Oh Ocho Cinco

Oh the humanity. Oh the horror. Oh…the Ocho Cinco. We just had a latest burst of Chad Johnson and this time the federal government actually authorized the act.
Everyone’s favorite clown from the Bengals just put together his latest stunt that actually has legal backing by changing his last name from Johnson to Ocho Cinco. It used to be just his self-appointed nickname, now it’s his self-appointed surname.
Now I’m sure that there a few people who genuinely get a laugh out of all of Johnson stunts, and I’m sure that a majority of them are 3rd graders who get a laugh out of shooting spit-wads are the teacher. It goes well with what Johnson said, “I’m just having fun.” It’s the same thing that 3rd graders who shoot spit-wads at the teacher say but that doesn’t mean it the right thing to do.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m like having fun just as much as the next guy but there as to be a line. Especially for multi-millionaire professional athletes who get paid to win football games; something that Johnson hasn’t done a whole lot of. Let’s take a brief look at Johnson’s resume. A few pro bowls, one play-off game that he lost and well that’s pretty much it. But that doesn’t count all the pranks he’s pulled over the years that has won him exactly how many games? Right, not many.
There is no denying the direct correlation between teams that have players who are focused on the task at hand and teams that win Super Bowls. The Patriots, Colts and Bucs are some of the teams this decade that have been champions and for the most part they have disciplined teams that didn’t cause a lot of ruckus. That’s the problem with Johnson, he’s so busy worrying about end-zone celebrations that you’ve got to wonder how much he really thinks about the game.
Now I don’t know if he wasn’t hugged enough or hugged too much as child that he needs this much attention. Maybe he’s is just a Paris Hilton-type masquerading as a football player. But all his antics scream “Everyone look at me.”
Eventually someone has to draw a line. Either Johnson starts winning games, as the best player on a team should do or they get rid of him. They had their chance this off-season when he demanded a trade but I guess the front-office couldn’t pull the trigger on off-loading such a talented player. It kind of reflects the attitude of the whole organization when it comes to arrests, drug-test failures and other trouble makers. It happens off the field so it doesn’t affect what’s happening on the field. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If a team is always dealing with the law, the league office and loud-mouth receivers being distractions there is no way they are prepared to play on Sunday.
Johnson is hurting his team immeasurably. He is always creating this media frenzy that has to be causing everyone headaches. He needs to quiet down, focus on his job and the results will come. If he doesn’t, he’ll continue to make headlines for the sillies reasons and his team will continue to watch football in January and not playing it.

The Olympics

The Olympics and have now come and gone. Like the World Cup, it only last a few weeks and only comes every four years. It is so much fun but it's like a good afternoon nap, it's so much fun that it just flies right by.
I have decided that most of the "haters" of the Olympics are pretty much the same people that don't like the Major League Baseball All-Star game. They take their detest of corporate marketing and the money made off the thing that they forget to enjoy the game. Yeah, the Olympics are one big commercial for NBC, Nike, Gatorade and everyone else but that doesn't always take away the innocence. I don't think people as they were cheering on Michael Phelps while he's swimming, "Geez, what a great race, I'm totally going to go get that Visa credit card he endorses." No, they are just cheering because it is a game, nothing more. People get excited for games, not a low APR. Let the big business make their money, because that's what they do and let the rest of us just enjoy the show without having to hear people complain about the lack of purity.
Of course, there are some things that are definitely not pure. People like Becky Hammond playing for Russia and Chris Kaman playing for Germany is downright treason. They weren't good enough to make the American basketball team, well too bad. We've all at one time not been good enough for something. That is absolutely no excuse to go play for another country. It's the Olympics; you take pride in playing for your own country. Both of them handled their rejection like whiny little kids and found an excuse to make up for their won inadequacy.
Ok, back to Michael Phelps, who became the greatest Olympian right before our eyes. He entered eight races, won eight gold medals and broke eight world or Olympic records. Sheer brilliance. He put his body through one of the most taxing 10 days in sports and came out of the water laughing in the face of the expectations and pressures.
And their that was that lady swimmer, Dara Torres. She is 41 years-old, had a child two years ago, competed in her fifth Olympics and won three silver medals. Like I said earlier about her: no excuses, get off the couch and go run a mile or two.
The American men's basketball proved themselves worthy to call themselves the "Redeem Team." They didn't play like a bunch of "I" guys like four years ago and instead came together to show the rest of the world that yes, we really are the best. No questions.
That Usain Bolt guy of Jamaica broke the world record in the 100M and 200M and didn't even run hard. He had such long legs he could coast the last 20M, pound his chest and still out stride everyone. Like Phelps, it wasn't just winning, it was dominating.
Now to get political. Going into the games, China knew this was their chance to show the world they were ready to be a world player. They accomplished that, at least on the business side. Everything was well organized with no mishaps. They proved that they have the organization, discipline and knowledge to be a part of the world market.
But they have yet to realize that will not be seen an equal power until they start playing by the rules. The strengths of the free markets of the western world are built on free societies. You can't have an advanced, progressive nation that is coming up with the latest ideas if they don't have personal freedoms. Countries that are on the cutting edge give their people basic human rights. And it will eventually start to knock on their door. You give people a choice of computers and eventually they will want a choice of government. The Chinese aren't communists, they trying to make money like everyone else but they remain an authoritarian government and that will always hold them back. They can be a technological and economically advanced as anyone but until they start to upheld environmental standards and allowing freedom of speech and religion, they will always be seen as a lesser being; on old bully of centuries past. And they continued to show during the Olympics. The little girl lip-syncing during the opening ceremony because the real singer wasn't pretty enough and the women's gymnasts lying about their age. That is not acceptable in the 21st century were we've realized treating others as equals and following the rules is a requirement for being respected.
Of course, maybe the Olympics will help them realize where they have to go. The Olympics have done a lot of good for sports and good for the world during it’s time. We just have to make sure we don’t get some anti-corporate about it to let the pure part of it work it’s magic.

