lest you dipshits get an even bigger slice of the media pie next fall.

Guy Pwned By His Own Website

Hey guys, remember when I posted an article about Ron Santo written by a guy who thought Home Run Baker had nothing to offer but a nickname? No? Well anyway, he's back, and making an asinine post about contract extensions.

As is the case with most fangraphs articles, a lot of this is dry info that's poorly written and a slog to read, so I'll cut right to the chase:

Here’s a fun fact. In baseball history, there have been exactly twenty-five nine-figure deals — twenty-five contracts for $100,000,000 or more. Four of them have gone to free agent pitchers. Position players have received the other 21, and of those 21 contracts, 11 have been contract extensions, and just 10 have been free agent contracts. (Of the top five contracts in baseball history — Alex Rodriguez, Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Joe Mauer, and Mark Teixeira — four three were extensions.)

Right. Either that or two. Two were extensions. Mark Teixeira signed a free agent deal with the Yankees (This should be pretty obvious, given that he played for Anaheim the year before). And A-Rod signed two free agent deals, one with the Rangers, and one with the Yankees.

(Technically, as Bryan and Art Deco point out below, Alex Rodriguez was a free agent when he signed his second contract with the Yankees. But I view it as an extension, because he essentially used the opt-out in his contract as a bargaining tactic in his negotiation with the Yankees — who were the only team able to afford the amount of money they wound up paying him. That’s a judgment call on my part, though, and if you want to consider him a free agent both times, that alters the numbers a little bit: ten extensions, eleven free agent contracts.)

Oh okay, you view A-Rod as an extension because you say you do. Gotcha. But never mind. Let's focus on why Mark Teixeira's free agent contract was an extension. Oh? That's the last you're going to mention him? Gotcha.

So why have more position players been paid more money when they weren’t on the free market than when they were?

They haven't.

It’s too facile to say that free market competition actually depresses player salaries, but it’s beyond question that teams have a tendency to bid against themselves, both on the free agent market and when negotiating extensions. After all, the two biggest contracts in baseball history both belong to Alex Rodriguez, and both his free agent contract with the Rangers and his extension with the Yankees were largely the result of a team bidding against itself. Of course, the Yankees can better afford to bid against themselves than could the Rangers.

First of all, it's not beyond question that teams have a tendency to bid against themselves in contract extensions. They're negotiating with an agent what it will take to get their player to forgo free agency. Thus, they are bidding...against other teams. Secondly, the Rangers were in no way bidding against themselves for Alex Rodriguez in the 1999 offseason. A number of teams wanted to sign A-Rod. They didn't have access to what those teams were bidding and they bid a number that made sense to them because they had a new cable contract coming in contingent on signing Rodriguez. But that's hardly "bidding against themselves."

Anyway, let's get to the real stupid stuff:

The jury is out on three of the eleven richest extensions in history, those featuring end dates between 2015 and 2020: Troy Tulowitzki, Miguel Cabrera, and Joe Mauer. But we can start to evaluate the other eight. First, Ryan Howard and Alex Rodriguez are signed through 2016 and 2017, but they have already started to look like albatrosses. And the jury is more or less in on the other six. They are listed below:

Derek Jeter, NYY, $189,000,000 (2001-10)
Todd Helton, COL, $141,500,000 (2003-11)
Johan Santana, NYM, $137,500,000 (2008-13)
Vernon Wells, TOR, $126,000,000 (2008-14)
Ken Griffey Jr., CIN, $116,500,000 (2000-08)
Albert Pujols, STL, $100,000,000 (2004-10)
Of those eight contracts, three of those have been unmitigated disasters (Helton, Wells, and Griffey), two have been qualified if overexpensive successes (Jeter and Santana), two are likely disasters (Howard and Rodriguez), and only one was a clear success (Pujols). In other words, seven of the eight extensions have been hard to justify on their dollar value alone.

