The real question is, Who's Now? Is Mike Trout Now?

I should have done this post back on Tuesday when I took the screen cap, but fuck it, it's still relevant so I'll do it now.  Here's the ESPN front page as of Tuesday morning:

First of all, before we get to the main event, let's look at the undercard that is the four "sub front page" stories on the bottom.

Going from left to right: NCAA women's basketball, which is front page news the day after MLB opening day, while the NBA and NHL are approaching the end of the regular season.  I wonder why this is here?  Could it be because ESPN televises NCAAW tournament games?  Nah, no way, couldn't be.  I was promised by John Skipper (or some other piece of cat shit high powered ESPN decision maker, I'm not going to look up exactly who it was right now but I'm pretty sure it was Skipper) in "Those Guys Have All the Fun" that's ESPN's editorial decisionmaking process is COMPLETELY REMOVED from its business side.  So therefore, I guess NCAAW is on there with the same number of panels/stories as MLB because it's editorially important to cover it, right?  And I guess the NHL just really isn't editorially important at all.  Not that I give a shit whether ESPN enables obnoxious NHL fanboys (who are the worst fans this side of obnoxious soccer fanboys) by giving the fanboys' sport the attention the fanboys think it deserves, but come on.  Fucking women's basketball?  Fuck that.  Fuck.

Next: Turmoil in Indy.  Wow, holy hell!  It's a story about a team that isn't the Heat, Knicks, Bulls or Lakers!  And it appears to be about how they're doing on the court and what challenges they might face as they move towards the playoffs!  Wild stuff.  I'm shocked.  ESPN management is aware of the relatively low number of people who live in Indy and/or follow the Pacers, right?

Next: Final Four.  It's the week before the Final Four.  Sounds like news to me.

Finally: "Critical of Kobe."  I don't know what this is and I don't give a fuck.  He hasn't played a meaningful game in a year.  I don't care what he Tweeted about what someone wrote about what he Tweeted, or whatever the fuck is being addressed here.  This is tabloid garbage and it does not belong on the front page, or anywhere else.

OK, enough of that.  I should just be happy the entire front page isn't NFL draft.  IT'S ONLY FIVE WEEKS AWAY, GUYS.  WHO'S GOING TO GO #1 OVERALL?  I THINK I JUST PEED MY PANTS.  Fuck the NFL draft.  Anyways, here's the reason I decided to write this post in the first place.

Mike Trout is really awesome.  He's the best player in baseball.  When he signs a gigantic contract extension, that's very important news.  However, he signed that contract on Friday night.  In the world of 24 hour sports news, it's ancient history by Tuesday morning.  It would have been ancient history even if Monday weren't opening day, i.e. the day on which a bunch of teams played their first game and lots of cool stuff happened.  Now, Mike Trout hit a home run on Monday night, which is pretty cool.  But his team still got their shit kicked in by the Mariners.  They lost 10-3.  But that doesn't even get mentioned in the subheadline.  It's only in the title of one of the links.  To be clear: I am not a Mariners fan.  I don't give a pot of piss about the Mariners.  I am not whining about this because I feel like the Mariners have been disrespected here.  As you can see from the highlighted box on the score ticker at the top of the screen capture, I am a Rockies fan.  God, do the Rockies suck.  Anyways.

So, the Mariners beat the Angels on Monday night.  Lots of other baseball stuff happened too.  What is ESPN's angle?  Well, since ESPN is more interested in promoting marketable personalities (WHO'S NOW????  IS JOHNNY FOOTBALL NOW?  I'M PRETTY SURE HE IS NOW) than covering sports, the angle becomes: Mike Trout hit a home run.  But Mike Trout's home run was pretty unimportant.  It was a long ways away from being the most important thing to happen in this game, and this game was definitely not the night's most entertaining.  Thus: this home run isn't really news, unless you're some shithead who cares more about stories and narratives than about sports.  Unfortunately, that's exactly who ESPN caters to.

