Some Kansas Jayhawk football fans (?) are a little upset at a new ticketing policy in Lawrence. If you bring a toddler to the game now, they’re going to need a full-price ticket, regardless of age or size.
“I just thought it was pretty tacky,” Owen Foust said. “It’s just a grab for money.”
and…
“This is supposed to be a family-friendly environment,” Owen Foust said. “I don’t think that policy promotes that [environment] much.”
What’s the point of even take a kid that age to a game? The child in question here is 3 months old… let’s be reasonable about this. That kid doesn’t know where the hell he is, and will gain nothing from the experience. Get a babysitter. If I’m sitting next to your kid, I’m going to make him cry. Bank on it. I’m going to scream, I’m going to teach your child his first profanities, I might elbow him in his soft, bald, head. It’s really no place for him… and I doubt very seriously that a child that young is going to enjoy the game in any way.
Now, it’s different if the kid’s a little older, and it’s something they’ll remember. That, I’ve got no problem with, every kid has a right to see a ballgame, share that with their dad or mom or whoever, and have a good time. I love that. That should be encouraged.
But if the kid’s at an age where they don’t even know what the hell’s going on around them… just get a babysitter or something. If you can’t find one, lock them in a closet, or chain them to a radiator at home. Be a responsible parent and duct tape them to something at home while you go enjoy the game. I don’t want to hear them crying.
I don’t even think new Kansas policy even goes far enough. Charge them double, and make them sit next to the drunkest, sweatiest, most abusive, profane, smelly guy in the house. They need to be taught a lesson.
Something about this feels kinda … off-putting. Five professional soccer players in Europe have had stem cells from their newborn babies frozen, for the potential future use in repairing their own bodies.
So, for example, if Joe Cole (and I’m just using him as an example) rips up his ACL in a few years, we crack open the freezer, find the stem cells right behind the Stouffer’s frozen pizza, shoot it into him, and bam, good as new.
I at least hope he saves a bunch of them … I’d hate for the child to one day develop scoliosis, and have to hear daddy tell him, “Oh, no, I’m sorry. We can’t fix your spine. I know, tough break. But this one time, daddy had a really important game against AC Milan. Yeah … I’m sorry. But hey, we got you a brand new walker, little guy. It even has Spiderman stickers on it! Be brave.”
I’m not really sure why this bugs me. I’m all for stem cell research, and funding, and I think it’s an exciting thing, I do. And I think the people who believe that using stem cells is an abomination against God are absolutely fucking crazy. But, I dunno… using them to repair a center-back’s torn MCL, at least at this early point, seems a little crazy.
Maybe I’d just like us to understand this better, and figure out some of the more pressing applications first. For example, let’s wait until we figure out a way to use these things to cure Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or some other debilitating disease first, before this just becomes a plaything for rich people.
Forbes.com has released their list of the drunkest cities in America, and I believe that you can trade the causes for the alcoholism directly to sports. A brief analysis:
1. Milwaukee. You know, the focus here will naturally be on the nickname “Brewers,” as it should be, but I’d argue that the Bucks had more to do with this than the Brew Crew. It was those purple uniforms. Asking a fan to show up and root for the guys in purple threatens the fan’s masculinity, and counteract that, he has to drink to prove his worth. You could see a guy in a Michael Redd jersey and say, “Hey, is that a jersey or a camisole? Did it come with matching panties?” And then he’d say something like, “Screw you, bucko. I drink $7 scotch, right out of the fucking bottle.” And a champion was born.
2. Minneapolis-St. Paul. This one’s a surprise to me. So here’s the question: Did the sex boat incident happen because everyone in Minnesota is drunk, or is everyone in Minnesota drunk because the sex boat happened? I mean, Fred Smoot can’t get every woman in Minnesota drunk to the point that they consent to have a big rubber dong inserted into them. Or can he?
3. Columbus, Ohio. 70% of the beer consumed in Columbus was drank by one guy: this fellow. But he’s quit now, so expect Columbus to drop off the list next year. Maybe not, though. You throw in a dash of Maurice Clarett, a pinch of Mike Cooper, these guys, and some intense lacrosse molestation, and yes, the folks in Columbus have plenty of reasons to drink the pain away.
4. Boston. 100% whiny Red Sox fans. “Waaah, we’re cursed, it isn’t fair. We were just swept at home in a five-game series by our sworn enemies, my daddy never loved me, I hated Bill Russell because he was black, I can’t pronounce any word that includes the letter “r” and Good Will Hunting isn’t on free cable anywhere for the next two months. Oh, what am I to do?” Have another Mickey’s, you drunk son of a bitch.
5. Austin, Texas. Well, Texas is the top party school in the nation, an accomplishment that becomes easier to achieve when you win every damn national championship that the NCAA makes available.