This is where I "laugh out loud." Let's start with the "unmitigated disasters." Griffey's contract exists largely before Fangraphs started computing dollar-values for WAR so let's give Remington this one, since he's probably right. Wells is a disaster indeed, although he has come close to the $18 million he makes per year last year. But Todd Helton?

Let's go to Remington's own site and see what an unmitigated disaster looks like:

Todd Helton 2003-2010 Fangraphs WAR: 31.4
Todd Helton 2003-2010 Fangraphs Contract Value: $111.9mm
Todd Helton 2003-2010 Actual Salary (using avg per year): $123.8mm

What an unmitigated disaster! A loss of about $1.5mm per year!

Now let's take a look at one of his qualified but "overexpensive successes:

Derek Jeter 2002-2010 Fangraphs WAR: 41.9
Derek Jeter 2002-2010 Fangraphs Contract Value: $151.7mm
Derek Jeter 2002-2010 Actual Salary (using avg per year): $170mm

Man that's overexpensive! A loss of ~$2mm per year. Meaning he was something like 9% overpaid. What an overexpensive success! Look--I'll buy "overpaid" but overexpensive strikes me as having connotations of someone making more than about 10% of what they should have made. Especially when, allegedly, Jeter brings in plenty of off-the-field income. I think that might have been overstated in this year's negotiations, but certainly he bring in at least $2mm per year in corporate tie-ins and merchandise revenue (and yes, I know that the Yankees don't make specific money off of JETER jersey sales, but they make money off of jersey sales in general, hats in general, souvenir bats in general, etc and you have to figure Jeter moves those to some extent)

In short, 3 of the contracts Remington mentions are more or less square deals or an out and out bargain (Helton, Pujols, Jeter). Of the remaining extensions, two have been hampered by injuries (Griffey and Santana) and one was made as a publicity move rather than a baseball move (Vernon Wells). Now, injuries happen, and you can't just discount them. But they certainly don't say anything specific about contract extensions, now do they? If Griffey and Santana are overpriced, it's not because "teams bid against themselves." It's because "they got hurt." Certainly you'd rather be paying a hurt player like Santana $22mm a year than the dollar amount he could have gotten on the open market. How do we know what Santana could have gotten on the open market? We don't, necessarily, but we can take a pretty good guess.

Anyway, all of this non-information adds up to an asinine conclusion. Here goes:

But just as many inexplicable dollars are being spent on extensions, which aren’t even a market — they’re a response to a hypothetical market, and in recent history they’ve been a poor investment. If eyebrows should be raised anywhere, contract extensions are the place to start.

So much is wrong with this. So much. I'll leave that to you the reader to deciper because I'm utterly sick of this uninformed squawker who can't even be bothered to look up players' statistics.

BREAKING NEWS

ESPN wants you to know something about tonight's Indy/Tennessee matchup:




We'll get more details out to you when we hear them. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much- they didn't go for an unnecessary play on words like "CLASH OF THE TITANS (and Colts)."

Dear Jeff Passan: You're a Diptard

The Rockies recently handed Troy Tulowitzki a hefty extension, and the baseball media's reaction was mostly negative. Rob Neyer was mildly unsupportive, Tangotiger sort didn't really mind it, and Keith Law hated it. No surprise there because Keith Law is a card-carrying asshole who (smugly) hates everything. The fact that Passan also hated it, then, isn't anything special. What's special are his reasons for hating it, which range from WRONG to terribly thought out to fucking ridiculous. The craziest part- he found a way to try to claim that the deal isn't just bad for the Rockies, but for Tulowitzki as well (something no other writer I stumbled across did).

What could’ve been, though. Oh, what could’ve been. On one hand, Tulowitzki played things safe. He was reasonable.

Agreeing to be paid $19MM per year 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 years in the future for doing the same thing you do now is probably a reasonable thing to do, yes. LET'S PAT HIM ON THE BACK FOR IT BEFORE WE TEAR HIM TO PIECES.

