In Case It Wasn't Already Obvious, Last Friday I Learned That I'm Not Meant To Be a Real Journalist

I haven't posted anything for a few days, and I do feel bad about that. Horrible sportswriting happens every single day; I usually take pride in the fact that I in turn complain about it each and every day. Or each and every weekday, anyways. So I'll be getting back to that kind of thing on a regular basis starting tomorrow. For now, though, please indulge me while I tell you a story about my brush with real journalism and the valuable lesson I learned in the process. I know this is going to come off douchebaggy and boring- I promise I don't intend it to be either of those things. It's actually a kind of good story, and I swear that this kind of writing will not happen (from me, anyways) regularly here at FireJay.

(Preface: It really bothers me when sports bloggers/columnists put information about their personal lives into their posts. I constantly rip Bill Simmons for doing it. Wow, you helped conceive a child? Congratulations. You've managed to perform a basic mammalian function. Here's your sticker. And although I absolutely love The Big Lead (how could I not when he's responsible for about 75% of FireJay's exposure), he sometimes lets details about where he lives and how he's employed slip into his writing. It's not like these kinds of things are the end of the world but for some reason they do kind of bother me. Obviously, though, I'm going to have to do exactly the same if I want to tell you a story about something cool that I did. So I apologize in advance for that. And I promise that when I'm not having adventures like this one, which are extremely rare, I'm squarely planted in my parents' basement doing nothing but playing Stratego against myself and eating Teddy Grahams. Also, like I already said, I promise that this kind of post is a one time deal, unless something equally exciting happens to me during the life of this blog, which is very unlikely.)

A few weeks ago, one of my roommates gave me a great idea. "Hey," he said, "you should go to that Bonds arraignment thing." Although normally he's full of crap, I had to hand it to him on this one. It was a damn good suggestion. I do live in the Bay Area (near Palo Alto, so about a 45 minute drive from downtown San Francisco). I will be going to law school next fall. I am self employed, meaning I can take a day off from "work" pretty much anytime for any reason. And furthermore, as a huge baseball fan, I do definitely find Bonds's legal troubles fascinating. Several of my biggest interests were intersecting at a massively significant event which was to take place less than an hour from where I live. How could I not show up?

I quickly realized, however, that I was probably not the only person in this metropolitan area of about 8 million people interested in this arraignment. And federal courtrooms can only accomodate so many people. A quick search of the court's website revealed that after allotting 60 of the available "public" seats to media members, there would be a whole 30 seats left over being made available to people like me. My interest level in the event quickly sank. What were the odds that I could secure one of those seats? Surely there were enough crazed Giants fans, avid court watchers, media members having to pose as regular citizens after being denied a media spot, and streakers-that-always-show-up-at-big-events interested in Barry's big day that there wasn't really a point in me trying to get in.

But come Thursday, I couldn't help but continue to be interested. It's not that I harbor some dream of becoming an actual sportswriter, but I couldn't help but remember what ESPN's Jeff Pearlman told me when I interviewed him for the blog back in September.

LB: bloggers/amateur writers with big dreams about getting into professional sports journalism should make sure they do what, in order to best increase their chances of one day making their living from writing?

JP: ... do reporting—real, honest-to-goodness reporting... The thing about blogging is that, while it's great, it's also lazy. I know—I write a lame blog, and it's literally me on the couch. It may well show you can write, but it doesn't show you can report.

Again, it's not that I want to be a real journalist. I'm selling my soul to the US legal system in about 9 months. But that doesn't mean that I don't want just a little taste of what it's like to be a real journalist before I go through with the whole legal career deal. This was obviously the perfect opportunity for me to do so. Not only would I be getting off my couch, I would be leaving my house AND going to a significant event in the world of sports! Plus, I mean, what if the impossible happened and Bonds decided to take a plea bargain right then and there? I would be kicking myself for years after passing up an opportunity to be in that room to witness such an occurrence. Of course it wasn't going to happen, but this thought wouldn't leave my head. I had to at least take a shot at getting in. So Thursday night, I threw my Spiderman toothbrush and Harry Potter pajamas in a backpack and drove to San Fran. I have some friends who live up there, in an apartment that's about a 20 minute walk from the courthouse. My plan was to park at their place, crash for the night (to avoid making the drive in the morning), get up at 5:30, and walk down to the courthouse. Assuming no one was allowed to camp out overnight, I figured there was a pretty good chance that getting there at 6 would put me in the top thirty. And hey, if it didn't, I could just go back to my friends' place and continue to sleep.

I don't really remember waking up and getting dressed. Five thirty in the morning is not a time I am well acquainted with, unless I experience it before going to bed rather than after. Somehow, some way, thanks to pure will power and my unstoppable desire to pretend to be a journalist, I found myself in front of the Philip Burton Federal Building at 6:30 AM. Those who know me well can confirm that this is a minor miracle. I really surprised myself by pulling this off, especially since I hadn't gone to sleep until about 2 in the morning. Even more surprising though, at least to me, is that I was the first motherhumping person in line! That's right! Me! I won! I won the prize! Laptop under my arm and smug sense of satisfaction evident on my face, I proudly stood inside a temporarily fenced off area as a handful of camera crews and other media types hanging around on the building's front patio sipped coffee and wondered who would be dumb enough to wake up that early unless it was part of their job. You want to know who? Me, baby. Me. The rest of the line filled in very quickly with a combination of interested citizens and (as predicted) media members who hadn't been able to get a media pass during the next 20 or so minutes. But they'd better not forget who was first. Bitches.

Don't believe me? I've got proof. Check out this. And this. (Note: now that you know my full name from those articles, please do not steal my identity. That would really piss me off.) That's right. To the victor go the spoils. At least eight or nine print journalists interviewed me, along with three camera crews from local TV stations. I didn't bother to watch the news that evening and see if my ugly mug made it into the lead for their Barry piece; I fucking hate my voice when it's recorded and played back to me. I tried not to sound like a total dumbass, but when you're coming off less than 4 hours of sleep and it's the earliest you've been awake in a year and a half, the words tend to stumble out of your mouth. You can see the guy from that first article I linked chose to directly quote me on the stupidest thing I said during our three minute conversation in order to make me look like an idiot. Why? I'm not sure. That's the media, I guess. Always out to screw you.

