Tag: sports

It was certainly interesting. And for Vikings fans, a little disappointing, because I would very much have liked to see the Vikings draft Tim Tebow. Unfortunately, Denver’s unexpectedly bold move means that they may have to get by with Clausen, assuming that they go for a quarterback with the second pick in the second round. Obviously Tebow has some doubters, but as Cold Hard Football Facts points out, if you don’t buy into the “mechanics” voodoo, Tebow has been the best SEC quarterback since Peyton Manning and cannot possibly be as likely to turn out a bust as JaMarcus Russell was.

I trust passing accuracy, character, and championships a lot more than the dogmatic insistence on a model that has regularly produced the likes of Russell, Leaf, and Harrington. The scouts didn’t think much of one Francis Asbury Tarkenton either, and he only retired with every major passing record in the books. Bradford was probably the right pick for the Rams, but it was a high risk/reward pick that they had little choice regarding. Quarterback is simply so much more important than every other position in the modern NFL that if there is even a 20 percent chance that a quarterback is genuine long-term starter material, a team has to take it.

Which means Clausen even though I suspect he is a little prick of a prima donna. Which is all right, since he’ll be nicely suited to step into Brett Favre’s when old Number Four finally retires for real after next season. Or maybe the season after that. Prior to the Sheppard signing, I’d expected the Vikes to draft a cornerback, but despite Sheppard’s loss of elite status, he’s still a definite upgrade to the secondary once Griffin returns. I would like to see them pick up Clausen with 2(34) and Myron Rolle at S with 2(62), assuming he’s still available. And, since Pat Williams won’t be around much longer, it would be interesting to see them pursue a trade with Washington for Haynesworth.

Some great games on Thursday. Even if the rest of the tournament is boring, it has already been one of the best tournaments in a while.

This would be your NCAA tournament thread. Unleash the bracket hounds. CBS has kindly provided an online live stream.

Even if you don’t care about baseball, you have to loathe the Yankees after reading this tale of attending a Yankees game:

My father-in-law was thrilled when we reached our seats. He couldn’t believe it. He’d never had seats this good. “Hey,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “maybe we’ll catch a foul ball.”

I looked around. “We got a shot,” I said.

“You know,” he continued, “I’ve been coming to Yankees games for 65 years. Never caught a foul ball.”

Never caught a foul ball? Celebrating his 71st birthday? My father-in-law? Kids, we have a mission.

So we got to the seats, and remember, these were crazy good, expensive seats. Sitting behind us in Row 2 were four kids who I’d guess were between the ages of 8 and 10. A couple of things immediately stuck out about these kids:

1. They were bragging to one another about all the different toys, vacations, servants, whatever they all had.
2. There were no parents in sight.

Apparently, they were just dumped there or something. I know baseball is America’s pastime and kids are cute, but let me tell you something, and I’m not gonna lie. These kids were superannoying. They came across as spoiled, rich kids. They were loud, demanding and, just like you would expect of unsupervised children, completely without a care about anyone around them.

They were discussing foul balls and bragging to one another about how many they had. This one had five, this one had three, a third had four, so on and so on. They apparently came to these seats a lot.

The game started, and we were close enough that the players could hear us. The kids knew this. And started screaming at the players.

“Throw us a ball! Give us a ball! Hey, mister, we want a ball! Give us a ball! Hey, throw the ball here! We want a ball! Please, mister, throw us a ball!” On and on they went. “Hey, mister! Mister! MISTER! GIVE US A BALL!”

If you think that is annoying to read, imagine it being screamed during the game, constantly, inning after inning, directly behind you. In the bottom of the fourth inning, the Yankees went 1, 2, 3 with the final out a ground out. As the Blue Jays ran off the field, first baseman Carlos Delgado (told you it was a while ago) tossed the ball up into the stands. Many folks went for it, but I came down with it.

I turned to my father-in-law, all smiles. “Here’s your ball, Joe.”