One More Football Preview

In the spirit of all the other football previews that are going on right now, let’s take a look overseas for one more.
Manchester United is the defending European Champions after beating Chelsea in the Champions League Final. They are also the back-to-back defending champions of the English Premier League. And this year they seem to be just as solid as ever. They were able to thwart of an attempt by Real Madrid to steal away Cristiano Ronaldo meaning they will hold to arguably the world’s best player for at least one more year. And with Rio Ferdinand, Wayne Rooney, Paul Scholes and the rest of the lot still looking as good as ever, the Red Devils look to be favorites at home and abroad.
Their main rival will again by Chelsea. They retained every player of importance to them like Frank Lampard, John Terry and Didier Drogba and surprisingly didn’t sign any big name players. They seem for the first time in the Roman Abramovich era to have found a squad they are comfortable with.
Arsenal and Liverpool round out the top four again with Cesc Fabregas and Steven Gerrard lead the two sides respectively. Neither club as won a trophy in a couple of years and the waters seem to be getting a little uneasy in North London and on Merseyside.
Real Madrid has won the last two La Liga titles and has the squad to do it again this year. They still have Fabio Cannavaro, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Wesley Sniejder among others. They seem to have found the discipline they were missing in the first part of the decade with their “Galaticos” signings.
Barcelona, in the meantime has gotten away from what made them the most attractive club in Europe just a few years ago. They have stopped playing with any type of unity or teamwork and it looks like everyman is for himself as they continue to crowd their attack with too many star names. Thierry Henry and Samuel Eto’o both seem to be past their best days and they lost Ronaldinho. They still have other solid players like Xavi and Carles Puyol but as a team they have lost their way.
Milan were the guys that picked up Ronaldinho and that instantly makes them the best team in Europe. Their attack may get a little congested with him, Kaka and Clarence Seedorf but they have always been a club with the discipline to handle their players in the right way. And as always, they’ll get pushed by Inter and Roma.
And here’s a surprise, Bayern Munich and Lyon are probably going to win their respective leagues in Germany and France.
On this side of the ocean, David Beckham continues to suffer in relative anonymity. He is still a solid player and solid endorsers of many products but it will take more than him to make football big in the United States. Something we all knew back when he signed.

NFL Preview

It’s another week of football and this time we look at the NFL.
In case you haven’t notice, the biggest story since the end of the last season was the Brett Favre situation. It’s actually been very surreal watching it all. Favre wants to comeback, the Packers don’t want him, Favre shows up, Favre leaves, the Packers give him money to stay retired, Favre goes to Jets. It’s definitely weird to see him in a different shade of green. I don’t think anyone really wants to see him do this. It’s a lot like Jordan coming back to play for the Wizards. It probably won’t turn out to be the best experience and we’ll just try to erase from our memories.
The other team in New York is the defending Super Bowl champions, just in case you forgot. They can stumble it do it last year and no one is really convinced Eli Manning is that good. They’ll be competing in a tough division and still have to some drama problems.
It will be interesting to see how the team they beat does this year. You have to think they are still hung over. I think they’ll struggle to win 12 games this year and probably won’t make it back to the Super Bowl. They just can’t have another season like that again.
This is the Dallas Cowboys year. They are loaded. Tony Romo, Marion Barber, Felix Jones, Jason Witten, Terrell Owens, Demarcus Ware, Anthony Henry just to name a few. They are easily the most talented team in the NFC but they still have to prove they can win it counts because they have terrible in the only two playoff games, both losses. Anything less than making it to the Super Bowl will be considered a failure.
The Indianapolis Colts seem like the team that is built to win it this year. They still have everything in place from two years ago and everyone is on the same page. If they stay healthy, they have the right attitude and setup to go all the way again.
The Raiders are still a year or so away but they building up a nice collection with Jamarcus Russell coming along nicely and that Darren McFadden guy is well, really good. If they don’t self-implode they can make a playoff push.
It will be fun to see how the quarterback battles play out in Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Tampa Bay, Chicago, Arizona and San Francisco. That’s a lot of teams with an unsteady situation under center, even for the revolving door of the NFL.
The over/under on the number of players that are going to be suspended this year for violation personal conduct is seven. Please place you bet at the closet strip club.
Well, 21 straight weeks of pro football are getting ready to come your way. Get the beer and chips ready because only the strongest survive.