My favorite part about the interviews was that everyone seemed shocked that while I didn't support Barry, I also claimed not to be there just to shit on him either. Which was true- although I hate the guy, I didn't go to the arraignment to watch him crash and burn. I was there, as I've said, for a variety of other reasons. Attending a possibly historic event involving both baseball and the courts. Trying to do some "real reporting." (I failed to plan out in advance just what I would see that justified reporting; an arraignment is a very vanilla process. But whatever.) Not wanting to miss out on the 0.0000000001% chance Barry would plead guilty. Etc. But I definitely didn't go there with any kind of anti-Bonds rage. I save that for the ballpark, where you can't get thrown out of the building by a couple of US Marshals for loudly telling him he sucks.

One of the TV interviewers, in particular, was really hoping for some kind of angry and/or racist sound bite from me. She asked what I thought about Barry being charged with using steroids. When I pointed out to her that he was actually standing trial for perjury, she looked disappointed that I understood that issue. She then immediately switched gears asked me if I thought the fact that he is black has something to do with it. Fortunately I was able to voice my disagreement with that assertion without bursting into laughter; had I done so it might have come off wrong. But really, are people who think that serious? I mean, COOOOOOME ONNNNNNNN... Anyways, this reporter moved on down the line as soon as she realized I wasn't going to play the role of local idiot for her. I was on to your little trick, Jemele Hill. Don't think I didn't recognize you under all that makeup. You're going to have to do better than that.

This is getting long winded and I've already done what I really wanted to do, which was gloat about being first in line, so I'll move forward and get to my conclusion. I brushed off the media like a celebrity and entered the building as soon as they opened the doors around 7:15. I spent the next hour or so in the cafeteria, talking to the guy who had been second in line. He recently retired and now spends his days as a court watcher. He had been to the vast majority of the BALCO case happenings so he was able to answer all my questions about their intricacies. He also knew a lot about the judge and Barry's legal team, so we discussed that for a while. Probably the most eyebrow-raising thing he told me was that it took so long to get an indictment against Bonds because (by his estimation) the US Attorney who had formerly been in charge of the case, Kevin Ryan, is a lazy bastard who wasn't doing anything with the case before his removal about a year ago. Ryan is the balding guy you see being interviewed on ESPN in split screen all the time whenever Bonds is being discussed. I can now no longer take him seriously. I probably should have written down some of the other interesting things this court watcher guy said, but I was too tired/delirious to do so.

At around 8:30 I took the elevator up nineteen floors to claim my rightfully earned spot. Brushing elbows with lawyers and other well-dressed people in the elevator was mildly awkward. I was wearing a hoodie and jeans, and probably had forgotten to brush my teeth. My seat in the courtroom was unfortunately in the back row. But the room was small, with a maximum capacity of maybe 120 people, so that wasn't a huge deal. It was mostly full by the time I arrived. I ended up sitting directly behind ESPN's Pedro Gomez, the guy that has been Barry's shadow for about four or five years now. I didn't have the heart to tell him he has basically contributed exactly jack shit to my appreciation or understanding of the Bonds situation since the day he was assigned to report on every single Goddamn thing Barry does. He's been more useless than Ed Werder and his reports from Dallas Cowboys headquarters. Gomez definitely has a nicer cell phone than me. But it wasn't one of those "ESPN Special Superfan" ones with video highlights on it that they're always advertising, which was disappointing. At 8:55 Barry and his high powered legal team came in, silencing the room. I'll say this- Barry's head is shockingly enormous from 20 feet away. I couldn't believe it didn't get stuck in the door frame as he made his entrance. It really looks like it needs to be lanced like a giant boil. There's got to be a soda can's worth of fluid in there.

At 9:00 sharp, the magistrate judge arrived and the next ten minutes were spent receiving Barry's plea ("Not guilty." FUCK! A tiny hopeful sliver of me really hoped he was going to give in) and hammering out the details of his release bond. After a ten minute break, the actual judge who will conduct the trial came in and spent about twenty minutes talking to both sides and agreeing that the next time everyone would convene would be in exactly two months, on February 7. In the meantime, they'll begin the discovery process and send threatening letters to one another. They didn't even get close to beginning to think about setting a trial date. Hell, I don't even think they used the word "trial" in a sentence at any point in time. And then, at about 9:40, it was all over.

All told I had spent just over an hour staring at the back of Pedro Gomez's head. Barry hadn't pleaded guilty. No one had made a "WE LOVE YOU BARRY!" or "GO FUCK YOURSELF BARRY!" outburst and been forcibly removed. No surprise witnesses had been produced. No one cracked under the pressure of an intense cross-examination. The most interesting part was probably when the US attorneys initially said they wanted to restrict Bonds from leaving the country, only to relent and instead limit his travel to North America when his attorney pointed out that the might have to go to Toronto to play ball next summer. Yawn.

I looked down at the blank screen on my laptop. I hadn't written a damn thing. What was that I had thought to myself about Pearlman's "real reporting" advice? Did I honestly think I could do that kind of thing? Sure, it was cool to have been there. Had Barry pleaded guilty I would probably have shit myself with excitement. And the experience made me hope that one day if I'm a lawyer, I can somehow practice law related to sports because that's probably slightly less boring that other types of law. Most importantly, I knew the whole experience would make for a half decent story. But really... what did I think I was accomplishing, "journalistically?" The only way to describe the situation is to say that I was completely out of my element.