Much like every other cyclist who anyone’s ever heard of, Floyd Landis is in a little bit of pee-pee trouble. He tested positive for an unusual amount of testosterone, and… you know what, I just don’t care.
And it’s not because I don’t care about cycling, or that I hate the Tour de France, in fact, I actively followed Floyd’s pursuit of the yellow jersey, and I found his story to be pretty damn inspirational. And I mean inspirational in the sense that it really might have inspired someone other than me who cared more about cycling or had any kind of ambition.
Rather, here’s the reason I can’t make myself care about this: cycling is so tainted, so drug-infested, that I think you’ve just got to accept it as part of the deal. How many of the top riders were banned from this race right before it began? It just the way things are. And I’m not pointing a finger at cycling, I know other sports have their problems, with in recent cycling history, hey, the needle is there. Doping is to cycling, as ground balls are to baseball, the nickel defense is to football, or super-absorbent maxi-pads are to the WNBA. For better or for worse, it’s a part of it.
My opinion of Floyd Landis hasn’t lowered a bit. I mean, I hope he didn’t do it, but even if he did, he certainly wasn’t the only one in the field, he still beat everyone else, and he still did it with a hip that’s mangled worse than the Knicks salary cap. I’m not saying that I assumed he was dirty beforehand, but I didn’t assume he was clean, either. All I assumed was that he was a cyclist, and thus, under the cloud of “maybe/maybe not, but let’s just see who’s the fastest anyway.” It was Floyd, his comeback was still manly as hell, no matter what turns up in his urine, he’s still a bad-ass.
Maybe that’s a bit too skeptical of me, and maybe it’s not fair to put all cyclists in that same category. And hey, I’d like to believe that purity is possible in cycling, and maybe someday, that’ll be the case. But for right now, to me, believing with 100% certainty that any pro cyclist is clean is about the same as believe that Mark McGwire was clean, too.
Under federal court rulings and commission rules, material is indecent if it “in context, depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities or organs in a patently offensive manner as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium.” Indecent speech can be aired safely between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Now, I do believe in a certain amount of “decency” on the airwaves… which might come as a bit of a surprise to you, considering the outright filth that I produce here. But I do believe that when there’s a chance that young kids are watching, the networks have a responsibility to do what they can to keep the language clean, and I would take the bold stand of being against hardcore pornography being broadcast as a lead-in to SpongeBob Squarepants.
But at the same time, I like live television, and I understand that sometimes, you know, people say fuck. Things happen at live sporting events. At certain college arenas, the “asshole” chant is almost tradition. Bill Cowher can’t call a play without using the word “fuck.” I think it’s actually in some of their playcalls. “All right, let’s run Jumbo Right, Fuck 27, Slant Wing Z Cock Deep.”
Things just happen. And I think the networks do everything they can to keep it off the airwaves, with delays and such. But every now and then, a little bit of potty-mouth is going to get through. Broadcasters can be fined as much as $325,000 per violation, under a new law. And if networks keep getting hit with these huge fines, broadcasts are going to get farther and farther away from actually being “live.” Delays will be longer, microphones will get farther and farther from the field, and they’re going to air on the side of caution.
Just seems like the FCC should have better things to spend their time on.
It’s beach volleyball season. I just wanted to be sure that you were aware. You can catch up on the action here. Man, I love beach volleyball. Huge fan. Can’t get enough.
Last night, in my post about the NBA Finals, I asked the questions, “Are officials worse now than they were ten years ago? Or do players and funs just bitch more?” And I knew at the time that it was a bigger question that deserved its own discussion, and again, I didn’t want to rain on the Heat’s parade. So I figured we’d get back around to it later. A couple of commenters made good points…
The officiating is the same as it was 10 years ago. The difference is now that the losing fans have more of a voice (via blogs, talk radio, message boards, etc) to be heard after the game. And since the majority of the fans can’t point at their own team, the obvious choice of their ire is the officiating.
- Mondesi’s House
mjd…the answer is clearly the latter. It’s going to get worse too. The fact of the matter is that with commentators ripping on refs, sportscasters ripping on refs, fans ripping on refs…the propaganda machine is unstoppable. You don’t even need any evidence anymore. If a coach or an owner doesn’t feel like being accountable for a loss, all they need to is blame the refs and people will hop on the bandwagon.
- jerloma
Good points there. And there were more, but… space is limited. I can’t quote them all. Sorry.
And two things I don’t want to do are 1) pretend that bad calls don’t exist, or 2) put all of the blame here on Mavs or Mavs fans. The discussion isn’t solely about the Mavs, and I do believe that Seahawks fans set the gold standard on that one (and continue to do so). Mark Cuban, Avery Johnson, and Dirk Nowitzki were all adequately concilliatory in defeat, much unlike Mike Holmgren. I don’t think the ‘Hawks will ever be topped… I seriously fucking hope not, anyway.
