Zach Brain

"All in the game yo, all in the game."

Tue, 22 Dec, 2009 08:43:32 GMT

Fans of the Minnesota Vikings are not happy with the way that this year’s version of the Christmas Story is playing out. The “Baby Jesus”, or Brett Favre, is beginning to let everyone know who is really in charge. The “Three Wise Men”, Zygi, Brad and Rick Speilman, have recently proven that they may not be as shrewd as we once thought. Furthermore, it is clear that a level of hubris at Winter Park has been reached comparable to that of what we see only in New England. The main difference is obviously that one side has three Super Bowl rings while the other has a new and unexplainable five year “marriage” contract. Ragnar and his fellow braid wearing and sword swinging brethren are still uncertain what they will find underneath their tree this season. The opportunity for Minnesaota fans to dream about a championship is all we can guarantee. Purple stockings could be filled with lumps of coal or the diamond studded rings of Super Bowl champions that have eluded this “storied franchise” since its inception. In order to help illustrate the mess that the Vikings organization is in, I will shift from the Christmas story to one of my favorite stories of all time that was played out in five chapters. Still looking for that perfect Christmas gift? Head to Best Buy and purchase the underappreciated mini-series, “The Wire” for anyone over the age of 16. A blend of the characters from this Baltimore based drama can be seen in many of the millionaires and billionaires who run and work for the 2009 NFC North champions.

Proposition Joe, “I treated you like a son.”

Marlo, “I wasn't made to play the son.”

These words could have been uttered on the sidelines this past week in the third quarter of the Vikings/Panthers game in what I will argue will be the defining tipping point of the Vikings season. I do not know which way it will tip but things are not looking good especially when you consider the following pieces of information that are being leaked from the Vikings locker room. Before the incident there was an apparent halftime rant by the head coach. A rant can have multiple purposes. If however, those in which the rant was directed at, find it to be “entertaining” you probably missed your mark. Brad seems to want to play the role of the father and it appears that he has succeeded, at least to this extent. Players off of the record have come out and compared to the half time speech this past Sunday night to that of a parent chastising a teenager. Coach Childress is treating the players like they are his children. Unfortunately, in return he is getting about as much respect that a grown man will give his dentist. They may listen to his advice and go to him for assistance on how to take care of their teeth, but if they are chastised and made to feel like they are twelve they will simply stop listening and never return.

Proposition Joe to Stringer Bell, “The feeling is it ain't right for you to be at the head of our table, when you can't call off your dog. Call it a crisis of leadership.”

A simple definition of leadership is that it is the art of motivating a person or group of people towards achieving a common goal. In addition, a leader is to be inspiring and the director of the task at hand. A leader possesses the skills and personality that allow others to want to follow in their direction. Sunday night we saw that the so called leader of the team was clearly missing his most crucial follower. The reason this follower is important is because he plays a very similar role as the head coach but he does it on the field. Once he is under center it is out of the coach’s hands and if the two individuals are not only on different pages but almost refusing to agree out of pride and spite, well then there is what Proposition Joe would call a crisis in leadership.

Burrrell, “What makes you think they'll promote the wrong man?”

Daniels, “We do it all the time.”

Those in support of the contract extension that Brad Childress received last month when the team was 8-1 and still in the hunt for home field advantage throughout the playoffs, point to his improving record over the last four years. 6-10, 8-8, 10-6 and anything from 11-5 to 13-3 this season. On paper, this makes sense. However, when one factors in the 5-9, 2-12, 6-8, 6-8, 1-13, 5-9, 9-5, 8-6, 7-7 and 7-7 records of this season’s opponents it is hard to imagine a team that is this loaded doing any worse. The morning the contract was signed they had 22 players on their roster who are in the top five in fan voting for the Pro Bowl. Combine that with the fact that Minnesota has played one of the easiest schedules in the history of the league and you really shouldn’t have expected anything less.

D’Angelo, “Yeah, but, Stringer, if you don't pay a n****, he ain't gonna work for you.”