Go back and read the stories those two guys who interviewed and quoted me wrote. They made this mudane arraignment sound kind of interesting. I, on the other hand, just wasted five to ten minutes of your day so I could brag about being first in line at something. There's definitely something wrong with that picture. Not only am I mentally about seven years old, I'm also a bad reporter. I'm just not cut out for it. So here's my conclusion, and the explanation for the title of this post: the main reason Friday morning was great (again, besides being first in line) was because it made me appreciate how much fun being a hateful blogger is! Let the Pedro Gomezes, the Jemele Hills, and the Howard Bryants of the world do the dirty work. Let them attend Barry's arraignment and broadcast completely useless "updates" back to Bristol, CT afterwards. Let them (SMACK!) play the race card and formulate ridiculous ideas and perspectives on the case. People like me don't belong in that world. We just don't do well coming up with our own material. Some might say this makes us useless to the world of discourse, since all we do is tear down other peoples' original thoughts. So? Someone's got to do it, when those original thoughts have little or no value in and of themselves. Even if we can't further the discussion with our own ideas, we can certainly try to prevent stupid people from doing the same when they have little to no business being employed by a major media outlet.

Friday gave me a new lease on life as a FireJay blogger. I feel great. From now on, I'm going back to exclusively bitching and moaning about professional sportswriters. And of course, living in my parents' basement while eating various unhealthy snack foods.

Will People Please Stop Saying Barry Bonds Is Being Treated Unfairly Because of his Blackitude?

Meh. Guess that won't happen. Instead, let's just read more crap about why Mark McGwire is just as bad a dude as Barry Bonds. Take it away, Howard Bryant of ESPN.

Both men are in the position they are today -- Bonds perhaps facing prison, McGwire a fallen legend -- because they looked in the faces of powerful, law-enforcing, law-making bodies (never mind their millions of admirers) and did not convince the public they were telling the truth. Not only did they fail the public with the truth; the public believes they refused to tell it even when each was largely guaranteed that no matter what he said, no harm would come to him.

Well maybe no legal harm. Are we just going to count losing the respect of millions of American citizens and being perpetually labeled as a cheater as "harmless"?

And in the years that have followed, neither has been able to "man up." McGwire ran under the back porch and hid like a child, and he's been hiding ever since. Bonds bullied, went on the offensive to say he was being singled out because of his race, even though it is common knowledge in the game that Bonds is, at best, indifferent to other blacks in baseball.

Now let's pretend that McGwire and Bonds aren't white and black for a second. Let's imagine they're both fucking purple or something, I really don't care. If you have two guys that have been up to anything suspicious in any area of life, who is going to get the brunt of the public attention? The one who quiets down and doesn't say anything, or the one who drones on like a pompous jackass and acts like he's being mistreated? Bonds is an asshole. He's asking for the public eye and getting it. He's singling himself out. That's why he's the proverbial lightning rod of American attention. I'll even go so far as to say it's Bonds's own fault that people stopped giving a shit about Mark McGwire.

A common thread exists for both men; race is a secondary, but still important, spool.

Race is not important at all when it comes to lying under oath, which only one of these two men did.

McGwire did not exactly lie under oath

There you go. This is the primary difference, and the only truly significant one. "McGwire did not exactly lie under oath." We're going to be copying and pasting this line many times to remind Bryant of why Bonds is being remembered and McGwire isn't. Go on...tell us how he "sort of" lied under oath.

but he wasn't forthcoming that cold day in Washington, the day he stood under oath and verged on moral collapse, weighted by his guilt. That day, he grew as defiant as Bonds has ever been, his answers short, his tone quick and arrogant.

What a bastard. He wasn't being forthcoming! Quick, defiant, arrogant responses! None of this is equivalent, however, to: lies.

He looked into the faces of millions of his countrymen and women and under oath refused to defend one day of hard work, or any of his 583 home runs, against steroid allegations. He refused to say that even one single moment of his career came honestly.

So basically...he refused to lie.

He rejected his hero position then as much as he runs from it now. That's why, as a person of public substance, he's been finished for two-and-a-half years, having plummeted mercilessly to earth, a flaming, redheaded Sputnik, unlikely to return.

Bonds effectively dared prosecutors to take him down. He spent the past four years using his wealth, his talent and his position to buttress a defense that has gone no deeper than "because I said so." Exposing him was a challenge federal prosecutors readily accepted and one the public, tired of easy escapes by powerful people, hungrily relished.

Howard....you're writing my point for me! Bonds literally challenged United States judicial officials. The public wanted to see him go down in flames because he's an arrogant asshole! It had nothing to do with him being black and McGwire being "a flaming, redheaded Sputnik". Great phrase there, by the way. Simply awesome. These two paragraphs alone should put any thought aside of the race card even being important.

They also are linked because they provide an unforgiving mirror for the American blemishes that do not fade. One is white, the other is black.

Other mirror. One is an arrogant asshole who committed perjury, the other is a once-respected guy who kept his mouth shut and decided not to make more waves than necessary. America chooses to hate: assholes.

There are many tributaries along this river of disgrace. They range from the thought that the federal government wanted to "get" Bonds more than the rest, to the flimsy notion that neither of them ever failed an official Major League Baseball drug test and so somehow both are $100 million victims, to the idea that Bonds' blackness is the reason he has been hit the hardest, been treated more harshly than McGwire, has received the least amount of public sympathy.

None of these issues lacks merit.

The last idea completely lacks merit becuase it's based on nothing but a wild allegation made by Bonds and the whims of a bunch of people ignoring the timing of the two incidents (one is after the start of steroid investigations) and the fact that Barry Bonds fucking challenged the judicial branch of the government of the United States of America to take him down. Oh, and this little detail.

McGwire did not exactly lie under oath

If you reverse the timing and actions of both men, the public forgets Bonds and zeroes in on McGwire. It's that simple, I swear.

Race plays a factor in every discussion between blacks and whites, whether it's about Friday night poker, Bonds, O.J., Michael Vick, Don Imus or McGwire.

I strongly disagree. Black people and white people can't discuss how Michael Vick was a dog-killing asshole without making a big deal out of the fact that Vick is black?

But it should be remembered that the Steroids Era has had many other faces, many other suspects, at least in public perception.

And it should also be remembered that the "baseball players who lied to a grand jury during the Steroids Era" has exactly one face in public perception.