ESPN is awful.  Please stop watching ESPN, people.  I have, except for live MLB and NBA broadcasts, and with the MLB ones I mute the TV.  (Their NBA announcers are kind of good though!)  Reading ESPN.com is not as bad as watching the network, but it's still terrible.  What do they offer that another major content provider that is 10% less horrible doesn't?  If you think the answer isn't "Nothing," you are wrong.  Just go to CBS or FoxSports or the actual home page of whatever league/sport you like to follow.  You won't regret it!  Oh, and if you use ESPN ScoreCenter on your phone, please stop.  That app was OK a couple years ago but it's horrendous now.  You're going to laugh at this suggestion, but I stand behind it.  Hear me out.  Delete ScoreCenter now and download TeamStream.  Yes, TeamStream is from Bleacher Report.  No, I do not go to Bleacher Report's website.  No, I do not respect Bleacher Report.  But damn, that is one fine app.  Seriously.  Try it.

In conclusion: fuck ESPN in the nose.

Hometown Hero Hates Computers

It's about time for our yearly doses of BCS controversy. This week's comes from the Cincinnati Enquirer's Paul Daughtery, who has been featured here before. He's certainly a Cincinnati hometown writer, and to a certain extent I think writers in their hometown papers should be allowed some license. But this article abuses that privilege."BCS is one game UC Can't Win"

"BCS one game UC can't win"

UC wins by 31 and loses three spots in the BCS computer rankings. The Bearcats smack Louisville with a QB who’d never started a college game. The computer says UC had a lousy week.

They beat up on a terrible team. The computer didn't factor in that the QB hadn't started a game before!

That’s because Louisville is bad and BYU is good and TCU won at BYU and Iowa hasn’t lost and Boise State got shafted two years ago and Southern Cal has fabulous cheerleaders. Or some damned thing.

I like how he complains that it's so confusing. Hey, BYU is a better team than Louisville, so a win over BYU should count more! BYU was 6-1 coming in, while Louisville was 2-4.

Also, Iowa, Boise State and Southern Cal all have much more impressive resumes - wins over Penn State, Michigan and Wisconsin (Iowa), Oregon (BSU, though their claim is weakest), Notre Dame, Cal, and Ohio State (USC) are more impressive than Cicninnati's.

It's not debatable.

The rankings account for schedule strength, conference strength, coaches voting, global warming, black helicopters and things that go bump in the night. To the BCS computers, if Florida beats Georgia in the parking lot of a Gainesville Burger King Saturday, it means less than if the Gators had done the winning out behind Weaver D’s Restaurant in Athens. Even if REM is eating there.

What? How hard is it to comprehend schedule strength? How hard is it to explain that a win on the road is a little more impressive than a win at home? How hard is it to explain conference strength?

Also, what are all those references doing here? Is this a Bill Simmons article? REM? Black helicopters? I don't get it.

The Bearcats are taking this well. Brian Kelly is absolutely rational about it. Kelly says all the right things, which for Kelly is highly unusual: We’re in the mix, he says. We have some big games coming up. Nobody’s great. Our players don’t think about it. Let’s let it play out.

Good for Brian Kelly, who is being rational about it. I like how Daugherty is surprised that Mr. Kelly is being rational. Like he expects the coach to share his hysterical, irrational perspective.

“It’s great the university is getting that recognition,’’ the coach allows. “I hope our admissions (are) up.’’

Fabulous. Let’s hear it for more applications.

What Kelly doesn’t say is, the whole deal is rigged. Not rigged in the manner of Soviet elections or nickel slots, but rigged just the same. Bloodlines matter, so Florida will win everything. Unless it’s Texas or Alabama.

Bloodlines matter and playing good opponents matter. How hard is this to understand?

The BCS is ingenious in the way it gets us all worked up about college football. Around here, it’s great we have the chance to get worked up personally. It beats planning the roadie to the Papajohn’s.com Bowl.

Sure, because Cincinnati has its best team in school history. But that doesn't mean they've ascended to the top of college football.

But America isn’t supposed to work this way. We compete. We tap gloves and come out fighting, may the best man win. My mousetrap against yours. We compete. We play off. Computing for a champion doesn’t compute.

Except that all 118 teams in FBS can't play, because a team can only play one game a week, and there aren't 118 weeks in the season. Even the top 25 can't all play! I realize this is a thinly veiled argument for a playoff, but the article doesn't mention any of the stumbling blocks to that end.

I asked Einstein about the BCS. How does it work? I ran it by Galileo, Copernicus and Kant. They had no clue. Stephen Hawking was stumped. Freud said it had something to do with my mother.

Well, I'm glad I read this.

