Tag: sports

“Shut up, boys,” they explained

The St. Louis police appear to have been underwhelmed by the Black Power-style Ferguson gesture made by five of the St. Louis Rams at yesterday’s game:

“The St. Louis Police Officers Association is profoundly disappointed with the members of the St. Louis Rams football team who chose to ignore the mountains of evidence released from the St. Louis County Grand Jury this week and engage in a display that police officers around the nation found tasteless, offensive and inflammatory.

“All week long, the Rams and the NFL were on the phone with the St. Louis Police Department asking for assurances that the players and the fans would be kept safe from the violent protesters who had rioted, looted, and burned buildings in Ferguson. Our officers have been working 12-hour shifts for over a week, they had days off including Thanksgiving cancelled so that they could defend this community from those on the streets that perpetuate this myth that Michael Brown was executed by a brother police officer and then, as the players and their fans sit safely in their dome under the watchful protection of hundreds of St. Louis’s finest, they take to the turf to call a now-exonerated officer a murderer, that is way out-of-bounds, to put it in football parlance.

“I know that there are those that will say that these players are simply exercising their First Amendment rights. Well, I’ve got news for people who think that way, cops have first amendment rights too, and we plan to exercise ours.  I’d remind the NFL and their players that it is not the violent thugs burning down buildings that buy their advertiser’s products.  It’s cops and the good people of St. Louis and other NFL towns that do.”

It was a remarkably stupid gesture. But young men are foolish, and spoiled young black male athletes are more foolish than most. It signifies nothing. What I find more interesting about their gesture was the public reaction to it. It tends to support the notion that blacks have lost the average white American’s inclination towards sympathy. The 60’s-instilled white guilt over slavery and white enthusiasm for the civil rights charade is rapidly dissipating in a considerably less white country where tens of millions of Hispanics, Asians, and Arabs simply don’t give a quantumn of a damn about blacks or their historical sob story.

“Oh, lawsy, mah great-great-great grandpappy wuz a slave!”

“Qué chingados, cabron. I just got here five minutes ago. What the fuck do I care about your pendejo grandpappy?” 

This mass indifference quite naturally causes many whites to wonder why they are expected to feel guilty about the continued inability of Africans to behave, or even to want to behave, like 18th century Englishmen. Not that there aren’t plenty of white SJWs who will salute the five players for their “courage” and “inclusivity” and spew all the customary buzzwords, but the anger and contempt most fans felt for the anti-police gesture was palpable on a number of sports-related sites. I also suspect that the half-hearted nature of the riots may have been in part due to blacks correctly sensing that there are an increasing number of whites who would welcome the race war that blacks have been threatening for fifty years.

It’s easy to be magnanimous and optimistic about the prospects for a permanent state of kumbaya when everything is going well economically and the majority population doesn’t feel threatened. It’s when the economy goes south and the majority is in the process of becoming a minority itself that race relations, class relations, and ideological relations tend to disintegrate.

Remember, majorities exist in almost every human society for a reason. And where they don’t exist naturally, they usually create themselves, often through less than entirely peaceful means. Fred points out the observable reality:

We need to realize, but will not, that blacks are a separate people, self-aware and cohesive. They have their own dialect, music, and modes of dress, which they value. They name their kids LaToya and Keeshawn instead of Robert and Carol because they want to maintain a distance from whites.

The races spring from utterly different cultures. Compulsory integration is thus a form of social imperialism in which whites try to force blacks to conform to European norms. Blacks have no historical connection at all to Greece, Rome, the Old Testament Hebrews, Christianity, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, to Newton, LaGrange, or Galois, to the philosophic tradition of Thales, Aquinas, Schopenhauer, or Hegel. Nor do Eurowhites have roots in Africa. No commonality exists.

Postracialism isn’t merely one of the many equalitarian unicorns, it is intrinsically opposed to black self-determination. They don’t want to be white. They have their own identity, their own pride, and their own culture. And there is nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that it has been forcibly intertwined with white American culture.

The pursuit of safety

Is often counterproductive, as was seen in the accidental death of the young EnglishAustralian cricketer, Phil Hughes:

Most of my career I batted on uncovered pitches without a helmet. This taught me how important it was to have a good technique and courage against fast bowling. Why? Because you required judgment of what to leave, when to duck and when to play the ball. But you had to be even more careful about attempting to hook because at the back of your mind you knew that if you made a mistake you could get seriously hurt.

