It was the lead item on SportsCenter last night, Michael Strahan’s little media outburst. It was an entertaining, passionate, spirited … something or other. From what I can gather, Michael Strahan is angry about something that Michael Strahan said.
Strahan went on some radio show, and said some things about Plaxico Burress and how he quit on a play against the Titans. He had some nice things to say about Plax, too, I suppose … I don’t know. Here’s the quote:
“It’s a shame,” Strahan said on the radio Monday. “You can’t give up. You can’t quit, because you’re not quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on everybody. I don’t quite understand what his lack of motivation is in those types of situations. But I’m going to try to see what it is, and if I can talk to him about it. He’s too good for that.”
And that same quote was ready to Plaxico Burress by ESPN reporter Kelly Naqi. Burress hadn’t heard it before, and he was legitimately surprised by it. But he didn’t make a big deal about anything, he said he’d talk to Strahan privately, whatever. And then at the end of Giants media time today, Strahan went nuts on Naqi.
“Come here, I want to see your face when you ask me this question, the way you are going to ask it. I know you are going to ask it in a way there is more division and more of a negative way than it was, so come here, I want to see your face, please. You’re a responsible journalist, look me in the eye and ask this question the way you want to ask it. Look a man in the eye before you try to kill him or make up something. Look me in the eye.”
Well, yeah, but … you said it, jackass. Kelly Naqi quoted you. She didn’t make up any quotes, she didn’t take anything out of context … she just quoted what you said. Again, you said it.
The problem was that the way she asked it was too negative? What do you want her to do, put on a cheerleader outfit, and read Burress the quote like she was reading him Green Eggs and Ham? You want her to slip Burress a half a dozen Prozac before she reads the quote? It’s a quote, as in, that’s exactly what you said, dickweed.
So Strahan embarrassed this reporter, called her out in front of everyone … because he called Plaxico Burress a quitter and then didn’t want to take responsibility for it. For someone who made it a point yesterday to tell the world that he’s “a man” about forty-five times, that’s a pretty bitch thing to do.
You can see video of Plax hearing the comments for the first time, Strahan’s ridiculous outburst, and listen to a Dan Patrick interview with Kelly Naqi here.
In a season that’s seen Randy Moss’s weekly passive-aggressive outbursts, the suspension of Jerry Porter for no real reason, and the mid-season firing of the offensive coordinating pillow-fluffer … this one might be the weirdest for the Raiders. Art Shell is accusing someone within the Raiders organization of trying to undermine the coaching staff and sabotage the team.
“I’m a fighter,” Shell said. “I sit back and I watch things happen and then it gets to the point where you cross the line. That line has been crossed and I won’t sit back and allow it to happen anymore.”
Why would you allow it to happen at all, fighter? It’s Week 12, man. If this is true, and someone is doing that (and I’m not ruling out the possibility that Shell is just paranoid and senile), isn’t that the sort of thing you’d want to stop immediately? Why wait?
Then again … why wait twelve weeks to fire the coordinator of an offense that never really seemed to exist? Say this for him … Art Shell is a patient man. I think he’s probably waiting for just the right time before arguing with the officials about the Vincent Jackson/fumble/forward pass call.
Just a weird, weird story. Ultimately, it’s probably even a meaningless story … it’s just that I can’t envision any other organization in the NFL, and less than a handful in all of professional sports, where a story like this is even possible. Every organization employs a douchebag or two, I’m sure, but … to the point where the head coach is telling the media about the anonymous evil guy who’s trying to destroy the team from within? You don’t see that every day.
It amazes me that the Raiders are playing as well as they are … which, I’m aware, is not at a Super Bowl level or anything, but … they haven’t quit. Hell, this team should quit. They’re 2-9, the most talented player on the team has made himself worthless, the head coach is worried about bullshit like this, the return of Aaron Brooks was seen as a good thing, and this team, at least the defense, still goes out there and works their ass off on Sundays.
Courtesy of Pulled My Groin comes this video of a legendary hockey fight. Warning: the violence is graphic, and it may not be for the squeamish. Especially when the one kid scurries frantically away from the other kid at the end.
If this doesn’t stop soon … someone’s going to have to tell mommy.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have approved the use of their team name and logo in an upcoming film (or TV show, I’ve heard both) about a “fictional” retired Maple Leaf (probably Tie Domi) who happens to be gay, and who happens to want to raise “a budding queen of an 11-year-old boy.”