And on the other, he lacked the fortitude to chase the greater glory that awaited him elsewhere. The money he could’ve gotten and the championships he could’ve won had he simply played out his current contract with the franchise that can’t help itself from taking a blade to its jugular.

Allow me to translate: gross! Who wants to try to win anywhere but Boston, New York, and MAYBE Philly or L.A.? What kind of an unreasonable stupid person is Tulo? Doesn't he know that all players should focus singularly on playing for one those teams? What a dummy this guy is! Trying to win a title with the team that drafted him. For shame.

By turning down the opportunity to hit free agency after 2014, Tulowitzki potentially left millions of dollars on the table.

Hard to say. Probably. He's still going to be paid for sure during those years, even if he decides to get fat and lazy and really sucks by then. So the security the deal offers was, you know, probably worth something to him.

He certainly left the opportunity to play for franchises that need not operate with tight margins because of one man’s deal.

This sounds like sour grapes from a Yankees/Red Sox fan, but The Google reveals that Passan doesn't seem to have any particular bias towards big payroll teams. In any case, it's shitty logic. More on why later. Let's move on to Passan's analysis of the Rockies' side of the deal, which is predictably dumb.

If this deal is bad for Tulowitzki, it’s ill-conceived and unconscionable for a Rockies team that knows what long-term, big-money contracts do to franchises with middling budgets: cripple them. And even if Tulowitzki is the anti-Mike Hampton

Right, terrible contract. No one would argue otherwise.

and even if he can stay healthy like Todd Helton couldn’t,

This is where the WRONG starts. He mentions the Helton extension (a 9 year deal worth $141 MM signed after the 2002 season and running through 2011) multiple times, as if it were some spectacular failure. Here are the facts which you can keep in mind as Jeff keeps referencing this deal- in by far the three worst years of the deal, the most recent three, Helton appeared in 352 games, or about 118 per season. He missed a boatload of time in 2008 and quite a bit last year. During this stretch, he "only" accumulated about 5 WAR and OPS+ed 108. Slightly above average for a corner infielder. Now- was he worth what he was being paid at the time? Of course not. He made $50MM from 2008-2010, and if you use the somewhat-accepted conversion rate of $5MM per WAR on the open market, he made double what he should have. It's really 2008 and 2010 that were the problem- he had a great 2009 (4 WAR).

So in spite of the good will his presence generates among fans, and his leadership/grit/whatever other intangibles you want to throw in there, he's spent the last three seasons being a mild cash sink for the Rockies. But from 2003-2007? He accumulated 26 WAR and OPS+ed 145. He was worth what he was paid and then some. Using that same conversion rate for WAR on the open market I described before, he paid for roughly 80% of the cost of the contract in those five years alone. Combine his performance then with his 2008-2010, and it's batshit insane to say the contract was anything worse than a "fair deal" for the Rockies. It would be perfectly reasonable to call it a good deal, and if you're really into intangibles and all that crap, you could call it great. Would they have been better off signing him to a 5 year extension and avoiding his eventual decline? Sure, in most ways. But making a deal to keep him around for the rest of his career generated a lot of value for the franchise, as he was their first true homegrown superstar. Comparing this contract to Hampton's is lunacy. Implying that it was or is some kind of albatross around the franchise's neck is flat out WRONG.

and even if he is the do-everything, all-world, good-guy shortstop, heir to Derek Jeter,

Then that would be awesome, because Jeter was really really good until last season and Tulo was a better defender to begin with so in theory his defense will age better.

he still leaves the Rockies in a compromised position: with limited money to spend on the other pieces and parts that would comprise an annual contender.