Stringer Bell, “What, you think a n****’* gonna get a job? You think...you think it's gonna be like, 'F*** it, let me quit this game here and go to college'? No, they're gonna buck a little, but they ain't gonna walk. And in the end, you gonna get respect.”

Why extend the contract in the middle of the season? What was the rush? Was Zygi worried that Brad wanted to take his “kickass” offense down to South Bend so he had to lock him up? I am continuously amazed as to how owners who are apparently savvy enough to make more money than 99.99% of the world, make decisions that make no sense logically speaking. We all had an idea before that the players did not respect the coach. Now we know. They were winning in spite of the lack of connection between their leader, who clearly is an intelligent man that works as hard as any coach in the league, but is missing the intangibles that we see other successful coaches have. Bill Belichick may be a jerk to the media, which is in part being a jerk to his fan base, but there isn’t a guy on that team who wouldn’t lie down on the railroad tracks for him. Conversely, it appears that in the Twin Cities, players will not only refuse to lie down but some are shoveling the coal in to the train, adding the dangerous fuel to the rapidly growing fire that is spreading through the facilities.

Cutty, "The game done changed.”

Slim Charles, “Game's the same, just got more fierce.”

The game is fiercer than ever before on so many levels. The amount of money that the NFL generates is mind-boggling. With the exception of a few terrible sports towns that have a pathetic team to support, stadiums are sold out on a weekly basis during a recession that has almost every other industry struggling to keep their heads above water. For many Americans there are two seasons. Football season and the rest of the year. And the rest of the year has become part of the season as well. This recent chapter of the Favre saga would not be playing out like it is if it weren’t for the events that took place and dominated ESPN the months leading up to the start of training camp. Brad Childress may have lost the locker room this weekend but it started to slip away when he made it clear that the rules didn’t apply to the guy that has been doing it his way his entire career. The rest of the players went along with it because they knew the predicament that they were in. Vikings fans heard and embraced the term, “final piece of the puzzle.” Everyone knew that #4 was needed to help the team achieve the ultimate goal. Both sides had a mutual understanding but when the deal was made, one side had the advantage and he is now showing who truly is boss.

Stringer, “This here game is more than the rep you carry, the corner you hold. You gotta be fierce, I know that, but more than that, you gotta show some flex, give and take on both sides.”

When I look at a head coach, I try to imagine him holding up the Lombardi trophy at the end of the year. Often times this is easy to envision (Mike Tomlin, Tony Dungy, Brian Billick) and yes, I intentionally mentioned only Vikings coordinators of the past. Other times it nearly impossible to see certain head coaches on the podium with their wives and telling Jack Buck’s kid how special this group of guys was (Mike Tice, Romeo Crennel, Jim Zorn). I honestly have always had a hard time picturing Childress in the winner’s circle. However, I do not think it is impossible. I knew that despite having some decent teams, Mike Tice would never be a Super Bowl winning head coach. And up until this season I knew that Brad Childress would never be a Super Bowl winning head coach. That is, until I saw that final piece of the puzzle ride into Winter Park. Can I picture Childress alone holding up the most coveted trophy in America? No, but I can picture him up there with the guy who helped him get that contract extension. If Brad and Brett can “show some flex, give and take on both sides” together they still have a chance to raise that silver football high in the air on a balmy Sunday night in six weeks in Miami. Brad will just need to know when to take Brett’s cue and allow the leader of this team to grab the microphone to thank his Vikings teammates, fans and owners for helping him win his team its first Super Bowl ever.