I once asked Len Hutton, a great iconic player, whether he hooked Ray Lindwall or Keith Miller. He said he once tried it at the Oval and he got halfway through the shot then cut it out because out of the corner of his eye he could see the hospital. That tells you everything.

Before the advent of helmets in Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in the late 1970s, if a team had a genuine fast bowler, tail-enders did not hang around. You did not see tail-enders propping and copping. They played shots or got out because at the back of their mind they were terrified of being hurt.

Helmets have unfortunately now taken away a lot of that fear and have given every batsman a false sense of security. They feel safe and people will now attempt to either pull or hook almost every short ball that is bowled at them.

Even tail-enders come in and bat like millionaires, flailing away and having a go at short balls with poor technique and a lack of footwork. Helmets have made batsmen feel safe in the belief that they cannot be hurt and made batsmen more carefree and careless. As a consequence more players get hit on the helmet nowadays than ever got hit on the head, before we batted without this protection.

This is true in the broader historical culture as well as the world of sport. We attempt to protect our women and children, to ensconce them in a rubber-and-plastic safety bubble that will keep them from all harm, forgetting that in protecting them from the petty dangers, they tend to forget about the existence of the more serious ones.

It is when we feel invulnerable that we are most susceptible to being taught otherwise.

So much for the reinvention of the position

Steve Sailer observes that despite the NFL’s being openly desirous of the success of black quarterbacks, they’re simply not very successful in the league anymore despite the growing number of them coming out of the NCAA:

Back in 2003 Rush Limbaugh got fired from being a color commentator on Monday Night Football for pointing out that the media had been pushing hard for more black quarterbacks for decades. So Rush got fired because everybody knows that the only reasons don’t make up 75% of NFL starting quarterbacks is discrimination and the burdens of history.

So I like to check in on how black quarterbacks are doing. This QBR rating counts their running contributions, so it’s the best measure yet.

Here are black QBs (treating Colin Kaepernick as black) who ranked in the top 20 for each year as far back as QBR has been calculated. I counted the top 20 in a 32 team league since it’s pretty safe to assume that if you rank in the top 20 you deserve to start, whereas if you are, say, 29th, then there’s probably a benchwarmer another team that deserves your job.

2014: 2 (Russell Wilson 14, Colin Kaepernick 16)

2013: 3 (Colin Kaepernick 6, Russell Wilson 12, Cam Newton 13)

2012: 4 (Robert Griffin 5, Russell Wilson 6, Cam Newton 14, Josh Freeman 15)

2011: 2 (Michael Vick 7, Cam Newton 15)

2010: 3 (Michael Vick 5, Josh Freeman 6, David Garrard 13)

2009: 3 (Vince Young 7, Donovan McNabb 13, David Garrard 19)

2008: 3 (David Garrard 16, Jason Campbell 17, Donovan McNabb 18)

2007: 4 (David Garrard 3, Jason Campbell 15, Donovan McNabb 16, Tarvaris Jackson 19)

2006: 4 (Steve McNair 6, Donovan McNabb 7, Vince Young 11, Michael Vick 15)

It’s fairly obvious to me why blacks are increasingly unable to successfully play quarterback in the NFL. The new passing rules tend to benefit the mentally faster quarterbacks, nearly all of whom are white. Michael Vick’s much-ballyhooed “reinvention of the quarterback position” has failed for the very reason that detractors of running quarterbacks predicted: sooner or later a running quarterback is going to take a hit that slows him down.

Look at the difference between Robert Griffin and Andrew Luck. In 2012, you could seriously argue that Griffin was the better quarterback. One injury later, Griffin has lost his superhuman quickness, and having proved himself to be almost embarrassingly incompetent as a pocket passer, has just been benched for the second and possibly final time as a Redskin. He simply can’t see the field and process it quickly enough; the image shows a play in which he had no less than FIVE receivers open and somehow ended up throwing it away while also managing to take a shot from a defensive lineman.

It’s almost always the same. A running quarterback simply isn’t going to a) start many games in a row, or b) maintain his peak level of play very long. As a long-suffering Vikings fan, I very well know the difference between a scrambler who moves around to buy time – Tarkenton, Cunningham – and a runner who takes off in a panic as soon as his scripted first option fails to come open: Gannon, Culpepper, Ponder, although hopefully NOT Bridgewater.