To an extent, that's the whole point, isn't it? If you're not the Yankees or Red Sox, you have to spend money on certain guys and build around them. Of course you can't keep everyone- I'm sure Carlos Gonzalez will leave the Rockies when he's a free agent or on the brink of becoming one, as Matt Holliday did- but there are certain guys you keep and build around. And you pay them a lot of money so you can do that. You keep Joe Mauer. You pay shitloads of money to keep Miguel Cabrera if you acquire him. And you keep Tulowitzki. It's a very smart way to do things, and keeps fans interested. Being successful while operating your team like the Rays or A's do is nice in theory, but it's a dangerous game. Having a cornerstone that keeps ticket sales up and allows you to be absolutely sure about something that's six, seven, or eight years down the road is a preferable option if it's available. Don't be surprised if you hear rumors about the Rays approaching Evan Longoria about this kind of mega extension a few years from now. And at the same time, this is a really stupid point. Because by the time the extension's big money kicks in, the Rockies probably won't be dealing with much of a "limited money to throw around" situation at all.

The Rockies operate with a payroll of around $80 million. Last year, it was $5 million more, the year before $3 million less.

And in 2015, it's a very safe bet that it'll be around $100 million or more. Back in 2003/2004/2005, it was around $60-$65MM. See how that works? In fact, call me crazy, but I'm willing to bet that salaries all across MLB have gone up in the last 5ish years, and will go up again in the next 5ish years. Magic!

Tulowitzki’s contract extension adds six years and $119 million onto the end of his current deal, which, including a 2014 option, was to pay him $38.75 million. So, starting in 2015, when Tulowitzki will be 30, the Rockies will give him nearly $20 million a year.

“If there’s a guy to spend a quarter of your payroll on, he’s it,” said a GM of a low-revenue team, “but you just don’t spend a quarter of your payroll on anyone. Period.”

Which is why it's a good thing they won't be doing that with Tulo unless some crazy and unforeseen financial catastrophe hits baseball or their team.

The Rockies ignored that rule again,

They didn't. This line of logic is kind of similar to saying "Why would you take an entry level job coming out of college that only pays you $40K a year? You'll never be able to buy a house and put three kids through college with that salary!"

And yet Rockies executives admit that attaining such success with Helton’s albatross nine-year, $141.5 million deal took an incredible confluence of timing and luck.

See above.

Locking up any other players of significance became an impossibility.

They didn't have any to lock up other than Holliday and MAYBE Jason Jennings. They traded both for packages of players who provided better value in the short and the long run. The Rockies' problem in 2003-2006 wasn't that Helton's contract (and Hampton's "dead money" contract, left over for five years even after he was traded) were holding them back. Their problem was that they didn't have enough homegrown talent to make it worthwhile to compliment that talent with extra free agent pieces.

With attendance unlikely to return to the halcyon late ’90s, new revenue streams to support such deals are almost impossible to come by. The jump to a $100 million payroll isn’t happening.

It almost certainly is, and probably by 2015. They're going to be at about $85MM this year.

So as the Rockies celebrate Tulowitzki’s new deal, they do so knowing that Ubaldo Jimenez is now likely to leave after the 2014 season.

Depends. No way to tell this far out, and stupid to make assumptions about a pitcher's ability to sustain success without having his arm explode.

And that Carlos Gonzalez, a Scott Boras client, is certain to do so.

Sure. He was probably going to whether they signed Tulowitzki or not.

And that rather than waiting until 2014 to figure out where to spend their money, the team went all-in on a player who has missed significant time in two of his four seasons because of injuries.

In 2008 he missed time for one injury that won't be repeated (hurt himself slamming a bat in the dugout) and one that was a legitimate on field "wear and tear" injury (quad/groin pull). In 2010 he missed about 30 games because some asshole Twins relief pitcher hit him in the wrist with a pitch. Jeff is only the 50th columnist in the last two weeks to overstate Tulowitzki's injury issues.

This is a marriage of convenience, though, a rarity in sports with good reason: rarely do they turn out well. Even the model for great long-term deals, Jeter’s 10-year, $189 million contract with the Yankees, comes with a warning label. Over the life of the deal, even after splurging on $1.6 billion worth of contracts on top of Jeter’s deal, the Yankees won only one World Series.