As he looked at the ball, the kids started yelling. “Can we have the ball? Hey, mister, we want that ball. Give us the ball!” “We’ve been yelling,” and so on. My father-in-law turned to me and said, “If you want to give the kids the ball, that’s OK.”

Hells. No.

My father-in-law was a softy. I’m not. And I was not going to give up Joe’s first foul ball in 65 years so some spoiled brats could add it to their collection. Just because you beg for something in an annoying manner does not mean your efforts are rewarded. Learned that while dating in high school.

But some wise guy a few rows behind the kids started a chant. “Give-the-kid-the-ball. Give-the-kid-the-ball.” It picked up steam. “Give! The Kid! The Ball! Give! The Kid! The Ball!” Soon, the whole section was chanting this. GIVE! THE KID! THE BALL! GIVE! THE KID! THE BALL!

I ignored it and tried to watch the game. The kids turned from annoying to nasty. “Hey [mouth-washed-out-with-soap word No. 1]! Give us the ball, [mouth-washed-out-with-soap word No. 2]! He was throwing the ball to us, [mouth-washed-out-with-soap word No. 3, which, frankly, I’m not sure where an 8-to-10-year-old kid would learn].”

We continued to try to watch the game.

Then the food bombardment started. Peanuts, hot dogs and beer were thrown at us. Repeatedly. Security was nowhere to be found. We asked folks to stop, which made it worse. We tried to ignore it. But the food, beer and insults kept coming.

Order was finally restored a half-inning later when the first-base umpire came over and handed the kids some balls. The kids bragged to us. “Told you we’d get a ball, a–hole.”

And that’s why I hate the Yankees.

It’s not just the team and the way it is run. It’s not just its owner or the cheating, performance-enhancing drug users A-Rod and Andy Pettitte.

It’s the collective known as Yankee Nation.

I came away from that game with a hatred of the Yankees and was absolute in this belief: Yankees fans are subhuman. Everything they and the Yankees stand for was represented during that half-inning. Like the kids, they are spoiled and demanding and see things only from their self-indulgent point of view. Like the adults, they act out when they don’t get their way.

Of course, there is a better reason to despise the Yankees. They are, after all, the New York Yankees.

I have to admit, I’m not that interested in the NFL Combine. If you can’t tell if a man is a football player from the tapes of his games, what is a stopwatch going to tell you? Now, if they televised the interviews, that might be interesting.

I’d like to see the Saints win it, but I don’t see it happening. Colts by 17.

Congratulations to the great John Randle, who was honored with a place in Canton yesterday. Every Vikings fan loved the intensity of the face-painted warrior. As for Cris Carter, I don’t see a problem with him having to wait a year or two after Jerry Rice. After all, all he did was catch touchdowns.

Keep sudden-death, just give the ball first to the team with fewer penalties. Not penalty yards, penalties.

Sure, the more one thinks about how the Vikes gift-wrapped the game and gave it away, the more irritating it is. But the angst, pain, and general soulsickness doesn’t even come close to comparing to 1998, 1975, or 1983. As hard as it may be for younger Vikings fans to understand, this loss doesn’t even rank in the top ten. And as Chev reminded me, I never expected anywhere nearly as much out of Favre as he delivered this season. After all, this is how I answered when I was asked before the season if I was excited about Favre becoming a Viking:

“All I know is that as a Vikings fan, I never feared Brett Favre. Never. Sure, sometimes he’d beat you with a lightning strike from that cannon arm, but just as often – more often – he’d beat the Packers with an untimely interception.”

Upon reflection, I’m shocked that he didn’t do it more often this year. The reality is that Favre is the anti-Manning, the anti-Elway, the anti-Two Minute Tommy Kramer. For an elite quarterback, he’s actually a relative choke artist dating back to the Green Bay Super Bowl loss to Denver. I’m glad we had him this year and I hope we have him the next year, but I’m not at all surprised that he would turn out to be the goat, insofar as any Minnesota player can be said to be the goat. In my opinion, none of them were. AD, for example, had either the best three-fumble or worst three-rushing TD game in playoff history.