NFL quarterback is arguably the single most difficult thing for a human being to do. It requires a bizarre blend of physical ability and mental agility that is incredibly rare, and today’s physically gifted runners are the modern version of yesterday’s rocket-armed blockheads. I find it very puzzling that NFL teams still haven’t learned that you simply can’t teach seeing the field and reacting to it. It’s interesting to see that Tarvaris Jackson cracked the top 20 in QBR at one point. He may have been the most perfectly coached quarterback I’ve ever seen play. He was a team player, he worked very hard, he always did his absolute best, he listened to his coaches as if their words were coming from on high, and his movements were so perfectly rehearsed that he looked like a well-oiled robot. I wasn’t at all surprised to see him go on to have a very successful career as a backup quarterback. But he just processed everything too slowly. Drop back, check one, check two… sack!

Anyhow, I won’t be surprised if in another year or two, we start seeing the football media start to complain that the new passing rules are racist. Because they observably place a premium on a particular skill that no current black quarterbacks – yes, zero, which you’ll know if you’ve seen Wilson or Kaepernick play this year – appear to possess.

FIRE GOODELL NOW

Actually, forget firing him. Roger Goodell should be stripped naked, whipped with tree branches, and then locked in an elevator with Ray Rice and Bill Simmons until he resigns:

Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings was notified today that he has
been suspended without pay for at least the remainder of the 2014 NFL
season, and will not be considered for reinstatement before April 15,
for violating the NFL Personal Conduct Policy in an incident of abusive
discipline that he inflicted on his four-year-old son last May. Peterson
pled no contest on November 4 in state court in Montgomery County,
Texas to reckless assault of the child.

What an utter fucking joke. I hope the NFLPA declares a strike. As if Goodell gives a quantum of a damn about anything but how he thinks the league looks to women who don’t watch football anyhow.

“The NFL Players Association released a statement shortly after the NFL
announced Peterson’s suspension, and in it the union said the league
lacks the credibility to appropriately handle player discipline. Smith
said the players have lost confidence in Goodell.”

So have the fans. The real fans of the game.

The 18-year delta

Ender was excited last night because, with his B team season at an end, the first team had extended an open invitation to the B team players to practice with them. It’s a chance for the coaches to see which young men are ready to play with the men, and who the eventual up-and-comers are. The first team practices at the same time my veteran’s team does, so we drove over to the clubhouse together despite a howling wind and a black sky that threatened some serious rain.

It’s getting near the end of our season too, three-quarters of my teammates are banged up, and I discovered when I got there that a) the veteran’s practice had been canceled, and b) the first team was missing half its players due to vacations and whatnot. But I know several of the first team players and coaches fairly well because we’re permitted to field two players below 32, but over 25, and some of them play with us when they have an evening free. So, I asked one of the guys I know if they needed an extra player – thinking that they were just going to scrimmage – and he suggested that I stick around and join the practice. So, I changed, put on my cleats, and joined them in the middle of the field.

There were about eight of Ender’s teammates there, huddled together against the cold rain that had begun to fall and vaguely intimidated by the first team players. They know who I am, of course, and were visibly startled by my presence there – let’s face it, no one is more contemptuous of a middle-aged dad than an elite teenage athlete – and were further taken aback when the player-coach leading the practice greeted me with an enthusiastic handshake-hug. What they didn’t know is that I’ve played several games up front with Stefan and we are molto sympatico on the field despite him being much better than I am. We’ve both given assists on each other’s goals, and like most stellar strikers, he prefers having a strike partner who looks to feed him the ball rather than shoot.

However, Stefan had a full practice in mind, not a scrimmage. It wasn’t brutal, but it was strenuous, enough so that he came over twice during the repeated agility drills to make sure I wasn’t about to keel over. His concern wasn’t entirely unjustified, as I’m beyond old by first team standards; the oldest player on the team is 28. I would have been insulted, especially given the fact that I was pretty much keeping up with the tall B team defender in front of me in the line, were it not for the fact that I was fairly certain two more run-throughs would have resulted in vomiting. Ender and the midfielders were having no problem, but some of the defenders looked to be mildly in shock at doing 2.5x more repetitions, and doing them at faster speed, than they’d ever done before. Fortunately, we moved on to the team keep-away drill next, which is fast-paced, but gives you a chance to catch your breath if need be. Which was, in fact, the case.