SECOND CHANCES

Fri, 14 Aug, 2009 04:52:29 GMT

“Sometimes you just have to man up.” A captain of the varsity football team that I coach for, recently said these seven words to a teammate of his when he was questioned as to why he needed to lift weights if he hated it so much. I was in the middle of doing some work on my laptop when I heard this conversation start. I paused to listen. I was not only impressed by the way in which this senior leader was encouraging his teammate and friend to not only find ways to become a better football player but he chose this moment to pass on one of the many very important life lessons that football, or any team sport for that matter, can teach today’s young men and women. The six-two 225 pound offensive tackle who amazingly benches the same weight that he squats (we are working on this by the way) continued to explain to this underclassman that lifting weights and working hard in practice is just like a lot of things you do in life. Whether it be school, work or taking care of your home, these are all jobs that can be enjoyable but they are often times done out of the desire to live a richer and fuller life. The tasks that we go through on a daily basis are often times not fun but they must be done. Yes, enjoyment can come while the work is taking place but the real happiness is living in the moment of achievement.

The moment of achievement is when everything you were doing comes together and you are able to see the end result. A chef slaves in the kitchen for hours and in the end has a meal. A carpenter pounds his hammer for months and in the end has a home. A father raises his son and after 18 years his son is a man. However, in all three scenarios along with countless others, it is not just a matter of time that allows us to get to our end goal. Give a guy a kitchen and he will be able to mess around with some food, turn on the stove and make something to eat. But it takes real work and concentration to make a five-star meal. Give a guy a yard filled with wood, a hammer and box of nails and he can build a shelter. But it takes skill, knowledge and extreme attention to detail to construct a stable home. Give a man a son and provided that he gets adequate food and shelter, after eighteen years his son will be a man. But much like the chef and the carpenter, the finished product of the father will be that of what he puts into it over the course of eighteen years. We have seen time and time again that almost anyone can make a child but only a real man can raise a man.

Michael Vick did not have a father figure in his life that was a positive influence when he was growing up. Is this part of the reason the 2001 No. 1 draft pick and once highest paid player in football decided to almost throw all of his fame and fortune away during the greatest time of the most prestigious sports league this country has ever seen? Probably. Maybe. Not really sure. That doesn’t matter right now. That is the past. With only three weeks remaining before the start of the 2009 NFL season, one can only focus on the present and near future. Throughout the first twenty-something years of Michael Vick’s life, he did not have that father figure. That doesn’t matter right now. What matters right now is that he is fortunate enough to have a mentor and a father figure who is the main reason we see the former Falcon back on an NFL roster today. Not only can Michael Vick learn a lot from Tony Dungy but so can everyone who follows (or doesn’t follow for the matter) the NFL.

Dungy, who is regarded as one of the finest men in the often troubled world of sports that we live in, retired from his lofty head coaching position with the Indianapolis Colts months ago. People were confused. He wasn’t suffering from burnout. He wasn’t stressed. He was at the pinnacle of his profession and everyone looked up to him. For Dungy, it was just time to do something different. While some choose to take their millions and retire to a warmer climate to sleep in and golf every day (which is perfectly acceptable by the way) the Super Bowl winning coach wanted to do something to help a generation of young people realize their potential. He had done some great work already with thousands of players who already made it to the NFL but as the coach puts it, these were men for the most part that had already gotten some good mentoring along the way. It was time for Dungy to reach out to those that didn’t have the benefit of the college or NFL environments. This made his decision to reach out to Michael Vick even more difficult to understand. Vick had his opportunity and blew it. He had people wanting to help him in college and in the pros. They were invested in him and he let them down and in a big way. The world turned their backs on Vick when he was convicted in August 2007 of conspiracy and running a dog fighting operation. Vick was sentenced to 23 months in federal prison and suspended indefinitely by the NFL. The world turned their back on him. I turned my back on him.

You don’t have to be Christian like Dungy to believe that the community should be structured. Wisdom, which is a combination of age, intelligence and experience, ought to be passed down from elders to juniors. From the Tony Dungy’s of the world to the Michael Vick’s. From the captain of the varsity football team to an underclassman trying to make the squad. From a father to a son. This isn’t the case too much of the time in our society and is the affects are obvious. What Tony Dungy has done and is doing isn’t easy but it is necessary. In order for us to help correct society’s flaws, we must work together to help the generation following in our footsteps. We must pass down the wisdom we have acquired throughout our journey in life.

