Friday, September 30, 2005

Big News Out Of Boston Tonight...

"You Still Hungry? Then Feast On That!"

That's right, the Boston Celtics traded for Dan-Dirk Dickau-Diggler today.

In all seriousness, however, Dan is quite the upstanding, charitable citizen, what with his Dan Dickau Charity Classic (which I always thought was something you pay an extra 50 Bat for in Thailand. B-doom-doom).

You gotta think that This jersey is going to go on sale soon. You see, Dickau no longer plays there, and the team is sort of moving to Oklahoma City because the owner's an opportunistic scumbag who said, "Katrina? More like 'my chance to get the hell out of here-ina'.

Oh yeah, and there was some kind of baseball game tonight...

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

They Opened The Door!!

They finally did it. Tony and Mike talked about Aussie Rules Football! So what if it was 2 minutes about whether or not minor league player Brett Blackwell is a complete and total freak for having his finger cut off so he can keep playing. It's a mention, and thereby opens the door for me to list 10 reasons why I love this game.

1) The freaking passion. Did you read the above paragraph? Footy's the only thing going in Australia for the most part. Sure, they have a basketball league, rugby, cricket and some fucked up sport called Netball where women play basketball without the dribbling or backboards (I swear I'm not making this up), but Footy is THE national pastime, and if you're not playing it you better be a computer programmer or a poof-da.

2) The violence. For anyone unfamiliar with the rules of AFL, it's basically that schoolyard game 'Smear the Queer' with 50,000 spectators. Does this make it a game for loutish, sloped-foreheaded cavemen that aren't sophisticated enough to play rugby? You bet, but the results are better than anything HBO's showing about Roman gladiators at the moment.

3) The short shorts. Believe me, there's probably no more homophobic set of people on planet earth than Footy players, but you sure wouldn't know it by looking at their hot pants. Ever since the NBA switched to wearing dresses to help out brothers with no package, AFL football has been there to seperate the men from the Jude Laws.

4) The referees. You will not find a more scared shitless group of officials than you will in Footy. These guys are basically like boxing officials except the fighters are running full tilt for 40 yards before 'accidentally' plowing into them. Plus, they have that cool, semaphore code-looking goal signal.

5) Half the teams come from one city. I still think it's the coolest thing that half the teams in the league are from suburbs of Melbourne. Imagine the most popular sports league in the United States consisting of 8 large cities and 8 districts of Boston. How cool would it be to see Braintree play Quincy for a 'national championship'?

6) The Players. Words like 'meathead' and 'goon' are thrown around a lot in American sports, but you truly haven't seen what those words mean until you watch Footy.

7) The Announcers. "What a Ripppahhh" yelled at microphone shattering volume remains one of the great sports calls of all time.

8) Footy controls Australian Television. Entertainment Tonight, PTI, Sportscenter, and Access Hollywood are all combined into Australian Television's 'The Footy Show'. It's like if The Best Damn Sports Show Period were made required watching by every single American citizen.

9) The St. Kilda Football Club. Just cause it's funny that all their team gear says "St. KFC", which I like to imagine is the patron saint of extra crispy chicken.

10) The Number of High Quality Mullets. Now that it seems as if Hockey stars like Jaromir Jagr and Jeremy Roenick are no longer willing to rock the Schlong, it's nice to see that so many Aussie Rules Football stars are still willing to announce to the world that while it may be business in front, it's still a party in back.

So do yourself a favor and look up the nearest Aussie Rules Final Football party in your neighborhood. You'll be treated to lots of drunken shouting, homophobic abuse and love of hot pants.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Norm Chad is an Idiot

I have to admit that I haven't thought much about Norman Chad until quite recently. He's pretty much a below-average L.A. sportswriter (the poor man's Bill Plaschke if you will) who lucked into a job as 'tournament poker expert', proving everyone wrong who asserted that there's no such thing.

Well, over the course of the last couple of days, Norman has found his way into my conscious by making some of the dumbest assertions this side of that fat black guy from Kansas City that ESPN keeps thinking I have some interest in hearing from. You know, Jabba the Whitlock or whatever the hell his name is.

Anyway, back to the 'much more hateable than Dan LeBatard' Norman Chad. Here's how he turned himself from 'annoying trollish figure wasting the pixels on my TV' to 'guy that I'd like to kick in the groin and would pay for the privilege of doing so';

1) Calling Jerry Rice 'possibly the best receiver of his generation'. Look, I'm no huge Niners fan or anything, but this is fucking assinine. Who's better Norm? Mike Quick? Mark Duper? Harold Carmichael? His main argument for stating this is that 'he played with Montana and Young'. If that were valid Norm, then why didn't Joe Montana make J.J. Birden the 'greatest of all time'. And to act like Jerry Rice would'nt have been as good as previous generation leaders like Lance Alworth and Fred Bilitnikoff (sp?) is dumber than dumb, it's stupid.

2) Next, Norm's pick for 'sleeper team of the year'. Let's just say it starts with 'A' and ends with 'rizona Cardinals'. Do I need to say anything else?

3) Finally, Norm's assertion that L.A. doesn't want ANY football team ever, so the New Orleans Saints can look elsewhere. L.A.'s insecurity really shows whenever local sportwriters say this. They got burned by a couple of greedy assholes (Davis and Frontiere) and now they're swearing off lovers forever. What wimps! I lived in L.A. when the Raiders were there and you LOVED them, just like you LOVED the Rams. So stop pretending that you're 'above' the NFL and just get a fucking team. Your stupid excuse that it allows you to watch more games on TV is just pathetic at this point (especially with the advent of DirecTV) so just stop it. Get a team, show some guts and root for it.

So, in conclusion, congratulations Dan LeBetard, you've been replaced. Norman Chad is infinitely more hateable and wrong than you could ever be.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

50 Streets In 50 Days

Today, Fallon Street in downtown Oakland... Just Foolin'

Is there a bigger indicator of just what an awful sports summer it's been than Sportscenter's crummiest excuse to set up a desk in front of a bunch of screaming rednecks since College Gameday?

Here's the only thing I've learned from ESPN about the United States;

New Mexico looks like the dullest place on earth.

I can't wait for next year's '50 things that almost got thrown out in the ESPN Cafeteria'.