The Yankees signed Derek Jeter to a long contract, during the majority of which he was an awesome player and worth much more than what they paid him. But because of the way baseball's postseason works they only won one WS (and two other pennants, while appearing in the playoffs nine times) while he was under that contract. Therefore... don't sign awesome players to long contracts?

One of the stupidest things I've ever read.

The Rockies may spend half that, and even though general manager Dan O’Dowd and his lieutenants Bill Schmidt and Bill Geivett do a commendable job finding cheap talent and securing it to reasonable contracts, sustaining that for a decade is Sisyphean. It took O’Dowd, after all, nearly a decade to turn the Rockies from perpetual losers into a franchise worth emulating.

You know what they say: the easy part is finding a sustainable model for success in a mid-sized market where 9 out of 10 people prefer football to baseball. The hard part is keeping it going once you have a talented and young MLB team, a fairly stacked farm system, and supportive ownership willing to spend in certain situations. That's where you really see problems.

And what mummified the team for all those years? The contracts of Hampton and Helton, of course.

From 2003 until 2010, the Rockies paid Todd Helton about $120 MM to accumulate 31.7 WAR, play a starring role on two playoff teams, and be the face of the franchise. From 2003 until 2008, the Rockies paid Mike Hampton about $60 MM to pitch for other teams. Putting those two deals in the same sentence suggests how utterly unqualified you are to write about this subject. Cautioning the Rockies that there's a chance that the deal "only" works out as well as the 2001-2010 Jeter deal verifies it. You, sir, are a diptard.

I'm Probably The Only Person in the World Bothered By This, But I've Got the Microphone In My Hand, and Goddamnit, I'm Going To Be Heard!

In a Yahoosports post arguing Ron Santo's HOF case (a case I agree with wholeheartedly, btw), a columnist named Alex Remington posts this "gem":

Third base is the most underrepresented position in the Hall: There are 16 catchers, 25 first basemen, 18 second basemen, 22 shortstops, 21 left fielders, 21 center fielders and 22 right fielders, but only 14 third basemen.

Of those 14, three are former Negro Leaguers, and four are relatively weak players from the dead ball era who were elected by a previous, much more permissive incarnation of the the veterans committee. (These include Frank "Home Run" Baker, whose most notable feature is his nickname, and Freddie Lindstrom, who was mainly elected because he was a member of John McGraw's dynastic New York Giants.)

Emphasis mine. I support Santo's case, but the abject ignorance in this argument kind of undermines the writer's case. Home Run Baker was a fantastic player with a short career, but by nearly any measure significantly better than Santo. Just for a quick and dirty look: in 6660 Plate Appearances, Home Run Baker tallied 63.7 WAR in his career. Santo took 9396 PA to tally 66.4. Is there an argument for longevity? Sure, but to say "Home Run" Baker's most notable feature is his nickname in the same column arguing for the HOF enshrinement of a lesser player seems like a pretty dumb move.

Meanwhile, in the same column, Remington makes an offhand comment indicating he doesn't think Santo stacks up to BBWAA enshrinee Pie Traynor. Another rough and dirty look: In 8293 PA, Traynor has 37.1 WAR (which includes a -3.6 dWAR). Santo, as we saw above, has 66.4 WAR in 9396 PA (which includes a positive dWAR). So it's pretty clear that Remington is very close to completely clueless. But enough about this d-bag. Let's talk like adults about Santo's HOF case.

As far as 3B HOFers go, they probably rank like this:

1. Mike Schmidt
2. George Brett
3. Eddie Matthews
4. Wade Boggs
5. Home Run Baker
6. Maybe Brooks Robinson

That's about it in terms of 3B who are better than Santo at 3B in the HOF. So let the guy in already, for crying out loud. Oh, and Dick Allen, Bert Blyleven, Tim Raines, and Allen Trammell too.

