Tag: sports

Hall of Fame 2014

Canton makes room for seven more:

Giants defensive end Michael Strahan led a seven-member class into the Pro Football Hall of Fame Saturday. First-ballot eligible Seahawks tackle Walter Jones and Buccaneers linebacker Derrick Brooks joined Strahan among the modern era finalists, along with Cardinals and Rams cornerback Aeneas Williams and Bills wide receiver Andre Reed.

The two seniors committee candidates, Raiders punter Ray Guy and Falcons and Eagles defensive end Claude Humphrey were also elected

I don’t see how Strahan got in before Charles Haley. I don’t think there is a coach alive who would take Strahan over Haley, but Strahan is Big Media while Haley is, to put it mildly, an unusual guy. Ray Guy is more of a symbol than anything, so I don’t really have a problem with that. It’s the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Statistics, after all, and if you’re going to name a punter from back in the day, he’s the first one you think of.

I’m glad to see Reed get in over Brown. I never thought all that much of Brown while he was playing and certainly never worried about him.  Not an exciting class, but not a problematic one either. Jerome Bettis shouldn’t get in, neither should Marvin Harrison. Both good players, but neither of them were great.

Super Bowl XLVIII

So, I’m told there is a game today. And, let’s face it, this is the matchup most fans of the game wanted to see. If Peyton Manning is going to cement a legacy as a champion, rather than a choker, it’s much more interesting to see him try to do it against the best defense in the NFL.

Historically, the best defense has defeated the best offense. Defense wins championships and all that. So, one has to lean towards the Seahawks on that basis, I think. While DVOA has Denver as the top offense and Seattle as the best defense, it also shows the Seattle offense (7) being better than Denver’s defense (15). Russell Wilson hasn’t looked great in the playoffs, but the San Francisco defense was capable of making anyone look average and the New Orleans defense was much improved over the disaster of the year before.

As I’ve said several times over the course of the playoffs, I haven’t seen a defense intimidate wide receivers like this Seattle defense since the 2000 Ravens. If Manning can get Welker working across the middle early, that will be the sign that Denver can solve the Seattle secondary. If not, well, we may be seeing the same alligator arms we saw in the NFC Championship game.

And if you’re one of those commenters who feels the need to inform us that you’re not interested in the NFL every single freaking time those of us who are interested in the sport are discussing it, just go away already. Neither I nor anyone else cares about what you do or don’t like. Deal with it.

It’s not broken, so why not fix it?

The NFL playoffs this year were exciting. The best teams advanced to the Super Bowl. Naturally, this doesn’t prevent the meddlers from insisting on “improving” things. Unfortunately, it turns out that one of those inveterate meddlers is the NFL Commisioner:

“We currently have 12 teams qualify for the playoffs, as you know. We are looking at the idea of expanding that by two teams to 14,” Goodell said at his State of the League press conference. “There’s a lot of benefits to doing that. We think we can make the league more competitive. We think we can make the matchups more competitive towards the end of the season. There will be more excitement, more memorable moments for our fans. That’s something that attracts us. We think we can do it properly from a competitive standpoint.

And then the complaints will start that the #1 seed has too much of an advantage, so two more teams need to be allowed in. The crazy thing is that the people whining about the need for seeding have been complaining about 8-8 teams making the playoffs, but adding more teams is only going to increase the likelihood of that happening. 

Faith is positive contagion

The atheist Peter Boghossian, to whose anti-apologetics I have been responding, likes to claim that he is mystified by how faith can be beneficial. But again and again, across a wide range of disciplines from medicine to sports, we see that “pretending to know what you don’t know” is materially beneficial to the faith-filled individual. From Grantland:

Anyone who plays sports understands this phenomenon. We want to use the same clubs, shoes, balls, bats, and everything else as the pros because they’re the best, and we want to give ourselves every chance to play as well as them. It’s as much about confidence as it is quality equipment.

This isn’t just common sense — social scientists have actually studied how using “professional” gear affects amateurs’ performance. In 2011, researchers at the University of Virginia laid out a putting mat, a ball, and a putter, and invited 41 undergraduates to take part in an experiment. The students were asked to do two things: Take 10 test putts and then try to draw the hole to scale. Half were told nothing about the putter’s origins. The rest were told it once belonged to a PGA Tour player. You already know what happened next. The students who thought they were using a pro’s club sank more putts and drew the hole larger than the control group. The social scientists running the experiment must have known that what they were witnessing was pure superstition. How else to describe the process by which years of practice and skill can be transmitted from an expert to an amateur through the simple transfer of an object? But because they’re academics, they use a different term — positive contagion.

Thus the Magic Putter refutes the false claim of the inutility of faith, even faith as incorrectly defined by the atheist. What the academic philosopher Peter Boghossian has clearly never mastered is a simple and intrinsically scientific concept: Let reason be silent when experience gainsays its conclusions.

Richard Sherman on the NFC Championship

I have no problem with his “outrageous” post-game interview. I wish more NFL players would simply say what they think. He’s a very good player, and like Sherman, I still can’t believe Kaepernick chose that moment, of all moments, to throw in his direction:

Erin Andrews interviewed me after the game and I yelled what was obvious: If you put a subpar player across from a great one, most of the time you’re going to get one result. As far as Crabtree being a top-20 NFL receiver, you’d have a hard time making that argument to me. There are a lot of receivers playing good ball out there, and Josh Gordon needed 14 games to produce almost double what Crabtree can do in a full season. And Gordon had Brandon Weeden, Brian Hoyer and Jason Campbell playing quarterback.