College Football Preview

I know you smell that. It’s is what you think it is: football season. So for the next two weeks, that’s were talking about: the upcoming pig-skin season.
And college is first up. Georgia seems to be everyone’s hot pick to start things off; not a bad one. They destroyed Hawaii in last year’s Sugar Bowl and they return a lot of good players including offensive duo Matthew Stafford and Knowshon Moreno. If they do win the national title, they will be the fourth SEC team to win the BCS crown after LSU twice, Florida and if you want to count Auburn’s undefeated 2004 season. But the team that starts off number one usually doesn’t finish this way.
So that leaves us USC at number two. The Trojans still have all the talent they have always had this decade (that Pete Carroll guy can sure recruit) but they don’t seem to have the leadership of the past like Palmer, Leinart, Tatupa and Grootegood. It hurt them last year at times now having a player who could drag through the tough times and it could be their downfall again this year. On the other hand, they do have a pretty easy schedule.
But they do have to open up the season against the Ohio State Buckeyes, who are number three. Now those guys have an easy schedule. The past two years, they were the other team in the national title game after their schedule ended three weeks early as everyone else kept battling it out. And with Chris “Beanie” Wells running the ball there is good chance they could be playing for a title again this year, especially since their biggest late-season threat, Michigan, is going to have a down year.
Oklahoma and Florida round at the best of the best at four and five. Both have stellar quarterbacks in Sam Bradford and Tim Tebow respectively. Bradford broke all sorts of freshman records last year and Tebow won the Heisman. Both teams also have fast defenses again and have decent shots at the title; if they can survive their schedule.
Speaking of stellar quarterbacks, the Big 12 is loaded. We already talked about OU’s Bradford and he I joined by Colt McCoy (Texas), Graham Harrell (Texas Tech) and Chase Daniel (Missouri). Oh wait, we’re not done yet. There is also Zac Robinson (Oklahoma State), Todd Reesing (Kansas) Josh Freeman (Kansas State), Stephen McGee (Texas A&M). Ok, I think that’s it. Get read to see footballs flying in the middle of the country.
Elsewhere around the country. Like previously said, Michigan will have a tough transitioning to new coach Rich Rodriquez’s spread option offense. Arkansas got NFL castaway Bobby Petrino after old Arkansas coach Houston Nutt went to rival Ole Miss. Joe Pa is still at Penn State and he’s still got the Nittany Lions in the top-25. Virginia Tech will have fun will their dual quarterbacks (Sean Glennon and Tyrod Taylor) along with their always awesome defense and special teams. Clemson is still really fast and athletic. Surprise. C.J. Spiller and James Davis can really run. Oregon might return to another Leaf after losing Dennis Dixon. And we all thought the nightmare ended at the beginning of this decade.
Gosh and there is still so much more to talk about. Tulsa is going to keep scoring a lot of points, Norte Dame will try to prove their worth all that TV time and don’t forget about the Toledo-Bowling Green Peace Pipe rivalry game.
Ok, let’s pace ourselves, it’s a long time until January.