And, as I said, it’s not pretending that bad calls don’t happen. They do. I still believe that the Mavericks were wronged in Game Five, but, as quite a few others have pointed out, the Mavs have been the beneficiary of some other calls in their journey to the Finals.
And the bigger point is that they lost because of their own mistakes. When it came right down to it, the Mavs could not play as well in 4th quarters as they did in 1st and 2nd quarters. If they had, they’d have won the series, and it might be Heat fans right now finding something to bitch about.
My contention is that if a team plays as well as it possibly can and still loses (which is rarely the case), there’s about a 99% chance that it’s because they weren’t good enough, and about 1% chance that their loss was the direct result of an erroneous decision by an official. I just don’t think it happens very often.
And maybe the difference between now and ten years ago is imagined… maybe we just don’t remember the bitching, because it’s not what stands the test of time. And maybe ten years from now, no one will remember the Mavs bitching, and we’ll be asking this same question again.
Or maybe it’s true, and we really are just whinier people. Like the commenters quoted above said… everyone’s got a voice now, and the whiniest voices tend to get heard. Maybe we’re a nation raised on Bill O’Reilly, and CNN’s Crossfire, or whatever. If you don’t like something, bitch… and if you’re wrong, then just bitch louder. The important thing isn’t the content of the discussion, but that we get really loud about it.
And please note that I’m not leaving myself out of this… note the usage of ‘we.’ I’m guilty of it, too. I try to never blame the failures of any of my favorite teams on the officials, though I don’t have a perfect record there. For a recent example, see my treatment of JorgeLarrionda this past weekend on Deadspin (though I would contend that when a ref is suspended for corruption, it opens things up for a whole other line of debate).
Connecticut high school football coaches are facing a suspension if they win a game by more than 50 points next season. They say the rule isn’t aimed at any one guy, but… there is one particular dickhead who was calling timeouts en route to a 60-0 win last year. The opposing coach was arrested after punching an assistant coach on the winning team.
I do think that coaches who run up the score are quite loathesome, and they might deserve to have someone egg their house or slash their tires… but I don’t know about this rule. I think high school is about the age where we have to stop worrying about protecting feelings. But I may be the wrong guy to ask… I don’t have kids, and I am of the opinion that it’s absurd that they don’t keep score in T-ball. I think if you’re old enough to play sports, you’re old enough to learn about both sides of the ass-whooping.
And I just don’t know if this rule is going to prevent anything harmful. If it’s me, I’d rather lose 70-0, as opposed to losing 49-0 while the other team has to intentionally run backwards every third play, just so they don’t care. The former would anger and humiliate me. The latter would force me to incite a brawl.
If they wanted to institute a mercy rule, where the game ends when one team takes a 40-point lead or something, that would be preferable. But they’re setting themselves up for some awkward and contentious situations with this one.
Sometimes, a team’s 3rd-string, their absolute worst players, are better than some other team’s best players. It happens. You can send all your scrubs out, put the waterboy in, put the managers in, but if the other team can’t tackle them, they can’t tackle them. That’s how it goes sometimes. Ask Temple.
As it turns out, there is not a new world record in the 100m. Justin Gatlin has supposedly broken it last week in Qatar, coming in a hundredth of a second better than the previous mark.
Unfortunately for him, the guy who was holding the stopwatch is an asshole. His time was actually 9.766 seconds, and was supposed to have been rounded up to 9.77. I don’t know how you screw something like that up… rounding to the nearest decimal was something I always thought was pretty easy. You’d think the track people would’ve been prepared for such an event. Damn the Qatar educational system.
So after Gatlin celebrated his accomplishment, did the talk show tour, and was proclaimed the world’s fastest human… all before getting a call yesterday saying, “Um, oops.” That couldn’t have felt good. I’d guess that walls were punched and things were thrown in the Gatlin household last night… if he has children or pets, they were probably beaten for no reason.
I guess some Sports Emmys were given out the other day… the good news is that TNT’s Inside the NBA won the award for Outstanding Studio Show. The bad news is that Joe Buck won the award for play-by-play.
I just… don’t… get it. I don’t understand why people like Joe Buck. I don’t know anyone who thinks he’s good, I don’t know anyone who enjoys him… I’m not even sure that I know anyone who doesn’t want to punch him in the face.
There are two things that I can’t stand when done by a play-by-play person, and they always seem to go hand-in-hand… 1) believe that they are a reason that people are watching, and 2) interject their own opinion. Joe Buck does both. He’s got Troy Aikman sitting next to him, and he can’t just leave it to Aikman to provide the football opinion… he’s got to do it himself. My favorite was when he was watching a team move up the field at the end of a half in their 2-minute offense, and he asked, in all seriousness, “Hey, why don’t they just do this all the time?”
