Ten Observations/ Predictions from the Sports World

Please read the following observations/ predictions from the world of sports. You’re welcome for the clarity.

The Indianapolis Colts are 0-3 in the NFL pre-season. This gives them four wins versus 21 losses dating back to 2005. This proves the pre-season records mean nothing because the Colts have averaged 13 wins over the same regular seasons. Oh, and they won a Super Bowl.

Nick Saban will eventually leave the University of Alabama for another coaching job.

The NFL is the king of sports, and college football rules the south, but high school football is the best value for the Everyfan.

No American male will advance to the semis-finals of the 2010 U. S Open.

Pitcher Andy Petite is the key to the New York Yankees post-season and Roger Clemens federal indictment for his role in the performance enhancing drug saga.

The World Basketball Championships are currently under way in Turkey. You may not have known this, or even cared. This lack of story proves that the “Lebron James Decision” was good for the NBA in the vein of “any publicity is good publicity.”

Major League Baseball is on a roll right now. Clemens’ issues with telling the truth and letting guys inject drugs into his backside, has a fantastic reality television feel that is attractive to mainstream viewers and readers. Also, there are great story lines emerging as the play-offs approach. Small market and small budget teams like San Diego and Tampa Bay are leading their divisions. And lastly, The Yankees are still relevant.

Golf’s Ryder Cup is the premier all-star contest in professional sports. Tiger Woods is the world’s best golfer. Still, he has been fighting to make the U. S. Ryder Cup team. (He will make it). Golfers are the only athletes care so much about these exhibitions. That’s why we should be interested.

The NFL will go to an eighteen team schedule next season. Rosters will expand. Teams will carry four quarterbacks. Some teams will take this opportunity to “carry” an unconventional or “Wildcat” quarterback.

Every guy driving a Smart Car has a beard? It’s true. This may not be related all that closely to sports, but it is true. Think about it.

Slingshots and Salaries

We all know football season is right around the corner because Brett Farve has decided to changed his “I am retired, or I might be retired” Facebook status and lace up his cleats. As a country, we anxiously await the start of the football season, but take a look at what is going on the fields of what used to be America’s pastime, baseball.


For the first time in recent memory, every division in Major League Baseball has close races between the top two teams. Most years there are a couple of good division races and the wild card races to keep fans interested. Not this year. The 2010 season is playing out like a series of David versus Goliath duels from coast to coast. And, David, with his dollar store slingshot, is beating up on ole Goliath.

Every division leader in MLB has a smaller payroll than the second place team. (The payroll numbers used for this article are from the AP and are pre-trade deadline. Historically, every team in a pennant race will increase their budgets when making trades in July and August). In the National League West, the Padres lead the Giants (hence the appropriate Goliath reference). This is despite the MLB’s second smallest payroll. The Padres are paying their players only slightly more than one third of the Giants combined salaries of at least $97,828,833. Same in the AL East, the Yankees are spending $206,333,389 + on their major league roster. This is the most in the majors. Yet, they trail the Rays (ae least $71,923,471) in the standings by virtue of the results of their head-to-head match-ups.

The list goes on, the Braves are spending the 15th most money but lead the Phillies, fourth in payroll by a couple games. The Rangers just left bankruptcy court room last week but lead the Los Angeles Angels in the AL West. The Reds are leading the Cardinals, and the small market Twins are ahead of the White Sox. This is not saying that parity has arrived in big league cities … it hasn’t. The penurious Pirates, Athletics, Diamondbacks are getting what they pay for in relative terms, not many wins. Some things just don’t change or at least change quickly.

Oddly enough great pennant races are shaping up in the one sport without a salary cap. Remember, the NFL’s “uncapped year” is a Haley’s Comet type situation. Don’t count on seeing it again in your lifetime. So, forgive me for saying this. Don’t get out the pompoms just yet. Buy more peanuts and more Cracker Jack. It’s time to take another look at baseball and cheer for the little guy.

Ten Reasons Why Americans Love Football:

1. We are the best at football.  No other country comes close to us.  We own football like we own proceesed lunch meat, Disney World, neck tattoos and Beyonce.
 
2. It’s violent. Who ever  watched “The Sopranos” or any Arnold Schwarzenegger movie for the acting.

3. Little kids look funny playing football.  Kids play tackle football in full pads at five and six years old. Have you seen a live 3 ½ foot bobble head try to run sixty yards with 21 other bobble heads in hot pursuit? That’s funny.
 
4. It's appointment television. Our commitment is manageable. You know when (and where) to find games on your television.  Games are either in prime time or on the weekend. If you want to be a casual fan, it's easy.  You don’t have to keep up with football everyday through 80 plus, or even 160 plus games like other sports.


5. It’s appointment gambling and for some, it’s a manageable vice … if you want it to be. And yes, fantasy football is also a form of gambling.  Then, again so is paying taxes via buying lottery tickets.

6. The players look like superheroes. Do you really want to see C. C. Sabathia or Shaquille O’Neal without a shirt? Adrian Petersen is a walking anatomy lesson. And even the fat guys on the offensive line look cool when they put on twenty-something pounds of space age kevlar, impact resisting body armor.

7. Football players are Americans, and they speak English.  The athletes and coaches are predominately Americans. This is not so true in baseball, hockey and lately basketball with the globalization of the NBA. We don't need a translator for football. (Although sometimes, subtitles would be nice).

8. Kickers. They really don’t fit in with everybody else. They are lees than pint-size, and they don’t practice with the team.  These hummels only play for a few seconds every game, yet their success is critical to the outcome of every close game. We either jeer them like the nerdy kid with one entire hand up his nose, or we celebrate them like the guy (not Al Gore) who created the interweb.