SLAM! Sports tries to get some reaction to it … they talked to Anson Carter, a Columbus Blue Jacket, and a guy who understands a little something about being a minority in the NHL, seeing that he’s black.
“You’re talking about a lifestyle—homosexuality and heterosexuality—it’s a choice…but people are people from my personal standpoint.”
“We have 700 players (in the NHL) and if we have one gay player in the league, I wouldn’t be that surprised.”
Carter went on to say that it wouldn’t bother him if a teammate was openly homosexual, “as long as you’re a good teammate and a good person…that’s all that matters to me.”
“If that’s what the (NHL) wants fine…the world’s changing now…maybe people will be more open now.”
There’s probably more than one gay player in the league … but all in all, I’ll take it, Anson Carter. Another guy, though, who opted to remain nameless, had a different take.
At least one former NHL player (who preferred to remain anonymous) commented that the film “tarnished the sacred icon of Canada and the Maple Leafs’ organisation.”
“What do you expect when you have a fomer basketball guy running the league,” the player stated, in reference to Commissioner Gary Bettman’s previous tenure in the National Basketball Association.
And we have found an asshole … that didn’t take long.
I don’t understand, chief. Are you suggesting that the NBA is some sort of haven for gay sexual activity? Listen, I’m like the rest of you … I would love to believe that Mike Sweetney blows Jordan Farmar every other Thursday, but I just don’t think that’s true. I mean, the NBA has a ton of image problems, but I didn’t think rampant deviant gay sex was one of them. I thought the LPGA had the market monopolized on that particular stereotype.
And by the way, if you were looking for the sport with the most hot man-on-man action … hockey might be a pretty good bet, as long as you like your hot man-on-man action to involve a teenager and be of the “forced” variety. Canadian junior hockey has a history of sexualabuse of young boys, most notably this Graham James character, and then the extremely weird Mike Danton story, in which sexual abuse was strongly suspected.
Yeah, you wouldn’t want to tarnish hockey’s image with something like a movie about a gay, retired, hockey player.
The system we’re currently using is so contrived and unconvincing, why not just fudge things a little bit more and bend the rules to allow us to crown a national champion right now? That way, we could just abandon this mountain of BCS horseshit, and get on to the business of setting bowl matchups that would actually be fun, if pointless.
There’s no one that deserves to play Ohio State for the national championship. In my mind, Ohio State has proved that they are the national champions, and if there’s one more game out there for them, it’ll either be against a team that doesn’t deserve the chance to play them because they didn’t go undefeated, or a team they’ve already beaten. Who gives a monkey’s nutsac?
You may have guessed this, but I don’t want a rematch. And it happened just like I thought it would… the two teams played a close game (though I’d argue it wasn’t a classic, that Ohio State was clearly better, and the game wasn’t quite as close as the final score would indicate, though it was certainly very competitive), and now people who didn’t want a rematch beforehand (Kirk Herbstreit and Jim Rome, off the top of my head) now want one. I remain unmoved.
Say Michigan plays them again, and beats them. Can you say then that Michigan State is clearly better and deserves a national title? I wouldn’t. If they win, they get a split, and we’re right back were we started. Unless they’d consider making it a best two-out-of-three situation, I will remain against a rematch.
And what if Ohio State wins the rematch? Well, then, congratulations, Buckeyes, you did something we already knew you could do, and we just wasted about a month of everyone’s time.
And if any other team, like USC, Florida, Arkansas, or God forbid, Notre Dame, plays and beats Ohio State in the championship game, then both of those will be one-loss teams, and Ohio State’s loss likely would have come against a much better team than whoever beat the team that just beat Ohio State. During the season, the BCS would reward Ohio State for that, but after the season, we’d just give the title to the other guy? Poppycock, I tell you. Poppycock.
I hate the idea of a rematch. I see no point to it… but, if we give Ohio State the title now, and can have Michigan and Ohio State play again, just for the sake of amusement… then hey, why not, let’s have some fun. I’d prefer going back to the old system, where any bowl could have any team, as opposed to what we have now, which never works. Let’s just ram our collective wangs into the earhole of the BCS, and set some fun matchups. Such as…
Fiesta Bowl: Notre Dame vs. Rutgers.
Orange Bowl: Louisville vs. Arkansas.
Sugar Bowl: West Virginia vs. Florida.