The bad thing about being a sprinter is that you quickly run out of steam. The good thing about being a sprinter is that you bounce back just as fast. So, by the time we were doing the final drill, which involved a 20-meter sprint to a cone, turning around to receive the ball and firing a one-touch shot on goal, most of the B team kids had slowed to a jog, but I was still running. I even managed to put a few past Ender, who was alternating with the first team keeper in net. Ender acquitted himself well, making some diving saves and drawing praise from the first-team guys, which pleased him immensely.

I was more than a little pleased myself when, back in the clubhouse, Stefan clapped me on the shoulder and said, “hey, why don’t you come to the next one too?” Which, I have decided, I am absolutely going to do. It’s not that I will ever play for the first team, but I suspect he may find me to be useful in goading the younger players. None of them will have any excuse for falling behind, given that I’m literally three decades older than most of them. The best compliment, however, came from Ender, when I asked him if he’d found it embarrassing to have his old man running around the field.

“Actually, Dad, I didn’t even notice except for when you were the one shooting at me.”

I’ll take it. It’s a rare pleasure to be able to play sports with one’s son on an equal footing, so I will enjoy it, however long it lasts.

Horizontality and the keeper’s friend

Last weekend, I had a great game and Ender’s was merely passable. This weekend, things were reversed as I had a frustrating game and he did very well. After last week’s two-goal performance, I had high expectations when I saw that the other team’s goalie was older and not very good. I knew they had a decent defense anchored by a fast Portuguese sweeper, but I also knew I could score on them since I had a goal and an assist in both previous games against them.

But various factors conspired to deny me. The first chance blown was when a rebound bounced wide rather than to me waiting for it in the center, the second when a beautiful pass from the other striker was ruined by a stealthy two-handed push in the back from the sweeper that knocked me off balance just as the ball arrived. The third was a phantom offsides call, the fourth when instead of simply passing the ball forward, our attacking midfielder decided to shoot the ball wide, and the fifth when I had a clear run on the left side of goal, but badly scuffed the shot under pressure from the sweeper. We’d dominated the run of play, but nevertheless the score was tied at 3-3 when our captain replaced me 15 minutes into the second half. As I feared, that promptly shut down our attack, as we no longer had anyone on the field to stretch it horizontally or vertically. We spent the last half hour under constant pressure and wound up losing 5-3.

I know it probably confuses the guys to repeatedly observe that taking off a lesser player for a better one reliably provides negative results, but it all comes down to geometry. It’s not just that I have more speed, but also that if I am the attacker further away from the ball, I move out wide when we attack, which usually draws two defenders after me. The outside defender has to stay with me, and since they know I can beat him, the inside defender also has to cheat 10-15 meters in that direction as well. Not only do we get whatever opportunities are created when the ball is passed my way, but more importantly, taking 1.5 defenders out of the equation creates the space our midfielders need to bring up the ball and attack.

For example, there is a very good reason that an important aspect of the Barcelona tika-taka approach often involved one wing standing literally on the left chalk and the other on the extreme right side of the field. When you’ve got Lionel Messi in the middle, the single most useful thing you can do if you are not Messi is to pull a defender wide with you and leave the man room to operate. Fortunately, one of our new attackers has good speed, so I think I can teach him to do what I’m doing and we can stop playing a half-court game when I’m not on the field.

Ender and his defense started their game in a very shaky manner. They very nearly gave up a goal in the first minute, and the opponents had a pair of attackers with enough speed to make the defenders visibly nervous. One nominal backpass from the right defender (who subsequently had a very good game) was more akin to a shot than a pass; Ender had to volley it clear as it bounced. However, I was coaching from behind the goal and pointed out to Ender that they were attacking pretty much the same way every time up their left, so he blunted its effect by aggressively coming out of goal to intercept passes into the box, or, on one occasion, stuffing an attacker one-on-one at the top of the box. He also made a fantastic diving save on a low ground shot towards the right post after a corner, then pushed another shot onto the near post when the left defender was beaten. He did a nice job of intercepting a corner kick by leaping up and slapping it away before an attacker could get a head on it, and then was fortuitously bailed out by the crossbar on a free kick that was too high for him.

After ten minutes of Ender and the defense withstanding moderately heavy pressure, the star player finally did his patented “run through four defenders and pass off to an open man” for the first goal against the run of play. That shook the other team, and a second goal on the first corner kick they gave up – which, to Ender’s amusement, I correctly called in advance – broke them entirely. It was 3-0 at halftime and Ender didn’t have much to do in the second half as his team put in five more goals. Then, as is usual in such situations, the defenders got greedy to score and lazy about getting back, thereby leading to two goals that he had no serious chance of stopping, both from inside the 6-meter box. They ruined his chance at a clean sheet, but his team put in one more goal to close out the game at 9-2. It looked like an easy win after the fact, but as I pointed out after the game, if they had scored one or two of those early chances, the game might well have gone the other way.