A Baseball Fortune

Have you been to a Major League Baseball lately? Gosh, it pretty much takes the entire GDP of Denmark to pay for everything. It’s pretty much highway robbery with how high the prices are. No wonder there is that growing separation between the average fan and the big, corporate world of pro baseball franchises.
And something needs to be down. The average Joe shouldn’t have to spend an entire week’s paycheck to take the family out to the ballgame. So “The Grandeur” is going to bring you several ideas to bring prices back down and make baseball games an activity that is considered a splurge. Power to the People!
First, let’s look at parking. If you go to a game where you have to drive and then park, you’re paying $9 just to get you car through the gate. A fee to sit you car on pavement that’s already been laid? Cheap shot.
Now let’s continue our journey into the gate. You want to be able to see a few baseball games in your lifetime not sitting in the upper deck. You actually want to be able to read the numbers on the back of the jerseys. But to get tickets within 50 rows of the field and in the infield, you dishing out $35 a pop. And now where at the point where everything is multiplied by four since you have your lovely wife Lucy and your two charming kiddos Johnny and Lizzie. So now it’s $140 dollars just to see the game.
Of course, it’s humanly impossible to survive without food and fluids. Hotdog: $5.00; pop: $3.50; peanuts: $4.00. Multiply times four again and there is another $50. And let’s you have a long week at work and really want to relax with a nice cold one. Yeah, that beer is going to cost you $8.00. You can brew your own for less than that.
And it’s pretty hard to go home without a souvenir so you have to get a ballcap. At $18 apiece there’s another $72 tacked on to the bill.
Ok, let’s review our spending. Parking, tickets, refreshments and souvenirs: that’s comes out to a total cost of, hold on to a stadium seat, $279. I did the math for just in case you weren’t keeping score. Of course, if you wanted to keep score at the game, a program is going to cost $5. That now brings our total cost to $284. You could mow all the fields at your Little League park and still not have money to afford the game.
Ok, now that we’ve seen the problem, let’s work on the solution. First of all, get rid of the parking prices, it’s just a low blow.
We can bring down the prices of food and drinks with good, healthy dose of capitalism. At a ballgame, the vendors are all working for the same guy. There is no competition to keep prices low. It’s neo-communism. Teams should allow separate business to come in and setup shop to compete with each other. One guy wants to charge $8 for a beer, then the next guy is going to make a fortune only charging $3. And to help the teams make up for the lost revenue, the businesses pays them a lease price to operate in the stadium.
And ticket prices can be slashed with a little pay cut. If everyone in the organization gave up 10% of their salary, tickets prices would get cut in half. A guy that is making $20 million a year is now only going to make $18 million. I don’t think it’s going to cause him to foreclose on his house. And if every player, coach, executive and whoever else decided to give a little bit back to the fans who support them then fans would be able to go to a game without having to have a garage sale every other week.
See, now were all starting to work together. The fans supports the team and the team supports the fan. It’s that kind of teamwork that everyone wants to see. Now, we just need to challenge a team to do this. Just imagine if a team decided to make the best seats in the house on $15, a hotdog a $1.50, a cap $10 and a beer $2. The fans would go crazy and want to come to more games, they would start selling out. And all the other teams around the league would like the bunch of greedy punks they are. So let’s hope that there is an owner out there who is willing to go where no one else is gone. A place where he put aside is own personal checkbook and supports the fans that support him.

All-Star Game

It’s final year, the House that Ruth Built was given the Mid-Summer Classic; a great way to send off one the temples of sports.
I have written repeatedly of my admiration of the All-Star game and all its festivities. All the criticism that it receives is coming from people who just want complain. It’s that chance for the best players to come together for one night and play together. It’s the best of the best. And the rest of just get to sit back, take a break form rooting for anyone, and just watch baseball. It’s a pure from of baseball.
There is also the Home Run Derby. Ok so Justin Morneau end up taking home the crown but it always be remembered for Josh Hamilton’s incredible performance. He didn’t win in the final round but it really didn’t matter. Everyone knew he was the best hitter on the field; he had just simply run out of gas towards the end and understandably so. The man crushed 28 home runs in the first round alone. Yes, that is a record and yes, he is the guy that wasn’t even play baseball a few years ago because of drug and alcohol problem. Now that is a comeback story. I think just about everyone would like to see win the MVP award this year; and he will if is the Triple Crown champ.
Back to the game and that was a nice little opening-ceremony with all the past living greats from each position coming out on to the field to meet the night’s starter. It’s always important to honor those that come before us and that was a great to it.
As for that game itself, it was little long. 15 innings did tie a record and 4 hours and 50 minutes did break a record. That’s a few All-Star games that have gone long in the past few years, including the infamous tie. The problem isn’t the game itself going to long, it’s the last batch of players that have to stay out there especially pitchers. They are running the chance of injury. I don’t know about reinserting players after being subbed out, that’s a little un-baseball-ish but something needs to be done. I do like the idea of the starters playing longer from the beginning. The starting pitcher going for three innings and the field players going for four or five innings. Yes, some players aren’t going to get in the game at all, but hey, sometimes life is not fair. But is also not fair that the last guys got to play more than the starters. I think most people would rather see Derek Jeter and Chipper Jones on the field more anyways.
By the way, here’s a surprise: the American League won. Oh wait, no it’s not. The National League hasn’t won since gas 0.99 a gallon.
Well, it was a nice way to send out Yankee Stadium. The place deserved it. It’s played home to the best franchise in baseball history. And what’s reassuring, it that’s it replacement is going to avoid any corporate tag-lines and keep the same name. Now that’s another pure form of baseball.