Rose Bowl: Boise State vs. USC.
The Bo Schembechler’s Wake Bowl: Ohio State vs. Michigan.
Towards the end of the Sunday night Chargers/Broncos game, the Broncos set up to spike the ball, and they did. For some reason, though, Broncos center Tom Nalen took a dive at Igor Olshansky’s knees. On a spike play. As you can see below.
Olshanky then clubbed him with his giant Russian forearm, and was flagged for 15 yards and ejected from the game. The flag and the ejection were perfectly justified, of course… I wouldn’t argue against them. What Nalen did was technically legal… it was a play from scrimmage, he does technically have the right to block a guy, and the cut block is a legal maneuver.
The word “justified,” though, doesn’t really apply to Olshansky. The right thing to do, as difficult and against your instincts as it may be… is to not punch the guy. For the sake of your team, you’ve just gotta suck that one up and take it. If you want to find Tom Nalen in the parking lot after the game, though, I’d say that beating him to death with a tire iron would be perfectly justified. If Tom Nalen wants to take a shot at ending a guy’s season and/or career on a spike play, then I don’t think it would be completely out of line for someone to ram a knife into Tom Nalen’s stomach, park their car on his face, and play “Our Country” on that car’s stereo system until he bleeds to death.
Alright, that might be a bit much. But I do believe that the NFL should do something about cut-blocking in general. I’d argue that a cut like the one Nalen attempted there is easily as dangerous, and probably more so, than what Albert Haynesworth did to Andre Gurode. But the league’s more concerned with protecting their image than protecting their players, so Haynesworth sits for five games, and nothing at all will happen to Nalen.
It’s not just Nalen, of course, and it’s not just the Broncos… a lot of teams do this. Donovan Darius was cut last night about 30 yards away from the play, and was carted off with what looked like a pretty serious ankle injury. It’s such a dangerous thing to do, and honestly, I don’t know how any offensive lineman that routinely does it, or any coach that teaches and demands that his players use it, can sleep at night.
With all the rules they have for protecting quarterbacks, they won’t make one to protect the extremely vulnerable knees of defensive linemen and linebackers. That common denominator there is that the league likes offense… and they will never do anything about cut blocking.
If you’re looking for reasons as to why Ronnie Brown only gained 2 yards on 12 carries against the Vikings this weekend… pop Rocky in the DVD player and listen as Mick warns Rock: “Women weaken legs.”
And Ronnie Brown has picked a hell of a leg-weakener. From BenMaller.com (via the Miami Herald, where the article isn’t working at the moment), comes this little note than Ronnie Brown and Serena Williams have been spotted about town together. Brown says they’re just friends, but I think we should be completely immature and irresponsible with this, and assume that they are, at the very least, exchanging bodily fluids on a regular basis.
So yeah, if Mick’s theory is true, and Ronnie Brown is putting his serve in her box, then he probably spent Sunday being grateful that her herculean thighs didn’t just rip his cock off. The guy probably barely had the strength to get up in the morning, let alone try to run against an NFL defense.
A fellow known as “Mattress Mack” has given a gift of $1 million to the University of North Texas football program… on the condition that they rename a new athletics facility after Darrell Dickey, a football coach who was fired by the school three weeks after he had a heart attack. If North Texas refuses… Mattress Mack will have the entire $1 million redirected to the music department.
They’re going to do it. Man, that renaming ceremony is going to be awkward.
Mattress Mack… is all man. If for no other reason than the nickname “Mattress Mack.” His real name is Jim McIngvale, but I guess he sells mattresses and his some goofy commercials that have earned him the nickname. For a short time after high school, I was briefly known as “Mattress MJD,” but for vastly different reasons that I’m not going to get into it other than to tell you, hey, a man’s gotta make a living.
Anyway, I think that’s a pretty awesome thing for Mack to do.
“Right’s right and wrong’s wrong. It’s the right thing to do,” McIngvale said. “I don’t think firing a guy three weeks after he had a heart attack was the right thing to do, either. Even Wall Street is not that callous.”
I also found this little note interesting:
McIngvale’s $1 million gift means a lot at North Texas, where the football program’s budget is about $3.7 million and the music school’s is about $8.7 million.
You don’t see that a lot. I’m guessing circumstances are a little different at, say, I dunno… Miami? I don’t know what their football budget is, but judging from the production values on that “Seventh Floor Crew” song, I know their music department isn’t seeing a lot of money these days.