One amusing note. The one girl on the team, who has played with these boys for years, is hopelessly overmatched but hard-working and uncomplaining, scored two goals as a result of her perfect positioning at the far post. It’s funny to watch her play, because she knows exactly what to do whenever she gets the ball: immediately pass it to the star player. The moment the ball is heading her way, he accelerates towards her and she will find him and pass it to him even if he’s got three opponents around him. After she scored the first time, all the guys mobbed her and the star, who had cross the ball to her, nearly knocked her down by enthusiastically pounding her on the back. The truth is that the boys don’t mind girls playing with them at all so long as they play hard and play on the boys’ terms without any expectations of special treatment.

Two wins in two games as the starter, with three goals allowed per game, isn’t bad at this level. The regular goalie will be back in two weeks, but Ender appears to have secured his place as next year’s starter in the interim. I think he’ll be entirely content to return to his role as backup goalie and substitute defender for the rest of the season. The new coach clearly appreciates his multi-positional utility, and it’s nice to see that someone who knows what he is doing is finally in charge.

The agenda-driven sports media

It’s a bit amusing to see Mike Florio backtracking after repeatedly demanding that the Ravens provide evidence of their claims that the ESPN report was full of errors:

One of the more glaring problems with ESPN’s story regarding the Ravens’ mishandling of the Ray Rice investigation relates to the text messages sent by owner Steve Bisciotti to Rice after the team cut him. In the story, ESPN presents the text messages in italics.  While quotes weren’t used, the technique created the clear impression that the text messages were being quoted verbatim. The surrounding context reinforced the idea that exact quotes were being shared…. ESPN has acknowledged that the italicized text messages did not reflect actual quotes.

“We understand the confusion surrounding our use of italics and recognize we could have been more clear,” ESPN said Tuesday in a statement. “Most importantly, the information in our story about the contents of the texts was consistent with what the team released.”

While the contents were consistent, the clear and obvious error in the presentation invites fair questions regarding whether other aspects of the story are incorrect, especially in light of the strong (albeit belated) written response the Ravens provided to 15 different aspects of the report.

This specific flaw also carries with it some irony.  At a time when the Ravens fairly have been hammered for failing to ask for the notorious elevator video, ESPN didn’t ask the Ravens to confirm the precise contents of the text messages sent by Bisciotti. Instead, ESPN asked only if Bisciotti sent two text messages to Rice.

The story from ESPN doesn’t disclose that ESPN asked the Ravens only to confirm that Bisciotti sent two text messages and not to confirm the contents of the text messages.  But the words selected by the authors invite a perception that the Ravens were informed of the alleged language of the text messages: “Asked about the text messages Friday, the team did not deny Bisciotti had sent them: ‘His text messages to Ray reflect his belief that everyone is capable of redemption and that others, including players, can learn from Ray’s experience.’”

So, ESPN is making up quotes, misrepresented their communications with the Ravens, and claimed that Ray Rice was watching the Ravens-Bengals game from his home
with former teammate AQ Shipley even though Shipley was on the
field for the Colts at that time, but Florio still thinks that we should take their report seriously? After all, the Ravens response was, in Florio’s opinion, “belated”.

At this point, it’s difficult to rely upon the sports media to get the final score of the games right. Assuming they bother to report it in the first place, given all the socially vital crusades for which they have to find space.

That being said, good on Bill Simmons for being willing to step up and say exactly what he thinks about Roger Goodell. He may be on the opposite side of the fence, but at least he is genuinely calling them as he sees them:

“Goodell, if he didn’t know what was on that tape, he’s a liar. I’m just
saying it. He is lying. If you put him up on a lie detector test, that
guy would fail. For all these people to pretend they didn’t know is such
[expletive] [expletive]. It really is, it’s such [expletive]
[expletive]. For him to go into that press conference and pretend
otherwise — I was so insulted.”

I think Goodell was lying too. I don’t think the tape justified one additional day of suspension for Ray Rice, but I don’t think there is any doubt that the NFL Commissioner didn’t know what was on it.