But that’s not why I don’t like the man. It goes back to something he said to me this offseason in Arizona, but you’d have to ask him about that. A lot of what I said to Andrews was adrenaline talking, and some of that was Crabtree. I just don’t like him.

It was loud, it was in the moment, and it was just a small part of the
person I am. I don’t want to be a villain, because I’m not a villainous
person. When I say I’m the best cornerback in football, it’s with a
caveat: There isn’t a great defensive backfield in the NFL that doesn’t
have a great front seven. Everything begins with pressure up front, and
that’s what we get from our pass rushers every Sunday. To those who
would call me a thug or worse because I show passion on a football
field—don’t judge a person’s character by what they do between the
lines. Judge a man by what he does off the field, what he does for his
community, what he does for his family.

I very much like the way he came out, refused to apologize or back down, and simply explained why he did what he did. Like him or hate him, approve or disapprove, Richard Sherman leaves one with no doubt that he is a man. How few men these days have the courage to avoid the passive-aggressive shots and simply state, in a forthright manner: I just don’t like him.

I’m no Seahawks fan, but I sure wouldn’t mind it if the Vikings had gotten him in the Percy Harvin trade.

Championship Weekend

Patriots vs Broncos. The Broncos are at home, but I tend to like Brady and Belichick over Manning and Fox. Even though the Broncos are at home and they gave up 25 less yards rushing per game than the Colts.

San Francisco vs Seattle. Both teams have nasty defenses and mobile quarterbacks, but I think Seattle is the better team despite the 49ers having better receiving options. This game is going to be a hard-hitting war like the old Ravens-Steelers games and the team that hits harder is going to win. I think the Seahawks secondary is going to neutralize the 49ers receiving advantage and I wouldn’t be surprised if Kaepernick doesn’t finish the game.

Hands off the kiddies, please

Vladimir Putin extends a warm Russian welcome to the Lavender Brigade:

Russian President Vladimir Putin says gays should feel welcome at the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, but they must ‘leave the children in peace’. Mr Putin told volunteers today that gays visiting Sochi ‘can feel calm and at ease,’ and vowed that there would be no discrimination at the games. But he emphasised that, according to a law banning homosexual ‘propaganda’ among minors, gays cannot express their views on gay rights issues to anyone under age.

First, I don’t see how this can possibly be a problem for anyone who isn’t a pedophile. I mean, let’s face it, if you’re a middle-aged homosexual actively lobbying to lower the age of consent, you’re a pedo.

Second, is anyone really surprised that the former head of the KGB doesn’t recognize First Amendment rights?

Vikings hire Mike Zimmer

I’m cautiously optimistic about the hiring of Zimmer, which is more than I can say for every hire since Denny Green was hired after turning around Stanford. The proof is in the pudding, but hiring an experienced and respected defensive coordinator, who produced top 10 defenses three years in a row, is a big step forward for a franchise that hired third-rate coaches like Mike Tice and Brad Childress in succession. Dallas fans still miss him; he had the top defense in the league with them and they haven’t had one since.

Leslie Frazier might be a second-rate coach; jury is still out on him since his two primary problems were a) being too conservative, and b) Christian Ponder. He had to go, no question, but I’m not convinced he can’t be a successful head coach in the NFL if he learns from his failure with the Vikings. See: Bill Belichick.

When the whole coaching carousel kicked off, my preferences were Whisenhunt, followed by Zimmer. So, I’m pleased that the Vikings hired one of the sane candidates. And the fact that they didn’t hire Jim Caldwell AND get the benefit of playing against a Caldwell-coached team twice a year, is a bonus.

Divisional round part 2

I hope that the playoff games to date have shut up the foolish advocates of re-seeding the playoff systems. I mean, with three games on the first weekend going right down to the wire, can they honestly pretend that anyone would have benefited from not granting home games to the division champions?

And the ease with which both New England and Seattle dealt with the winners of the wild card round further demonstrates that it doesn’t really matter who is playing on wild card weekend, as the home teams on the divisional round are the better teams anyhow.

I was impressed by both the New England running game and the Seattle defense. I hadn’t seen much of Seattle, and let’s face it, it didn’t take much to shut down Air Frazier this year. But their linebackers and secondary attack the receivers in a way that I haven’t seen since the 2000 Ravens. They can definitely beat the Broncos; the Patriots might actually prove the more difficult challenge.

Some will complain that Russell Wilson didn’t do much, but he did what he had to do when he had to do it. He looked like Fran Tarkenton at times, although to be a true Tarkenton scramble, the ball has to either end up a) a two-yard completion, or b) a touchdown. And while I’m glad that the Vikings got a nice bounty of draft picks in exchange for Percy Harvin, I couldn’t help but feeling bad for the guy. He’s a great player, but he just can’t seem to stay on the field.

Divisional round

Everyone is expecting a Seattle-Denver Super Bowl, but both teams have vulnerabilities that could appear at the worst possible time. I think I’d like to see Brady and Belichick get one more ring myself. I’m just glad to see the Packers out of it, and it would be nice to see the 49ers lose this weekend too.

In any event, this is an NFL Open thread.