#1 vs. #2, rivalry game, BCS Championship Game, blah blah blah… but when Calvin starts peeing on something, then you know it means something.
Here’s what I don’t want to happen on Saturday. I don’t want a well-played, close game that comes down to the wire. Most people say now that they don’t want a rematch in the BCS Championship Game (Christ, I hate typing that), but if this one’s an instant classic, Brent Musburger and everyone else will be leading the cheers for them to do it again in Arizona.
I would hate, a couple months from now, for everyone to just accept that this Saturday’s game was meaningless, and if there’s a rematch, then that’s certainly what it was. Whoever loses… hey, you had your chance. I’d even rather see Notre Dame in there than a rematch. And if there were to be a rematch of this game, while Rutgers was still undefeated… well, that would be the ultimate middle finger to every college football program in the country that doesn’t have a reputation as a powerhouse.
One of you two teams, please, win by 40. Run up the score if you get the chance. See if you can sneak Braylon Edwards out there in Steve Breaston’s uniform, and do the same with Tom Brady in Chad Henne’s uniform. Eliminate any chance that a rematch could happen.
Via Deadspin, this New York Daily News article goes into some detail about new rules and regulations in the NBA that you might not have heard about. The league actually sent an official to a Knicks/Wizards game the other night to look for players who did any of the following:
- Untucked their shirt after being taken out of the game.
- Wore a rubber band with their name (or anyone else’s) on it.
- Chewed gum during the national anthem.
- Shifted and swayed as they stood in line listening to the national anthem.
But a little later in the article is the following quote, and this is what I find most interesting about the situation:
“The image problem is a subtle way of talking about black ballplayers and how they appear to the populace,” [Players Union boss Billy] Hunter said. “When we had our last round of negotiations, David told me that he was consulting with one of President Bush’s political consultants. The issue was, what they can do to make the game and players more appealing to the red states?”
But there you go. The quote from Hunter explains quite a bit about David Stern and why he’s doing what he’s doing. We can dance around the issue by saying “image problem,” and “red states,” but the issue is right there. David Stern wants to sell the NBA to people who aren’t entirely comfortable with black people. That’s it.
It’s a complicated issue, and we’re not going to cover all of it. But there are people in the world who are fine with happy, smiling, non-confrontational black people like Wayne Brady… and not fine with other black people who doesn’t seem quite so non-threatening. That’s racism just the same, and David Stern is endorsing it by catering to those people.
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It was the lead item on SportsCenter last night, Michael Strahan’s little media outburst. It was an entertaining, passionate, spirited … something or other. From what I can gather, Michael Strahan is angry about something that Michael Strahan said.
In a season that’s seen Randy Moss’s weekly passive-aggressive outbursts, the suspension of Jerry Porter for no real reason, and the mid-season firing of the offensive coordinating pillow-fluffer … this one might be the weirdest for the Raiders. Art Shell is accusing someone within the Raiders organization of trying to undermine the coaching staff and sabotage the team.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have approved the use of their team name and logo in an upcoming film (or TV show, I’ve heard both) about a “fictional” retired Maple Leaf (probably Tie Domi) who happens to be gay, and who happens to want to raise “a budding queen of an 11-year-old boy.”
The system we’re currently using is so contrived and unconvincing, why not just fudge things a little bit more and bend the rules to allow us to crown a national champion right now? That way, we could just abandon this mountain of BCS horseshit, and get on to the business of setting bowl matchups that would actually be fun, if pointless.
Towards the end of the Sunday night Chargers/Broncos game, the Broncos set up to spike the ball, and they did. For some reason, though, Broncos center Tom Nalen took a dive at Igor Olshansky’s knees. On a spike play. As you can see below.
A fellow known as “Mattress Mack” has given a gift of $1 million to the University of North Texas football program… on the condition that they rename a new athletics facility after Darrell Dickey, a football coach who was fired by the school three weeks after he had a heart attack. If North Texas refuses… 
#1 vs. #2, rivalry game, BCS Championship Game, blah blah blah… but when Calvin starts peeing on something, then you know it means something.
One of you two teams, please, win by 40. Run up the score if you get the chance. See if you can sneak Braylon Edwards out there in Steve Breaston’s uniform, and do the same with Tom Brady in Chad Henne’s uniform. Eliminate any chance that a rematch could happen.
Via 