Kthxbye

FMTMQR: Watch out for post-Thanksgiving Christmas Creep!

Oh, the football gods would so chortle at some of the shit in this week's TMQ column if they existed.

In other NFL news, Forget the Titans! Three weeks ago, Tennessee was 5-3 with a 13-5 streak stretching back to last season. Now, the Flaming Thumbtacks have lost three straight; they're playing a befuddled third-string quarterback;

Right, Kerry Collins and Vince Young are both hurt. I know what you're thinking: this is Randy Moss's fault.

coach Jeff Fisher and star Vince Young are openly arguing;

Gotta be Moss!

corner Cortland Finnegan looks like a horse's behind;

Probably from spending too much time around Moss.

and, on Sunday, the Titans were shut out by the league's 31st-ranked defense.

Prime suspect: one of the league's top 20ish WRs.

This can't possibly have anything to do with the arrival of Randy Moss, can it?

UM HELLO EXACTLY.

On Sunday, Moss didn't bother to chase a deep pass that might have been a touchdown.

Every deep pass "might have been a touchdown." Every WR in the league gives up on them from time to time, because they can tell from having chased thousands of passes during their lifetimes that they won't be able to catch this one. I didn't see the one he's talking about, of course. It's possible that Moss was being a bum and gave up on a catchable ball. But I'm pretty comfortable guessing Gregg is being a doofus as usual and blaming Moss for nothing.

In the games in which Moss started for them, the Patriots, Vikings and Titans are a combined 4-7.

No elite receiver can ever be on a sub-.500 team. It's unpossible. I said it in the comments last week: Broncos fans should just be happy their team's biggest offseason move involved trading away that selfish diva Brandon Marshall. Look where it's gotten them, and look where the Dolphins are! Those suckers.

Also- remember that time Moss was an integral part of a team that scored like 60 points a game and was 3 minutes away from finishing 19-0? Career loser that guy.

Fisher said a month ago, when Tennessee was 5-3, "there is absolutely no risk" in bringing Moss aboard. Tennessee is now 5-6, and it's time to forget the Titans.

Because they have an overrated defense and no QB. Not because they took a flier on a super talented WR who hasn't been able to drag them through their own shitstorm to any wins.

Christmas Creep Veers Into the Absurd:

This is probably my favorite creep segment ever. Read on and be ready to lol.

Since childhood, TMQ has loved the stop-motion animation special "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer," which was first broadcast in 1964. One of the things that first brought my future wife and I together was the discovery that, though we had super-serious careers, we both loved this delightfully cheesy show.

Thanks for the wife story, Simmons.

When our kids were little, they watched "Rudolph" on VCR over and over again in December, memorizing most of the lines. When my youngest was perhaps 8,

Tl;dr. Don't care about your family. Get to the damn point.

It brought a tear to my eye to learn, two months ago, that Billie Mae Richards, the actress who voiced Rudolph, died at age 88 in Canada.

Is there anything less tragic than a voice actor who probably made millions in royalties from her work living to the age of 88?

On Tuesday night, CBS takes Christmas Creep into absurdity

Note the word choice- what follows is patently ABSURD.

by airing "Rudolph" in November!

Oh my. OH MY. GET THE NATIONAL GUARD ON THE PHONE- A FAMOUS AND POPULAR CHRISTMAS TV SPECIAL AIRED 26 DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS. There's no way that's true, it's just too absurd. Maybe TV Guide misprinted it.

That's no misprint:

GAH

The 2010 broadcast of the show happens on Nov. 30.

Gregg, you are a sad, sad, sad man with an astonishingly strange complaint agenda. You make Larry David sound well-balanced and rational. HAS ANYONE EVER NOTICED THAT THE MACY'S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE HAS ALL KINDS OF CHRISTMAS-THEMED STUFF IN IT, BUT IT AIRS ON THANKSGIVING? STOP THE MADNESS AMERICA

Will "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" air next September?