Will Michael Vick be able to make defensive coordinators lose sleep at night and have defensive backs run into each other out of confusion in which way to go? Probably. Maybe. Not really sure. What I do know is that Michael Vick is getting a second chance in life. Many men, much more influential and successful than Vick by the way, have committed much more heinous acts and have been forgiven. Don’t get me wrong, we all understand how appalling dog fighting is, and neither I nor Tony Dungy, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell or anyone in the Eagle organization condone it. But once again, that is the past. I urge you to take a look at the man that spent two years in prison often times crying himself to sleep. Take a look at the man that spent days and nights wondering what went wrong. Time spent trying to find himself. Can we be like Dungy and forgive Vick and take an honest look at the person who is leaving that prison who saying he’s sorry? The man ready to apologize with actions and not just his words. The man who wants to get back to his three children and to be that father figure he never had. The man who has been given a second chance to stop the cycle.

As a football fan I am curious to see what this second chance will do for Michael Vick on the football field. As a man I am curious and excited to see what he does with this second chance off of the field. I am curious to see how Michael Vick takes this second opportunity to be a man. I am hoping that one day when his son asks him how he got through this time in his life he will look at him and say, “Sometimes you just have to man up.”

NFL's Main Event

Sun, 19 Apr, 2009 07:24:17 GMT

If you are looking for a little insight as to whom the Kansas City Chiefs plan on selecting with the third pick in the NFL draft next weekend you have come to the wrong place. I’m not saying there won’t be anticipation, speculation or even some jubilation here at the Sports Page Network over the course of the next seven days, but don’t expect this football fan to take part in any of the pomp and circumstance. Don’t get me wrong, I will check in with the mother ship that is known as ESPN throughout at least the first two rounds but I will get neither too high nor too low with any selection. I try to look at the draft the same way as I look at the weather. I don't care if it is on television, radio or online, my theory is less is more. Just give me a few sentences on what you think might happen, a little bit about why it is happening and then a quick recap. I know that there is a chance it can be 75 and sunny (like yesterday) or 41 and rainy (like today). I am fine with it either way. Just don’t tell me you know for sure it is going to be one way and then be totally stunned when the exact opposite happens. It is time we stop trying to not only predict but control the wind.

To further point to the power of the shield, one needs to only look to the release of the NFL schedules last week. In Minneapolis, our local sports radio station literally changed its programming to add an additional thirty minutes in afternoon drive for the evening guys to breakdown the 2009-2010 Vikings schedule. Nothing points to the popularity and power of the NFL more than a successful sports news and entertainment outlet adjusting their schedule to talk about how many road games their team is going to play in warm weather climates against non-playoff teams in the month of December. Don’t get me wrong. I am not ripping the decision. In fact, I applaud the move and I listened to the first fifteen minutes of the program just to hear the schedule breakdown for a third time that day. I will also admit to going online more than once and checking my phone throughout the afternoon playing out scenarios to see if my squad had a legit chance of 12-4 or if it was going to be another 9-7/10-6 season per usual. Our hopes and dreams lie in the hands of Roger Goodell and his disciples so it is no wonder that non-events have become main events. As we do with everything that becomes popular in American society, we get way to excited and react to minor occurrences like a ten year old boy hopped up on Mountain Dew and Snickerdoodles at his Chuck E. Cheese birthday party who just won five tickets playing “Whack-A-Mole”

The irony of it all comes up whenever any draft analyst, expert or scout voices their opinion on what the Motor City Kitties should do in this year’s draft to help them not go 0-32. Or they specualte as to who has the easiest road to a division title next season. The new trend is for everyone to qualify their predictions with, comments like, “The draft is hit and miss guys. You really never know for sure….but with that being said….!” Or, “There is no such thing as a sure pick but this tackle out of Virginia is a can’t miss….now I said the same thing about a 6-6 Sports Illustrated cover boy two decades ago!” (This of course is followed by self-indulgent laughter by a bunch of guys who paid way too much for obvious hair plugs and who are getting paid more than 80% of the population to study nineteen year old boy’s bubbles.)