There was Brady Anderson, who faced questions about his 50 home runs in 1996; and Sammy Sosa, who hit 60 home runs three times and didn't win the National League home run title in any of those years. There was Ken Caminiti, who admitted he won the 1998 NL MVP award on steroids

The 1998 NL MVP award was won on steroids, but by someone not named Ken Caminiti.

and David Wells, who in 2003 -- the old days of resistance -- said half of the game's players were using steroids. The Yankees forced him to retract that statement. There were Jose Canseco, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro. Bonds has outlived them all as a productive, record-breaking player.

....and perjury-committing douche!

The difference isn't that Bonds has been treated differently because he happens to be black.

Thank you!

The difference is in how McGwire has been treated because he happens to be white

Oh no he di'int!

Let the record show that those two sentences make some level of contradiction, and that they should be thrown into the American Hall of Ignorance for all eternity, along with every fact HatGuy has ever tried to use in a column.

But since the second sentence leaves a little bit of a loophole for me to work with, I'll go with it. Sosa. Sammy Sosa. Sosa isn't white. Sosa essentially got the same treatment as McGwire, and even came back to play baseball again without facing extensive government pursuit or anything. How can you argue McGwire was treated differently because he was white when the guy who will be tied to McGwire's legacy for all eternity isn't white and got the same fucking treatment? If you ask me, he actually got off EASIER than McGwire because he was able to slip into irrelevance earlier.

and it started with the decided lack of bloodlust to pursue him after he folded before Congress

The difference in bloodlust might have had something to do with the fact that he didn't challenge prosecuters to take him down! Oh, and also, there's this....

McGwire did not exactly lie under oath

See how important that detail is?

The inescapable conclusion is that the two are the dominant faces of a disgraced era. Both were at the top of their profession. Both broke records that commanded the respect of the country beyond of the boundaries of their sport. Both had their moment under oath and didn't come clean. Their images define the times and us.

Second to last sentence ignores....

McGwire did not exactly lie under oath

Last sentence is a major exaggeration. I tend not to be defined by the images of Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire.

One is the black Bonds, whose "bad Negro" defiance inspires a certain kind of basic hatred toward him, especially when combined with his enormous wealth and unwillingness to play the hero game, even for the millions of fans who pay to watch him play. Bonds knows that only he stands in the batter's box. For him, his success is not a shared experience.

Is it possible....just MAYBE possible.....that his defiance is not interpreted by people in the "bad Negro" sense, but rather in a "this guy is a complete dickhead, it doesn't matter what the color of his skin is" sense? The "race card" wasn't prevalent until Bonds made it so.

The other is the white McGwire, less confrontational but equally suspect, with one special distinction

McGwire did not exactly lie under oath

I'm just kidding folks. I copied and pasted that second part. Bryant's special distinction is idiotic and stupid.

Too many fans and members of the press, especially, willfully deluded themselves with the McGwire myth, built by them because of their shared whiteness, their belief in his false purity.

This is it people. No white guys ever think other white guys do anything wrong. Every white person sees white skin and thinks, "gee, he/she must be pure!" This is just such fucking bogus bullshit. I don't know any other way to put this.

To turn on McGwire would be to admit he took steroids in '98, that the whole thing was a testosterone-fueled act. Unlike with Bonds, whose record-breaking years of 2001 and 2007 came long after the public had learned the joke was on them, it was too hard for them to outright reject McGwire. The legend became fact, so they printed the legend.

This part is legit. This is a significant distinction between the two situations. It's not as major as

McGwire did not exactly lie under oath

but it's important.

As whites are with McGwire, blacks want to believe in Bonds, to hold on to the different but similarly destructive myth that their shared blackness makes his problems the same as theirs. The racial prism through which the two men are viewed so differently will always say more about us as a whole than it ever could about the two of them.

I'm sorry Howard, but do you think that if a white asshole took the place of Barry Bonds, took steriods, shattered home run records, challenged federal prosecutors to find him guilty, and COMMITTED PERJURY, that he would be treated any different than Bonds? There are plenty of examples of racism in America. I won't deny it exists. It obviously does. But what you are doing is taking two men who have taken vastly different courses of action and complaining, that's right, COMPLAINING, that the lying, confrontational asshole isn't being treated the same as the guy who kept his mouth shut because the former is black. These are two men that have defined themselves and created their own status in the government/public eye by their actions. Plain and fucking simple.

But on this senseless day and the days to come, when Bonds' fate is in the hands of the law and McGwire has lost the only thing worth owning -- a reputation -- they are the same man, disgracing their sport and themselves.

The same. Except for one little detail.

McGwire did not exactly lie under oath

So Like, Andruw Jones Puts the Dodgers in Good Shape, Right?

Michael Ventre doesn't think so.

[The] Dodgers overpaid for [Andruw Jones], although it’s only for two years, and besides, it’s not my money.

Right off the bat, I'll clarify my standpoint on this. Yes, Jones was overpaid for. He's not worth $18M/season even in this market. It is only two years, however, and the Dodgers are in a spot such that a major improvement at one position could easily be the difference between winning the division and losing.

The Jones move is also beneficial because it gives the team some options. Besides adding another much-needed stick to their odd assemblage of geezers and punks, it creates a positive logjam in the outfield. Jones will play center field, which will move Juan Pierre to left, leaving youngsters Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier to fight it out for right field.

How is that positive? Explain to me how moving Juan Pierre to left field is in any way beneficial for your team. Pierre was a dismal CF, won't be an awesome LF or anything (speed doesn't equal good left-fielder....see also: Podsednik, Scott). In a perfect world, the Dodgers swallow their pride, bench/trade Pierre, and allow younger, better, non-awful Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier to start every day.

Or alternatively, slop that .331 OBP and .353 SLG in left. Those are good numbers at a key offensive position (especially in the NL) right?

It may not be much of a bout. The Dodgers’ most pressing need, even beyond a bat, is starting pitching.

Wrong. Go ahead and prove to me why you're wrong by mentioning good people who start games for the Dodgers.

Their rotation of Brad Penny

The very good pitcher who allowed 9 HR in 208 IP last year.

Derek Lowe

The very good pitcher whose season ERA has not been higher than 3.9 for the last 3 years.

Chad Billingsley

The 3rd year 23-year old who posted a 3.31 ERA and struck out 141 guys in 147 IP last year.