Since the Winter Olympics are going on, and there’s so much discussion about what is and is not a sport, I thought this was as good a time as any to post this. I’ve thought about the question for literally years… and have decided that it is impossible to draw a line and say, “the things listed on this side of the line are sports, and the ones listed on this side of the line are not sports.”
There are just too many gray areas. There are too many questions that don’t have good answers. For example…
If you say, “Anything where the winner is decided by a judge is not a sport.” then is boxing not a sport?
If you say, “Any activity where you sit on your ass for four hours is not a sport.” then is wheelchair basketball not a sport?
If you say, “Any activity where David Wells/Craig Stadler/ participate cannot be a sport,” then did Babe Ruth not play a sport? Did Gilbert Brown participate in the activity of football or the sport of football?
You can’t create a black and white division on what is and is not a sport. It has to be a continuum, where certain sports score higher than others. If you want to decide for yourself that everything above a certain line is a certain number is a sport, and everything below that number is not a sport, that’s up to you. The highest possible score is 40.
I’ve decided on four different categories on which each prospective sport has to be graded. The first two categories are given a higher point value, as their ratings should carry a little more weight than the other two. Here they are:
Athleticism: To even be considered, an activity must have at least a modicum of athletic ability involved. Accomplishing something must involve at least a bit of physical skill. For example, darts would be included, as success is determined by an actual physical throwing motion. But poker is not included, because it is a card game in which it does not matter how skillfully someone manipulates their cards and chips. And this category is not just a sheer measure of athleticism, but how many different types of athletic skill are involved in one sport. For example, running would get a much higher score than darts, but at the same time, basketball would have a higher score than running. Obviously, running a marathon requires a substantial degree of athletic ability, but basketball requires a greater range of skills. In addition, some categories are difficult to rank because of different specializations within the sports, such as gymnastics and American football. We’ll just have to do the best we can. Maximum score: 15.
Outcomes: How are winners and losers determined? This one is absolutely crucial. Is there a definitive way to decide the victor? The more clear-cut it is, the better off you’ll be. For example, bowling would have a much higher score than figure skating. Scores here are likely to be very high or very low. Maximum score: 10.
Teamwork: A sport is more of a sport if one has to become a part of a team, play the appropriate role, and function within the framework of the group. Obviously, this doesn’t mean things like tennis and golf can’t be sports. Only two possible scores here: 5 for a team sport, 3 for an individual sport. Sports that can be conducted as either will get the 5, but sports where the team aspect is merely a series of individual events, such as running or swimming relays, get the 3.
Non-reliance on equipment: This is a measure of how much of the competition is based on pure human ability, and how much is based on a piece of equipment or machinery. The more a sport relies on equipment, the lower the score will be. For example, soccer will have a much higher score than auto racing. Maximum score: 10.
(Disclaimer: This list is not, nor is it intended to be, complete. Because your favorite sport doesn’t appear here, does not mean that I don’t regard it as a sport. I’ve used summer and winter Olympic sports, as well as popular traditional American sports. In addition, the ratings assigned to various sports in different categories are completely subjective, and in fact, many of them are guesses. Many of these sports, I’ve never tried, and I understand that countless arguments can be made on behalf of various sports for raising or lowering certain rankings. Consider them discussion points. This is also very much a first draft. To do this right may be impossible, and if not, you’d need a huge panel of experts on the human body and mind. All I’ve got is me.)
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Some Kansas Jayhawk football fans (?) are a little upset at a new ticketing policy in Lawrence. If you bring a toddler to the game now, they’re going to need a full-price ticket, regardless of age or size.
Something about this feels kinda … off-putting. Five professional soccer players in Europe have had 
Forbes.com has released their list of 
Much like every other cyclist who anyone’s ever heard of, Floyd Landis is in 
As part of the government’s quest to preserve your values, 
Last night, in my post about the NBA Finals, I asked the questions, “Are officials worse now than they were ten years ago? Or do players and funs just bitch more?” And I knew at the time that it was a bigger question that deserved its own discussion, and again, I didn’t want to rain on the Heat’s parade. So I figured we’d get back around to it later. A couple of commenters made good points…
Connecticut high school football coaches 
As it turns out, there is not a new world record in the 100m. Justin Gatlin has supposedly broken it last week in Qatar, coming in a hundredth of a second better than the previous mark.
I guess some Sports Emmys were given out the other day… the good news is that TNT’s Inside the NBA won the award for Outstanding Studio Show. The bad news is that 
Since the Winter Olympics are going on, and there’s so much discussion about what is and is not a sport, I thought this was as good a time as any to post this. I’ve thought about the question for literally years… and have decided that it is impossible to draw a line and say, “the things listed on this side of the line are sports, and the ones listed on this side of the line are not sports.”