Here is a short list of a few of the things that I stumbled across when doing some quick research on the draft: There are multiple “NFL Draft ‘Machines’”. I refuse to click on any sports story that uses the word machine unless it is reference to a George Michael comeback. If you want to, you can “Discover your inner draftnik.”. Who wouldn’t want to do that? If you Google, “NFL Draft” you get 14,800,000 results. That is 300,000 more than a search for “Hilton Video”. (A friend told me that stat.) There exists such a thing as an actual draft glossary. I am willing to bet there are thousands of guys that will actually study this before next weekend. You can spend a week reading up on everything that is available on guys who will be in next year’s draft. You can dig into actual combine databases and see everything the scouts, coaches and team Gucci’s see. These are just a few reasons that grown men will don Chad Pennington jerseys and wait in line for hours to go drink cheap beer and yell both enthusiastically or negatively at a stage in which their next hero or villain (who may or may not even be of legal age to drink by the way) puts on a dorky looking hat and takes the stage to shake the hand of the most powerful man in America.

I’m not telling fans to curb their enthusiasm when looking at next year’s strength of schedule. And I hope that I too can celebrate and think about how much potential my squad’s pick has to becoming a bookend tackle or a decade long shutdown corner. But I also know that teams who saw Miami and Atlanta on their 2008 calendar felt like they were starting the season 2-0 and that within the last ten years I have seen my team draft both a receiver who literally couldn’t catch and a guy who was literally crazy. I'm not sure which was worse.

Like I said before, I look at the NFL draft, schedule and everything that lies in between like I look at the weather. Ebby Calvin once said it best. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes it rains. Think about that for awhile.

CALIPARI TAKING UK JOB: Kentucky Basketball needs John Calipari. John Calipari needs Kentucky basketball.

Tue, 31 Mar, 2009 11:40:18 GMT

Pressure, (noun), the burden of physical or mental distress; the constraint of circumstance: the weight of social or economic imposition.

When doing a few searches on the internet for synonyms of pressure or to be more exact, “social pressure”, a few of the words that came up included but are not limited to the following; compulsion, urgency, persuasion, stress, affliction, coercion, trouble, hardship, humiliation, misfortune, repression and unnaturalness just to name a few. If three or more of these words can be used at any place in your job description, I encourage you to start updating your resume as soon as you are done reading this blog. I have had a few jobs that fall into this category including my last one, which for the better part of the last two years I searched desperately for a way out. With that being said, I was not working under a contract that guaranteed me 35 million dollars over the course of the next eight years, making me the highest paid person in my profession.

The most interesting side story in college basketball this March was that one of the nation’s best college basketball coaches was being wooed by one of the most storied basketball programs in the entire country. The University of Kentucky boosters made it very clear that not only was recently fired coach Billy Gillispie not the man for the job but that there are very few men in this country who are qualified for or even worthy enough to be asked to coach the men’s Wildcat basketball team. The list of candidates was short, sweet and sexy. It started and ended with Memphis Tigers coach John Calipari, whose record over the last nine years is an astounding 253-68.

Great coaches have a fairly equal balance of the following three skills; game management, game preparation and recruiting. It has become clearer in recent years that having the ability to convince some of the nation’s top talent to go to your school is the crucial ingredient to having a successful college basketball program. At Memphis, Calipari had two of the top four recruits next season. This would be a remarkable number at any school but at Memphis it is simply amazing. Granted, the Tigers are the most major mid-major but they are still just that. A mid-major. No titles. Very few big NBA names, (Anfernee Hardaway and Derrick Rose). Very few national celebrities, (Fred Thompson of Law and Order fame and former U.S. Senator and of course Wink Martendale). But despite being in a non-BCS conference and having to compete against schools on the recruitment trail that have much more to offer including exposure and tradition, Calipari has won consistently for close to a decade.