The vagaries of calcio

I’ve seldom been as angry as I was a weekend ago. For the last month, Ender has worked very hard to earn his place as the youngest member of a pretty good team, literally fighting for respect from some of this teammates and doing more than his part to shore up the defense when some injuries and suspensions removed all four of the defensive starters.

However, he is also the backup goalie, which is the position he plays most often in practice. He’s as tall as the starting goalie, but being three years younger, is about 20 pounds lighter. Two weeks ago, the quasi-coach told him that he was going to play, then neglected to put him in even though the team went up three goals and was in complete control of the game. Then last weekend, we showed up to the game to discover that a) a new coach, b) the starting goalie had injured his foot at school, and c) a goalie who belonged to a different club.

It was bad enough that instead of starting the backup, they’d gone outside the club to bring in a new goalie. But that was justifiable, since Ender had a poor practice earlier that week. What was worse was that the borrowed goalie was terrible. He only gave up three goals, but that was entirely misleading because the other team simply could not put anything on net. They must have beaten him 12-15 times, but kept shooting the ball wide or over the goal. It became a bit farcical at one point when the kid was out of position, got beaten by a lob, and instead of turning around and catching it on the bounce, tried to do a bicycle kick that missed. He was bailed out by the fact that the ball happened to bounce on the hard ground of the penalty spot rather than the grass, and bounced just over the crossbar.

Nevertheless, Ender still didn’t go in, even when his team was again up by three goals. He was angry and I was downright furious. Why am I spending an entire afternoon every weekend to watch my son not play? After the game, Ender told the coach that if he wasn’t going to play even when the starter goes down and the team has a three-goal lead, he’d much rather suit up as a defensive substitute. I suspect this may have alarmed the new coach since he was suddenly faced with the prospect of having one suboptimal goalie on loan and no backups.

I didn’t question the coach’s right to decide whatever he wanted. Making bad decisions is a coach’s prerogative. What I thought was egregiously stupid from the club’s perspective was the apparent reluctance to work with what they’ve got. Ender is young enough that he could be their starting goalie for the next three years and he is their most promising candidate for the spot since the current starter will be too old next year. And he may be slight, but he’s almost certainly going to be a more imposing physical specimen than the current starter in the near future. So instead of working to develop him, you discourage him to the point of having him switch positions? It made zero sense.

The new coach must have reached a similar conclusion after Ender had two very good practices this week, as he not only started him this weekend, but didn’t even bring back the loaner-goalie as a backup. Ender was visibly scared stiff after taking the field, but the whole team was supportive and the defense did a fantastic job in the first half of keeping the pressure off him.  Except for one little thing in the first ten minutes: they gave up an unnecessary penalty. Just what every young keeper making his debut needs. Ender dove right and missed the ball, but it hit the post and Ender got up just in time to make a nice reaction save on a close-range shot from the rebound.

That, along with a stuffed one-on-one late in the game were the high points. However, he let one high shot get through his hands when he jumped a little too late, and then I had to warn him when the team went up 4-1 because the defenders began to get goal-hungry and lazy about getting back to defend. To no avail, as it turned out, because the other team’s strikers rapidly put two more past him from close range that probably couldn’t have been helped, then, flustered, he blew a fourth one that he should have had. Still, his team ended up winning 7-4, he made three or four solid saves, and the general verdict was that he’ll make for a decent backup at this point. Not a great debut, but far from a disaster, and the first team coach told me that he thinks Ender has the ability to play at the next level in three years when he’s eligible. Since his own son is on the pro track, I suspect he knows what he’s talking about.

My own season has been personally satisfying but somewhat frustrating from a team standpoint. We tied our first two games against a very good team and a bad one while I contributed essentially nothing besides a few near misses. Last week, I found myself losing my starting spot, although it might have only been the captain wanting to save me for the second half when the defense is tired and the field is more open. He’s well aware of my age and limitations. We lost to our number two rivals 4-2, although I did get an assist when the right midfielder put the ball past the defense down the line for me. I pulled the two central defenders and the keeper to me as I approached the box, then chipped it over them towards the far post, where Julien, a tall attacker who plays for us as well as the first team, effortlessly headed it in. It was pretty; after the game the opposing team’s goalie came up to say what a nice attack it was. Of course, its easy to be magnanimous when you win. We have a bit of a history, as three of the last five games between our teams have come down to me going one-on-one with him at the final whistle. The edge is his at this point, 2-1.