I took my troubles down to Madame Rue. You know, the gypsy with the gold-capped tooth. What about the BCS? She gave me a Nick Saban voodoo doll and some pins. The good fans of Utah begged me to lie down in a cool place.

Well, I'm glad I read this.

“We’re coached just to do what we’re told to do on the field. It’s not a big deal’’ to the players, says Bearcats wideout D.J. Woods. Well, OK, but how come players hung around with their laptops Sunday afternoon, awaiting the new BCS rankings?

Because they want to do well? They're hopeful, even in a tough situation?

“Sunday, everybody was shocked,’’ Woods concedes. “How did that happen? I guess you have to be a big school surrounded by a big stadium.’’

I guess you have to be a school that schedules the best teams in college football instead of SOUTHEAST MISSOURI STATE.

Kelly argues that UC’s success is too new to make a big enough dent. The rookies have to stand on the table and sing their alma maters. You can’t just pledge the BCS frat. You have to swallow some goldfish first.

Or beat some good teams first. The comparison to a frat initiation is asinine. The team has to prove itself on the field of champions, instead of the field of patsies.

“That new person on the block has to prove (himself),’’ is Kelly’s explanation. “We keep winning, we’ll change the perceptions of what those traditional powers are. We’re in the process of putting together another great season.

“(If we) start doing that year in and year out, I think that changes everything.’’

Yes. Or, if your AD would've set up a tougher schedule five years ago, that would've given you a chance.

Maybe. But how many years? How many seasons of 10-win cred does it take a Cincinnati, or a program like it, to break the BCS glass ceiling?

More than one.

What if the Bearcats play, say, Alabama, in the Sugar Bowl, and roll the Tide the way Utah did? Then do they get a seat at the big boy table?

If they play more than one good team and beat them, then yes, they do. One win does not a champion make.

“We’ve got some games in front of us that really are going to serve us well,’’ Kelly adds. True enough, and those wins over Top 25s West Virginia and Pitt would get the Bearcats just high enough to chant “We’re Number Three!’’ if they win their BCS bowl game.

Good luck, Bearcats. But beating West Virginia and Pitt still don't prove your mettle like winning in a better conference would.

The BCS rankings have us talking, all right. Who’s listening?

Lots of people are listening. This is a terrible ending to a terrible article. The BCS has its flaws, I suppose, but this is a stupid article with a stupid premise. Shameless homerism which ignores the facts of the situation - that UC hasn't played and won against good teams, while other teams have - is embarrassing for any news writer or any newspaper.

Rick Reilly Makes Me Chuckle

But not in the way he makes clueless baby boomers chuckle. He's written an article about retroactively re-awarding MVP trophies to guys who initially lost out to steroid users, but are ostensibly the "real" and deserving winners for not cheating. Amidst the predictably lame pop culture references and plays on words that usually come with a piece of Laffy Taffy (Oops... is that a pop culture reference on my part? How ironic), we have this gem:

And here's yours from 2001, Luis Gonzalez, after you finished behind The Barry Bonds Pharmacy. We won't even mention the home run title you would've won that year.

Dude- really? I know, I know. Innocent until proven guilty and all that. But if there is anyone, and I mean anyone, who has yet to be officially connected to steroids but who I am 99.9% certain was a steroid user... it would have to be Gonzalez.

Before his age 30 season: about 3800 plate appearances, 84 home runs. Home run season totals for subsequent years, which just so happen to encompass what most people would consider the height of the steroid era: 23, 26, 31, 57 (in his age 33 season!), 28, 26. Those seasons together encompassed roughly another 3800 PAs. So let's get this straight- ages 22-29: a home run every 45 plate appearances. Agest 30-35, when everyone and their mom was on the juice: a home run every 19 plate appearances. What are the statistical odds of that happening without performance enhancers? What are the odds of a guy, playing right at the (presumed) height of steroid use, coincidentally discovering the power it takes to hit 57 home runs at age 33 when he had previously hit 13 in 500+ PAs during his age 27 season?

As Rick Reilly might say, poor- about as poor as that mother of octuplets is going to be when she has to put those kids through college! Or maybe slim- about as slim as Britney Spears is looking these days! Or maybe terrible- about as terrible as the economy is doing!

Etc., etc.

If you're about to leave a comment pointing out that lots of people used to subscribe to SI just to read Reilly's articles, cram it. He stinks.