In a meeting with his players to discuss the opportunity that was in front of him, the coach, whose team was prematurely dismissed from this year’s NCAA tournament, compared the Kentucky basketball program to Notre Dame football. He didn’t need to say more than that as his players knew that much like how they wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to get drafted in the NBA lottery, there coach couldn’t turn down one of the greatest coaching jobs in the country.

This seems to be a perfect fit. There are very few coaches that are big enough, let alone available, to coach at Kentucky. At the same time there are very few programs that are big enough for a coach with the resume, skills and relative youth that John Calipari encompasses. By hiring this years Sports Illustrated Coach of the Year, Kentucky will not only find themselves as favorites in the SEC next year, they should end up in the national title hunt on a regular basis within two or three years. This is not an exaggeration. It is an expectation. Coach Cal will not only bring over some of his top recruits for the 2009-2010 season but you would have to imagine that this would be the tipping point for a plethora of high school juniors and seniors for years to come. Memphis may be bumped off some radars all together and Rick Pitino’s job of getting the in-state talent to avoid Lexington for Louisville will get much more difficult if and when the deal goes through.

I have never been to the Blue Grass State but I have seen the Kentucky boosters in their element. In 1996, then coach Pitino and the Wildcats had what is considered one of the greatest college basketball teams of all time. In the Final Four, the fat cats sporting their oversized fur coats and smoking their victory cigars, strutted the streets of Minneapolis yelling obscenities at Wake fans stating that, “Tiny Tim Duncan couldn’t handle Kentucky basketball!” Ever since then, I have enjoyed watching the Wildcats lose. But now it has gone too far. Rock bottom for the UK faithful is not making the tournament, which is something that happened for the first time this season in nearly two decades. If things go according to plan, this won’t happen again for at least another twenty years. Despite my disgust with Kentucky basketball, it will be a good thing for everyone who enjoys college basketball to see them rise to the top once again. We need teams that we love to hate and it is simply too difficult to hate a team that is just average at best. Getting back to the Notre Dame comparison, you can look at the Irish football program as a perfect example of this.

You want to talk about pressure? As long as Calipari is in charge of the Wildcats, pressure is what will be placed on the east coach blue-chippers who are debating what school will be the best place to fine tune their skills before jumping to the NBA. If you didn’t enjoy watching UK in the NIT, don’t worry. Now that the largest coaching contract in the history of college basketball is agreed to this week, you won’t have to worry about the Wildcats receiving an invitation for that tournament any time soon.

Thirty minutes and three weeks that can't be beat.

Tue, 17 Mar, 2009 09:27:57 GMT

When I was a young child there were only a few days every year that stood out to me as being special. On a personal level, one day would have been the last day of the school year. Now that I think about it, the first day of school brought equal amounts of anticipation and enthusiasm. When it came to holidays, Christmas morning and of course my birthday were neck and neck. In the wonderful world of sports, three Sundays stood out as being the best and most anticipated days each and every year. The most obvious is Super Bowl Sunday, which has always been great but has somehow evolved into a national holiday. Secondly, and this one has grown in importance in my old age as well, Sunday at the Master’s is a personal favorite of mine and a day that I would prefer to spend alone, having absolutely no contact with the outside world. This is especially true when Young Eldrick is in the hunt. So I have a Super Sunday, a Major Sunday and while it may only be thirty minutes, my favorite Sunday was and is Selection Sunday. The day usually lands on the third Sunday of March, four days before the big tournament begins. It allows sports fans young and old to gather around their televisions flipping back and forth between the pre-selection show and the ACC Championship game. Often times that game, among others, still would be undecided when the brackets were announced. Everyone would be on the edge of their seats wondering who the number one seeds were going to be. Dozens of questions were being asked. Was that big upset back in November over Coach K’s squad going to allow their alma mater to earn an at-large bid? Who would be snubbed? What Mid-Majors were going to make a run this year? How does Princeton continue to stay in these big games with ten percent of the talent as their opposition? Jerry Tarkanian? Bubbles? Brackets? It was the beginning of the greatest three weeks in sports. It was Selection Sunday.