Jason Schmidt

The veteran who prior to last year's injury-destroyed season put up consecutive WHIPs of 1.19, 0.95 (!!!), 1.08, 1.42, and 1.26. This is your 4th starter.

plus whatever retread, fill-in or promising kid they decide to toss into the fray

Apparently you've never heard of Esteban Loaiza, who the Dodgers have, and is a perfectly capable 5th starter on a contending team. And just think, this is who the Dodgers start if no "promising kid" breaks out in the spring.

is not good enough to get them to the World Series. It may not be good enough to win the division.

Holy shit. Be more blatantly wrong please.

Let me get this straight. That rotation might not be good enough to win the division. Only teams with rotations like Brandon Webb, Doug Davis, Livan Hernandez, Micah Owings, and some combination of Yusmeiro Petit, Edgar Gonzalez and the ghost of Randy Johnson, can win the division (with a much, MUCH worse supporting offense than the Dodgers).

That rotation can't go to the World Series, you need one of the great all-time staffs to do something like that! A staff like Jeff Francis, Aaron Cook, Josh Fogg, Jason Hirsh, and some combination of Ubdalo Jimenez, Rodrigo Lopez, and Franklin Morales. The Dodgers don't have a fucking chance!

(Before the pro-Rockies faction of FireJay jumps down my throat, I'm not bashing the Rockies, just illustrating how ridiculous it is for Ventre to rule out the Dodgers from the WS with their rotation.)

Even though the $18.1 mil is a lot of dough per season to pay a guy who is coming off a disappointing year, Jones has the talent to rebound, and more significantly, he has the incentive to do so.

Why is incentive more significant than talent? Every fucking major league baseball player has the incentive to rebound from a bad season. It could be for money, for personal pride, or desire to win the World Series, but every fucking player has the incentive to rebound from a bad year. Don't feed people this bullshit.

From the moment he puts his Jown Hancock on his new contract, Jones will be working hard in preparation for the next one.

1) The "W" is nowhere near the "H" on the keyboard. I have no idea how you fucked that up.

2) This point is totally unique to Andruw Jones, and no other player in baseball is faced with this situation.

More likely, though, given the tendency of major league players to bear down and produce when they know there’s a pot of gold waiting for them

Like Andruw Jones, the very guy you're talking about, did in 2007.

2008 and 2009 could turn out to be career years for Jones.

For completely dissimilar reasons to those you stated, yes.

He’s never been a great hitter for average. He has only hit over .300 once; that was in the 2000 season, when he hit .303.

You don’t get Andruw Jones to hit for average. You get him to patrol center field and to drive in runs.

You forgot walking. He's very good at walking, and it's a very important difference between him and this guy, known for his negative VORP in 2006 despite driving in 100+ runs. Did I mention driving in runs is a stupid way to evaluate Andruw Jones?

With the Dodgers, he’ll be batting behind Rafael Furcal and Pierre, who presumably will do their parts and get on base.

Our friend Michael has turned delusional and is now presuming that Juan Pierre, the perpetual MVP of the MLB Out-Star Game, is going to contribute by ::gasp:: getting on base!

Does the signing of Jones make up for the lack of desire in pursuit of Alex Rodriguez? Serious Dodger watchers knew that A-Rod was more likely to sign with the Kansas City Royals than he was to don the Blue.

The Kansas City Royals wear an equal amount of blue as the Los Angeles Dodgers.

It was a plausible scenario only if you were a fantasy league geek living in your parents’ basement.

Nice. While Ventre goes ahead and alienates the basement-dwelling, Pop-Tart-chomping, Sega Genesis-playing faction of his readers, I'm going to ask legitimate questions.

1) When was there some sort of stereotype that fantasy league geeks, people who presumably have no life but to study up on facts/numbers and understand how baseball works, believe in wild and crazy places for big-ticket stars like A-Rod to land?

2) No professional writer or "baseball man" thought that A-Rod had a shot at going to the Dodgers? Really? There wasn't anything written about him going there and following in Torre's footsteps? There was never a fucking week in which people didn't talk about anything but "A-Rod to the Dodgers?"

Nah, must just be some fantasy geek pipe dream. I have never seen such an out-of-context and unnecessary geek/parents' basement reference.

Anyone else notice how super-personally I'm taking this? My mom even came downstairs because of the noise from how ferociously I was typing! I really hope she brings Teddy Grahams next time.....

And does it help them keep pace with their area rivals to the south, the Los Angeles Angels, who also nabbed a high-profile center fielder in Torii Hunter?

Doesn't matter. The Angels do not play in the same league as the Dodgers.

But if the Dodgers don’t use Jones as a first step in the process of building a World Series contender, it’ll be a waste of money.

For crissake Ventre, Jones works perfectly fine as the last step in the process of building a World Series contender. The Dodgers as-is are well poised to compete and win the division. There's no magic formula for a "World Series team", you just have to get fucking lucky in the playoffs. Thinking the Dodgers can win the division = thinking the Dodgers can make it to the World Series. And I don't think there's an idiot out there that doesn't think that this Dodgers team has a legitimate shot at the NL West title.

Bill Simmons- Still Dumb, Still a Hypocrite

Ho hum. This is all I could find to complain about on teh interwebs tonight, and it's pretty standard stuff. But I must continue my mission to make all four of our readers (note the plummeting BallHype ranking, down more than 100 spots in just 2 weeks! We need to get linked on The Big Lead again) hate The Sports Guy just as much as I do.

Go ahead, Bill. Tell me about unfortunate teams and annoying fans.

Which brings us to the difference between suffering and insufferable. When Celtics fans like me were pulling the woe-is-us routine after last May's NBA lottery, outsiders found it distasteful that any fan base that had been fortunate enough to have enjoyed the Russell, Havlicek and Bird eras could complain about anything. In our defense, it was almost worse to have lived the high life (16 titles) before falling on hard times (14 mostly terrible years) than never to have lived the high life at all.