This weekend, I not only started, but had to play the whole game, as we had lost two of our four attackers, including Julien, to injury, and our third attacker couldn’t make it. Fortunately, we were playing a lesser team and the midfielder who was moved up to the other attacker’s position was in the mood to pass, which isn’t always the case. I scored the first goal when he went one-on-one with the keeper, then slid it over to me to put in the empty net. Unfortunately, the clueless referee waved it off for offside, which was impossible since I was BEHIND both the ball and the player who passed it to me. I got a second goal, which actually counted, when the same guy put a long cross-field pass past the defense, I ran onto it, and slid it across the face of goal.

Then I got a third one by jumping a careless backpass from a defender, rounding the keeper as he came out for it, and walking it into the net. I should have had a fourth when Sergio sent a perfect ground cross through the box, but I leaned back too far and hit the crossbar. Stupid, stupid, stupid… I knew the moment I hit it that it was going too high. I had another great opportunity later cutting in from the right, but Giorgio called for it so I drew the goalie and slid it across to him and he was about a step behind where he should have been. He barely managed to get his foot onto it so the ball went wide. That cost us, because two defensive blunders gifted them a pair of easy goals and we ended up with a 3-3 tie. Two goals is great and all, but I legitimately had three and probably should have had five.

On the one hand, it’s good to know that even at my advanced age I can still help the team, and on a good day, compete favorably with the guys in their late twenties and early thirties. On the other hand, almost everything hurts and I’m walking like a man twice my age today.

The anti-NFL SJWs seek more scalps

Now Floria wants to see Baltimore’s president, general manager, coach, and possibly owner to be hounded from the league as well:

The Ravens contend that the ESPN report contains “numerous errors,
inaccuracies, false assumptions and, perhaps, misunderstandings,” but
the Ravens have identified none of them yet.  Apparently, the list
alleged errors, inaccuracies, false assumptions, and perhaps
misunderstanding is coming next week, after their game against the
Browns.

Sorry, but that’s not nearly good enough.  One of the league’s
billion-dollar network partners has pinned on the Ravens and the NFL a
report that, if accurate, should result in the termination of the
employment of Cass, Newsome, and perhaps even Harbaugh.  Likewise, real
questions should be raised about Steve Bisciotti’s fitness to own the
team, if the report is accurate and if he had any knowledge of the
coverup.  (Or perhaps even if he didn’t.)

This is getting BEYOND ridiculous. The idea that an organization might *gasp* attempt to protect its own interests rather than embark upon an anti-domestic violence crusade aimed at one of its employees is not even newsworthy, let alone a rational basis for decimating its employees. There is no “coverup”.

As I have said from the start, the NFL should announce that domestic violence is, like every other crime, neither its responsibility nor its concern, and declare that it is leaving all such matters up to the relevant criminal justice system. For the obvious reason that it isn’t.

And Roger Goodell needs to be fired. Not because he is insufficiently concerned about the poor widdle womens who ain’t never done nothing but get beat on, but because he opened this whole can of worms with his own posturing attempts to curry favor with the Social Justice Whores.

Sanity does not prevail long

At this point, I’m rather looking forward to seeing the idiot Vikings get shellacked again. I don’t think this decision to deactivate AD again, this time indefinitely, is going to go over well with the Vikings fan base. It certainly hasn’t gone over well with the Vikings fans in the Day household:

The Minnesota Vikings placed Adrian Peterson on the Exempt/Commissioner’s Permission list, requiring the running back to abstain from team activities during his child-abuse case, the team announced Wednesday morning. Peterson was indicted last Thursday on a charge that he injured his 4-year-old son by spanking him with a tree branch. He was inactive for the team’s Week 2 loss to the New England Patriots but was reinstated Monday.

To be honest, I thought people were exaggerating when they talked about Goodell and Pink October being harbingers of the NFL’s downfall. But the invasion of the self-appointed SJW police into what used to be a man’s game is seriously killing the game in more ways that one.

As Ender commented, they could cut the number of flags being thrown in half and there would still be too many. At this point, I’d rather watch soccer than an NFL game just because most of the action one watches actually counts.

“soccer is way more gay than the NFL. …  i must believe it so. dear god please”

Perhaps once, but not anymore, I’m afraid. I’ve actually seen more serious injuries on the soccer field than on the football field. One of my teammates got a pair of ribs broken in our game last week, and I’ve seen numerous legs broken, including one nasty compound fracture that was sticking out through the skin.