9. The Super Bowl. You can lose yourself, and your interest and your girlfriend in the legnthy baseball or basketball play-offs.  It doesn't make sense to come off a the beach sunburnt and browse sixty channells to find a second round NBA play-off gamre.  Then, there is the soccer.  Even if  soccer were  a very minor part of the American sports fan’s consciousness, we still could not tolerate the vuvuzelas and the World Cup every year. Finally, golf and NASCAR are not even clearly sports to the guy making dents in his couch every weekend, and the PGA and Cup play-offs are about as manufactured yet inconsistent as a fast food value menu.

10. Ask any coming of age high school boy, and he will tell you … cheerleaders.

 

Did I leave something off the list? Post a comment and let me know.  Also, please check out my SEC football posts at:
Sean Conway on 2010 University of Tennessee Football
Sean Conway on 2010 University of South Carolina Football

Because Real Men Don't Send e-vites to College Football Websites

As noted here very recently, I am now writing columns on college football in addition to this site.  Currently, I am contributing to www.chuckoliver.net  The posting will be more than once a week each on the University of Tennessee and University of South Carolina programs.  These posts will not update the latest injury to a freshman  linebacker, the recritment of a high school sophmore, or likely predict a undefeated seasons for either program.  They will provide researched opinions in a readable, unbiased and most importantly, from a slightly off-beat perspective. The link to the Univeristy of Tennessee Volunteers is: Sean Conway's 2010 Columns on Tennessee Volunteer Football.  The link to the South Carolina Gamecocks is: Sean Conway's 2010 Columns on South Carolina Gamecock Football. 

There will also be other contributors on each page. If you take a look, you may read an article by another contributor before you actually scroll down to my latest.  I have wriiten two columns on each program already.  Please also take a look at the entire site to read news and columns on your favorite SEC, ACC or C-USA team.

Thanks, and I would love to hear/read what you think. 


Sean

Notes From a Delinquent Writer

Notes If you are a member of the few, the (hopefully) proud, followers of this site: I’m sorry. Hopefully, I can reward your loyalty with some … thing. Here are some observations from the summer of 2010, as defined by the Cobb County (GA) School Calendar.

The Lebron Thing

Lebron James did the right thing for his “brand” when he held his press conference announcing his exodus from Cleveland on ESPN. He went to a pre-packaged All-Star team in the Miami Heat and made his “decision” a prime time spectacle. Lebron will win championships in Miami. People will forget the ESPN special. We will remember the highlights and the ad campaigns to come. Accountants and salespeople at Nike and the NBA were ecstatic. The “LBJ Decision ’10” drew a bigger audience than the prime-time NBA and NFL drafts. The show received higher rating s than any NBA play-off game before the finals. That’s good pub and good business. Like it or not, the The King is selling more and more shoes for Nike across the globe.

Not since “Must-See-TV,” has Thursday night programming garnered so much attention. Yes, the mainstream media crapped on it. Why? Because it was staged. The media was virtually ignored and certainly devalued, ESPN decided to chase ratings, credibility be damned. By the way, Jim Gray was the perfect moderator/ table setter for the one hour special. With a guy of Gray’s stature, ESPN and Lebron’s handlers did not even need to buy heavy duty the puppet strings. Just like with the Tiger Woods mea culpa months ago, the mainstream media was unnecessary and practically uninvited. Talking heads and beat writers were virtually ignored. They got their feelings hurt and cried like a kid that just lost his play date. Lebron James (the person) may have taken a little hit incredibility, but the Lebron James brand did not. His sponsors, the NBA and ESPN quietly loved it. Do you think Nike execs would have said, “Lebron, you really shouldn’t have brought so much attention to basketball in the middle of summer?”

The Kid Baseball Thing

Some six year olds can play baseball all summer anywhere, anytime. Parents should not encourage every six year old to play baseball anywhere, anytime.

The Kid Baseball Thing and Just Plain Good Baseball

If your team makes three errors in an inning it will hurt the ballclub. It doesn’t matter if the boys are six going on seven or twenty-six going on twenty-seven.

The Ozzie Guillen Thing

Ozzie Guillen is a lot like Charles Barkley. Some of the stuff those two say is dead-on. Often, they say what needs to be said. Other times, their musings are misguided at best. Should Charles Barkley have really talked about running for governor before he was a registered voter? On Ozzie’s latest rant, yes, Latin baseball players are treated differently than the Asian players. What Guillen chooses to forget is that the Latin players will do anything (including fake their age) to become a part of the baseball fraternity and escape the economics of Central America.

Some of these kids do learn to play baseball with yesterday’s tree limbs as bats and make-shift baseballs. These Latin players are almost always teenagers are more than happy to be paid to train on immaculate fields, receive state of the art coaching, buffet meals and live in air conditioned dormitories for the opportunity to play minor league baseball in the U. S. These players are not ready to play at the Major league level without the training and tutoring provided by MLB clubs.

Then there are the Cuban ballplayers which Ozzie chooses to forget. The Cubans are also Latin ballplayers. They are treated very similarly to the Asians because they are generally not available and desirable to the Major League teams until they are in their twenties and polished ballplayers. (Why spend money on someone too young, too raw, or too scared to defect a communist country). I have advanced well past my twenties (chronologically) and still would have second thoughts about defecting out of any foreign country. So, once the Cubans escape the Castro thing, they are more equipped to have their Miami-based agents (sweeping generalization) get them their money.

Finally, this blog will continue with more frequent, but equally, sanguine posts. Thank you very much for reading and commenting. The updates this fall will most likely be more digestible (shorter) moving forward. In the next days or week, there will be news about my new assignments writing about the religion of the south, SEC football.