No. No, no, no, no. That's not a defense. It's funny, this paragraph comes at the end of a long segment in which Bill acknowledges that fans of the Bills, Pirates, Blazers, have basically nothing positive to hang their hats on in the last 20 years. Which is great. Good to hear him admit that, especially in the context of his (until this season) constant bitching about the Celtics. Yet at the same time, here he is claiming it's "almost worse" to be a Celtics fan. This is a consistent pattern frequently repeated by Simmons- even when he's stumbling towards being right, he inevitably careens into Boston-homerism mode and ends up being hideously wrong.

We knew what we were missing: big playoff games, the sound of a sold-out crowd, rooting for a franchise that meant something.

Whereas... fans crappy teams have no idea what that kind of environment is like. It's not as if, you know, they can watch other teams enjoy those things on television basically each and every fucking night of the entire year (minus the playoff games, which can only be watched on like 75 or so fucking nights of the entire year). Go ahead, ask a Royals fan to describe a playoff game. See if they can tell you what a packed, loud, baseball stadium looks and sounds like. I'm guessing they have more than a vague understanding of one thanks to TBS and FOX. Now, granted, very few if any of them have probably ever seen such a game in person and felt the energy that accompanies it. But what percentage of Red Sox or Yankee fans have been to a playoff game? Two? One? Probably less than that. So their understanding as a group isn't that much more sophisticated. They've just had the pleasure of knowing their team was involved in the big games several times over the course of the past 15 years or so, whereas the Royals fans do not. But it doesn't mean the latter "don't know what they're missing." They have brains and imaginations. I'm sure they can put two and two together and come up with a vague idea of what a Royals playoff game would be like.

And because there were more of us, our suffering made us loud -- and, yes, insufferable.

Thank you. See, here he is, on the doorstep of admitting something that's long overdue. And yet, he still manages to blow it:

Same goes for Knicks fans now. In a sports world that is increasingly defined by big money and big markets, the Knicks play in the richest, biggest market of all.

This is true. But Bill's favorite teams play in the 5th largest market in the US (as of 2004, according to this website). And of course they also have legions and legions of bandwagon fans nationwide (arguably more than New York or any other city's teams), not to mention the world's largest and most influential sports network in their back pocket. So it's not much of a different situation.


You can't drown out their fans and can't reason with them, so don't even try. They will just have to figure out for themselves that they're lucky they don't live in Buffalo or Pittsburgh, where nobody hears you at all.

This is the ambiguous ending to the piece. Is he saying that he realizes the exact same thing applies to Boston fans, so maybe they need to shut the fuck up every once in a while if their precious Celtics don't go to the NBA Finals for a whole twenty years? Or worse, if their beloved "Patties" can't win the Super Bowl every single year (see Simmons's sour grapes/woe is us analysis of last January's AFC Championship Game)? If so, great. But this statement is too vague to be purposely vague. It's like he admitted earlier in the article that big market/popular teams get a disproportionate amount of press... but once he arrives at its conclusion, he feels it's necessary to make a distinction between New York fans the rest of those fans that like popular teams. Assuming that's the case, then this flagrantly obvious and glaring piece of hypocrisy has somehow slipped from his brain to his fingers to your computer screen undetected. It's truly astonishing that this is America's most popular sportswriter. Is the average sports fan just not annoyed by Boston fans? I guess so.

Too bad for me that I am, huh? My blood pressure is through the roof because of this topic.

There Is No Excuse for This

A blockbuster deal that happened today sent Cabrera and Willis to the Tigers.

SportsCenter just announced that the Marlins gave the Tigers "their two best players".

Hanley Ramirez had the highest fucking VORP in the NL last year.

Dontrelle Willis had a 1.60 WHIP last year.

Would Hanley Ramirez be more hyped if he and Jose Reyes swapped teams.....oh I wonder......

Scoop and America's Most Racist University

ESPN's big-name black writer takes on big-name black issue: Notre Dame

Considering the failures that Notre Dame and Washington endured this year, I don't know where to start. But I thought this article was worth a link. I am a little bit annoyed by one of Scoop's admissions:

I will admit I have waited three years to write this column.

I am trying to think of the sensible approach to rationalizing this comment - there must be a large segment of the sportswriting world that is waiting for Weis to fail in the same way they accuse others of waiting for Willingham to fail.

Obviously the situation at ND is pitiful at this point - but can you start a column where you purport to go to Notre Dame to find out "the real story" and then admit you've harbored this sentiment for three years?

Are The Reds Sure They Hired the Real Dusty Baker?

Because new Houston Astros manager Cecil Cooper is on ESPN being interviewed by Karl Ravech and Peter Gammons, and he sure sounds a whole lot like ol' Dusty. Here's the first ten or so words out of his mouth, when asked how he generically feels about his team's chances in 2008.

"We've got a very exciting team. We're going to steal some bases..."

Well, it's looking bleak, Astros fans. Your new manager's first priority/thing he's excited about is SBs. Hopefully he also has ideas about how to improve Houston's 4.68 team ERA and .330 team OBP from 2007. But he didn't really address that during the interview.

Ragging on the Mets: If You're Going to Do It, Don't Be A Moron About it

I once read an article by Larry Dobrow. It sucked. Let's see about this one:

Last year at this time, the New York Mets were the prohibitive favorites to rep the National League in the 2007 World Series. As late as early June, the Mets were on the verge of shedding their traditional other-team-in-town status and steamrolling everything in their path.

There is no way the Mets will ever shed their other-team-in-town status, until they get the World Series deficit to a more favorable ratio... and since it currently stands at 26-2. Might be a few years.

And then, they weren't. They played .500 ball from that point, showing the self-contentment of an overfed zoo animal and the urgency of a guy just exiting a toilet stall. Everyone dotes on the September collapse, but the Mets could have gone 0-for-the-month if they hadn't taken the summer off.

Actually, everyone dotes on the right answer, and savvy columnist Larry Dobrow is an idiot. On September 12, the Mets were 21 games over .500 with a record of 83-62. Over the last three weeks of the baseball season, they won only five games. No wonder everyone dotes on that.

Given that the National League is about to get more competitive -- hello, Brewers, Dodgers, Diamondbacks and Rockies -- can we Save This Franchise?