Probably not, since no one really cares about Halloween until mid October. As opposed to Christmas, which they care about in late November. Which is the point of him complaining about "creep," I suppose, except that it's perfectly rational to get excited about Christmas a month in advance. It's the biggest or second biggest family holiday of the year for most of America, and what the fuck else are you going to be excited about during December? January and February are the worst months of the year because it's cold and shitty outside and there's nothing to look forward to except spring.

My family will not watch on Tuesday; we will DVR the show and watch it next week,

You rebels! Do the advertisers know about this? You'd think they'd put a stop to this DVR nonsense.

fast-forwarding through the commercials.

Commie!

Rudolph lovers: Tape the show, save it 'til December and fast-forward through the commercials!

Make a completely inconsequential statement!

Make CBS pay for this absurdity!

Best line Easterbrook has ever written, ever.

Now Jax, trailing 24-20, has first-and-10 on the home team 29 just inside the two-minute warning. The Giants run a choreographed blitz on which Osi Umenyiora, the right end, sprints straight up the field and allows the Jacksonville left tackle to drive him behind Jax quarterback David Garrard -- an action that opens a lane for safety Antrel Rolle to come through unblocked for the sack.

Wait- on a blitz? No fucking way. The correct defense for all downs and distances is to play base coverage and rush four.

Normally, a left tackle who drives the right end behind the quarterback has won the down; in this case, Umenyiora was cooperating to leave a lane for Rolle. Garrard was sacked on each of the next two snaps, closing out the contest. So blitzes themselves aren't bad -- but there's smart blitzing and dumb blitzing.

He's learning, people. He's learning. Now we just have to make him understand that it's OK to punt and kick field goals sometimes. Teams have even won the Super Bowl using those ultra-conservative tactics!

Stop Me Before I Blitz Again! No. 2: With Oakland leading 14-10 late in the first half, the South Florida Dolphins faced third-and-10, beyond field goal range. The Raiders blitzed seven, and an easy completion to the Oakland 20 set up a field goal, helping spark the visitors' comeback win. Why mega-blitz when the opponent isn't in field goal range? Just play coverages and get an incompletion.

Just like that. As if it's equivalent to going to the grocery store and buying a gallon of milk, or picking up your remote control and turning the TV on. Just play coverage, and make sure that one of the (ostensibly) 32 best QBs in the world doesn't pick up 10 yards.

The Minnesota win came against the NFL's worst defense. Still, the Vikings looked more like a team, and less like a jeans promotion organization, than so far this season.

Gregg seems to struggle with the idea that just because they employ Favre as their QB, they don't necessarily spend their time on the field during games promoting all the products he promotes.

Comic-Book Characters, Having Ruined Hollywood, Are Now About to Ruin Broadway: The Spider-Man musical, complete with music by U2, began previews Sunday. Eight years and $65 million in the making, it sounds like the dumbest idea ever for a Broadway show

Here the one time this week when TMQ and I are on the exact same page. That does sound like just about the worst idea ever.

In the latest X-Men movie, about Wolverine, Logan became immortal -- If he's immortal, why is he scared of flying?

Come on, Hollywood writers. YOU'RE DROPPING THE REALISM BALL.

and acquired Superman-class strength, plus the ability to jump tremendous distances. In that movie, Wade Wilson and Agent Zero, who were normal people in the comics, become superpowered mutants. Dozens of men fire machine guns at Wilson at close range, and he uses his mutant super senses to locate the bullets and deflect them away with his fancy swords. Bullets move at 1,500 to 2,000 mph, so Wilson's arms would need to move at several thousand mph to reposition the swords fast enough to deflect every shot. That's flexing your biceps pretty fast. You'd think his skin would melt, and there should be constant sonic booms caused by his arms and the swords.

There are... no words to describe this man's idiocy.