I thought game itself went pretty much how I broke it down, barring all the crazy fumbles and the inability of the Minnesota defensive line to actually sack Brees. I’ll go over each aspect later, but obviously the thing that I got most wrong was giving the Saints a +1 advantage for coaching. It should have been a +3, enough to swing the balance in New Orleans favor. The true goat of the game is Favre’s fellow choke artist Brad Childress. While he did a pretty good job surmounting his natural tendencies over the season, under pressure he reverted to his terrible tendency towards hyper-controlling micromanagement. The strategy on that last drive was terrible from the start; the seeds of the problem were planted before that dreadful timeout called after Chester Taylor’s first down at the Saints 37. There were actually FIVE big coaching mistakes at the end that cumulatively cost the Vikings the game:

1. Calling timeout. The Saints were visibly reeling after the Taylor first down put the Vikes in field goal range. AD probably could have gone off tackle and into the end zone, not just merely gained the 10 yards to make the field goal a gimme for Longwell, if Childress hadn’t given them the chance to regroup. When the opponent’s morale is shaken, that’s the moment to strike and the very last thing you should do is give them time. Military leaders have known this for more than two thousand years, so why don’t football coaches?

2. After the timeout, the Saints stacked the line since Sean Payton knows that Chilly is from the Schottenheimer/Turner school of playing not to screw it up. I was SCREAMING at the screen for a play-action pass to the FB in the slot or a WR on a buttonhook. Naturally, they ran it up the middle twice for no gain, which makes one wonder if anyone on an NFL staff ever pays any attention to history. That play was straight out of Schottenheimer’s “how to lose a playoff game” book. You don’t play to win the conference championship on a 51-yard field goal. You simply don’t. It’s stupid.

3. The 12-men penalty. This is the one that everyone is talking about. Yes, it’s stupid. But no, it’s unfortunately not as surprising as it should be considering how the Vikings sideline was described as “chaos” at the end of last year’s playoff game against the Eagles. The penalty was inexcusable and it was entirely on the coaching staff.

4. The interception. Yes, it was a classic Brett Favre choke; there is absolutely no question that he should have run the ball. As a second option, he should have thrown it to the receiver who was in man coverage eight yards past the line of scrimmage. But it shouldn’t have been news to Childress that his quarterback is Brett Favre, who tends to throw amazingly idiotic interceptions at critical moments like those. Every serious Vikings fan has known this self-destructive flaw of Favre’s for years, so why didn’t Childress call the play accordingly? The roll-out call was actually fine, but if you haven’t given explicit orders to a) run if they give you an opening and b) not throw across the field, you’re just not doing your job correctly.

5. Griffin’s injury. Why is your #1 cornerback (given Winfield’s injury), on the kickoff coverage team? Would they have given up 50 instead of 40 if he wasn’t?

The fumbles were infuriating, but they weren’t the reason the Vikes lost. They were the reason the Vikes didn’t win by 17. A few of the penalties were ridiculous, especially the phantom pass interference call at the end, but the refs were shaky all night and they would have been irrelevant if Childress hadn’t pulled a Denny Green. The dropped interception was bad, but that, too, should have been irrelevant.

The reason the Vikings lost was a frightened, micromanaging coach trying to play it safe instead of playing to finish off the opponent and win. I expect Childress will probably learn from the experience – given his contract extension, I certainly hope he will – but that’s little consolation now. Anyhow, I can’t fault the Saints for accepting Chilly’s Gift, and I’m pleased to see them finally get the chance to play in the Super Bowl instead of the NFC East teams of whom I am so thoroughly sick. And let’s face it, this game looked suspiciously like playing for the right to play sacrificial lamb against the Manning-machine. Even so, I’d like to congratulate the New Orleans Saints and their long-suffering fans on their NFC Championship and wish them the best of luck in upsetting the Colts.