I guess the Dodgers are getting more competitive because they hired a New manager. For example, their owner was quoted:

"I think we're in good position right now," McCourt said. "We don't have to make a deal. We made the biggest move we needed to make in signing Joe."

Yeah. Sure. The Mets need to make more moves because the Dodgers signed a manager. Also- note that the four teams that Larry cites are NOT in the Mets' division.

I think we can. Martha, get me my protractor, my analysis cloak and my Metsie stamp set.

Wow. The implications of the existence of an "analysis cloak" are staggering. Alert the media!

Wait - don't.

Short-term outlook: Most of these "Save This Franchise" dispatches have taken a look at organizations that are beyond help -- the Pirates, Reds and their ilk. The Mets, after last September, are perceived as a team in disarray. That's an irresponsible suggestion, bordering on moronic. The Mets will win their division by a wide margin and should be installed as the easy favorite to claim the pennant.

Fuck you, Larry. The Reds rule. Whoops. Sorry. Larry actually makes a decent point here: that the Mets are still a solid team, although his suggestion that they should be the favorite is an exaggeration.

Assets: They have best young three-player core in the majors (David Wright, Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes). They have capable veterans at first base, second base and in left field. Their rotation is anchored by two 25-year-old starters, who averaged eight strikeouts per inning in 2006, and Pedro Martinez, still cowboying up, down and all around after all these years.

Pedro cowboyed it up, down and all around to the tune of 28 IP in 2007.

Even if trigger-happy general manager Omar Minaya doesn't lift another finger -- for that to happen, he'd have to be kidnapped, felled by a stroke, or suspended by an evil arch-nemesis in some kind of viscous jelly -- they resemble an 88-win team ... which, not so coincidentally, is what the Mets were in 2007. If they had won one more game in September and the Phillies had won one less, none of these conversations are happening.

I actually kind of like Larry's point here. The Mets seem to be an above-average team, and their late-season slump doesn't seem to fit with the rest of their season. I don't know what their Pythag W-L was (anyone know?) - perhaps the late slump was just regressing to their expectation. Larry's last sentence is sensible - most of the doomsayers wouldn't be doomsaying if the Mets hadn't missed the playoffs.

They recently improved by subtraction when the Braves took the aging and ineffective Tom Glavine off their hands. I wonder if the Mets sent a thank you note or perhaps a fruitcake.

Tom Glavine was almost perfectly averagely effective last year - 96 ERA+, though I think it's insignificant that he is "aging", since he's "thrown over 180 innings every year of his entire career". So I don't think either of those adjectives are accurate.

Also, for the geographically impaired, the Mets reside in New York, where their TV and marketing intake pays for an awful lot of $4.97 quarts of milk. This is an advantage akin to being born with a silver spoon in your mouth and a platinum umbilical cord dangling below your navel.

True. You'd think the Mets could parlay that advantage into more success, like how the Yankees parlay their even larger market share into a steady stream of World Series titles!

No, the Mets don't have the ticket, merchandise or broadcasting revenue streams that their privileged cross-town rivals do.But when you remove New York Post back covers from the equation, they're not competing with the Yankees.

Duh.

Their real competitors are the two National League teams that can match them resources-wise, the Cubs and Dodgers. Those are the only ones who, like the Mets, can spend stupidly without consequences. If the Braves or Brewers hand out a dumb long-term contract that occupies 15 percent of their payroll, they're screwed. If the Mets do the same, they can swallow it and move on.

Duh. Except that they're really competing with teams like the Rockies and the Brewers, who manage to be successful with half the resources and who, I suspect, have organizations that are simply more competent at assembling winning baseball teams.

Liabilities: They're old and creaky at a handful of key spots. The aforementioned vets -- Carlos Delgado, Moises Alou and Luis Castillo -- have all seen better days, especially defensively. If Delgado's bat doesn't gain back the speed it lost last season, they'll be power-deficient from the left side of the plate.

Luis Castillo has never seen better days. He has only had an above-league-average OPS in three of his ten seasons - and for a speedy guy, he's only scored 100 runs ONCE (!).

Can you win a pennant while being power-deficient from the left side of the plate?

As has been mentioned several zillion times, the depth in the starting rotation and bullpen doesn't inspire confidence. Counting on Orlando "El Dorque" Hernandez to give you 175 injury-free innings as a fourth starter is like counting on a wedding band to pull off "Paranoid Android."

Quite the pop culture reference, Larry. Though I think, as I mentioned, Tom Glavine has no problem throwing over 175 injury-free innings, but you don't seem to like him because he's old.

As for the 'pen, they're sure putting a lot of eggs in the Duaner-Sanchez--won't-go-on-any-more-late-night-munchie-runs basket.

Yawn. I'm hungry.

This team could probably use more 'tude, I guess. When the going got rough last September, the Mets collectively looked like they needed a hug and a warm bowl of soup.

Yes. That's what they need. More 'tude. YOU WERE DOING SO WELL, LARRY! You identified real problems in the Mets' team! Now you are telling me they need hugs! If Richard Fucking Simmons had been on the 2007 Mets, they would've made the playoffs.

That wasn't the case when things didn't go their way in 2005. They got up, dusted themselves off and started swinging, literally and metaphorically. Besides, I'm from the school that five-game winning streaks tend to cure most chemistry and attitude issues.

I am from that school too. Still, Larry should've supported this point with a stat about how the 2005 Mets actually overcame losing streaks so as to support his assertion that they "literally" did overcome something.

Larry goes on to suggest some solutions, most of which involves the Mets "being aggressive" an "using their market power" which is pretty much "what the Mets have done in the past". I'd write about it, but it gets boring.

Actually, this article isn't all that bad, though it doesn't really say much. I just have a baseball jones and even 80 degree weather in Baton Rouge winters isn't enough to satisfy me.

In Order To Be a Sportswriter Who Covers a Team From New York, You Must Be At Least This Lazy

It's a tough winter to be Omar Minaya. His team is coming off an epic collapse. But they're also not getting any younger, and have several holes that need to be filled before opening day. You can guess exactly how the always idiotic New York sports media is going to react to pretty much anything he does. Let's just say he probably won't be getting a whole lot of slack.

Exhibit A: The New York Post's Joel Sherman (via FoxSports.com) weighs in on Minaya's somewhat risky, but extremely likely to make the team better in 2008, swap of Lastings Milledge for Ryan Church and Brian Schneider.

In fact, the Mets sound now about Church as they did about Victor Zambrano at the time of the Kazmir deal — as if they have the magic to tap abilities not shown previously. For Church, that means hitting lefties and being a base stealer.

You want Ryan Church. To steal bases. Here's an idea- maybe instead, you should just rely on Jose Reyes, Luis Castillo, and David Wright to steal like 350 between them, and let Church keep his career totals of 12 steals in 17 attempts pretty much exactly where they are. I love this fallback criticism of players, which pretty much betrays any sportswriter who uses it as an idiot. "Sure, [player] is alright. But can he steal bases?" As if everyone on a team needs to be capable of swiping 2nd and 3rd on consecutive pitches at any time.

But Church is 29. He probably is what he is, a 'tweener, too good for the bench, not good enough to start.

Anyone who OPSes .813 in 500+ plate appearances while playing half his games in RFK can start for my team. Is he an All-Star? No. Is he a starter? As long as he sits against lefties from time to time (making him a platoon starter, I guess, but still a most-of-the-time starter), yes. Meanwhile, the Mets' 2007 starter in right, the 35 year old Shawn Green, managed to OPS 30 points lower than Church in roughly the same number of PAs.

Schneider, 31, was only available because the Minaya administration horribly lost Jesus Flores to Washington for nothing in last year's Rule 5 draft.

So that's a knock on Schneider? Brian Schneider: so shitty, his team was only willing to trade him because they somehow stumbled onto a better alternative in the Rule 5. Had this unlikely event not happened, they would probably still be holding onto him. That's how much he sucks. What about the guy the Mets gave up for these two scrubs?

Milledge is fearless. He was not afraid of the majors or New York.

I would venture a guess that 95% of the highly touted prospects in baseball history who haven't lived up to their potential did not fail because of fear. They failed because they were not as good at baseball as everyone expected them to be.

He tends to give too many at-bats away.

At least he's not pissing himself with anxiety while doing so.

But not in pressure spots. He loved the big stage. As a former teammate of Milledge said, "he'll win games for you. The better the pitcher, the bigger the moment, the better the player."

This is all tiny tiny sample size stuff. But still,

Milledge's career: .257/.326/.414
"Close/late" situations: .275/.315/.431
During innings 7-9: .238/.293/.385
vs. Jake Peavy, Brandon Webb, Brad Penny, Josh Beckett, John Smoltz, Erik Bedard, Aaron Harang, Roy Halladay, and Dontrelle Willis (not in the class of these other guys, but let me cherry pick every once in a while, would ya?): .108/.195/.220

So yeah. Pretty huge cherry pick. And he's faced most of them for no more than 6 PAs. And he's had good games against other good pitchers like Cole Hamels. And he's only 22. I'm just saying... so far, in about 400 PAs, he hasn't exactly stepped up and dominated. Particularly in "big moments" against "big pitchers." Does this mean he never will? Of course not. It means that Minaya, who has a team that needs to win now, was not stupid to trade him and his questionable ability to contribute in 2008 (plus attitude problems, for what that's worth) for two guys who definitely are ready to contribute in 2008.

That is the biggest problem with this deal by Minaya. In 2007, Milledge was beset by injury and more bad behavior that the NL talent evaluator said has "turned people off since high school." So Minaya sold Milledge at a low value. My gut says that even if Milledge had another dubious year in 2008, he would still fetch a Schneider/Church level deal.

My brain says that if this happened, it would hurt the Mets in 2008 compared to what they can expect now. And Pedro Martinez, Carlos Delgado, and Billy Wagner would all be a year older.

But what if he were entrusted with 500-600 plate appearances and was the .300 hitter with extra-base punch and complete comfort in the clutch that his talent suggests?

That would be really nice, wouldn't it? It's also very unlikely to happen in 2008, given what he's done in the majors so far. 2009 or 2010? Maybe. But Minaya doesn't want to wait to see if this happens. I'm not saying I know that's the right thing to do, but can you blame him for taking his team in this direction? Is it a stupid move? Definitely not. Church and Schneider are unspectacularly solid. Together they will do more for the Mets next year than Milledge would have, it's a near certainty. This doesn't rule out the possibility that Milledge will eventually turn into Alfonso Soriano. But the Mets were a game away from the World Series in 2006. They were on pace to win 95 games in 2007 until mid September. The window is closing. It it worth trying to make something big happen in 2008 by trading one volatile player for two relatively known quantities? The answer is definitely not "no." (That is the worst sentence I've ever written.) In fact, it's probably "yes."

I've taken forever to get to my point, but now seems like a good time to do so. Articles like this are the ultimate in lazy journalism. "Hey, [team] better be right about [trade involving a prospect]! They'd better hope [prospect] doesn't become a hall of famer somewhere else!" Or as Sherman puts it in the first paragraph of the article,

The Mets better be right about Lastings Milledge. They better know that he will max out, at best, as a good player and not a star because he has character issues — not just immaturity — and those character issues are going to blunt his full talent from blossoming.

No shit. Really? You think? Writers pen this kind of stuff because it's a no-lose for them. If the trade ends up bombing and turns into the second coming of that infamous "Jeff Bagwell for a pack of Upper Deck baseball cards" deal between the Red Sox and Astros, they can tell everyone they saw it coming. If it works out, and the low risk/low ceiling guys the team acquires become part of a World Series winner while the prospect goes on to be a 4th outfielder, they can tell everyone that they just wanted to point out it was risky. Of course it's risky! That's what happens when you trade things (such as people) that change over time. I hope Joel Sherman talks to his financial planner in the same tone in which this article is written.

You'd better be right about that stock you're buying for me. *pause* You'd better be right. *pause* I'm just saying is all.

That would be awesome.

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.