Hardly a day goes by in which I don’t hear the phrase or speak it myself, “What did we do before the internet?” Well I can tell you exactly what I did, at least on one Sunday afternoon in the middle of March for about seven years straight. With a pen and pad in hand, I waited to write down exactly when and where the Dukes and Georgetowns of the basketball world were going to play. Even though a tape was in the VCR waiting to record the announcement of the brackets from the East, West, South and Midwest regions, I sat there writing down the numbers: 1 and 16, 8 and 9, 5 and 12...just waiting to fill in the blanks. I knew the local paper would have a bracket that I would be cutting out and taping to the refrigerator but I couldn’t wait. I needed to know the match-ups so that I could begin to try to solve the puzzle. Who was going survive the road to the Final Four? The music would play and chills would run up the spine of my back. As an anonymous group of old curmudgeons drank stale coffee, ate multiple jelly filled doughnuts at some undisclosed location, determining the final two or three teams that they were going to let in to the dance, I would eagerly wait to see who got screwed and who was given the easiest path towards the championship. I waited to watch an entire gymnasium filled with players, coaches and fans leap to there feet when they saw their name flash up on the screen letting them know that they were heading to the big dance for the first time in school history. I waited to see who was going to have to settle for another trip to the NIT. I watched for the speculation, the reflection and of course I waited for the over the top reactions.

It wasn’t just the announcing of the 64, now 65 teams, that got me all pumped up. It was that this was the beginning of something thrilling and mysterious. The greatest three week stretch in sports was about to begin and nobody knew what was going to happen next. Who was this year’s Tyus Edney? Can we get another George Mason or is it too soon to ask for that? Can somebody please have a bigger game and a bigger shot than Christian Laettner did against Kentucky, circa 1992? Please?

Last week, the creator of the song that will forever be tied to the NCAA basketball tournament, passed away. Doug Towey created the perfect bow to wrap up the college basketball season. I will be the first to admit that, like everything else in our society, the tournament, selection show and all other things March Madness related, have become a little too commercialized. However, I am still able to look past all of the artificial hype and appreciate the first thirty minutes of the tournament, and I try to take in every single minute of action all the way through One Shining Moment. Why do I do this? Why do we all do this? If for no other reason, it is to take us back to when we were young and loved it all for exactly what it was. It takes us back to our childhood. A time when 63 games, now 64, were just that. A collection of games that gave us more than just a tournament. They give us the greatest three week stretch in all of sports. Who is going to be this year’s Santa Clara? I don’t know. Nobody knows. And that is the beauty of it all.

VIKINGS STILL A QB AWAY

Fri, 27 Feb, 2009 05:29:56 GMT

Long before losing to the Eagles in the wildcard round of the NFL playoffs the consensus opinion around the Twin Cities and from the national sports wonks was that the Vikings were a quarterback away from being a true Super Bowl contender. With a sore back from two hours of shoveling a heavy Minnesota snow last night, I woke up this morning in dire need of a cup of Guatemala Peace Coffee, aspirin and more importantly some good news from my favorite team on the first day of NFL free agency.

For a fourth round pick, Zigi Wilf and the Minnesota Vikings are now the proud owners of something called Sage Rosenfels. Yesterday the Vikings were a quarterback away. Today? The Vikings are a quarterback away. The fact that Sage may already be the second best quarterback in the NFC North says a lot more about the division than the guy whose parents decided to name him after a garden herb. Herb names are fine for girls. The first email I received on this subject was from a buddy who said he didn’t even like to say “Sage”. I hope Sage grew up next to some kid named Thor.

After reading the news I turned on the radio to hear the response from those closest to the situation. I heard a local “expert”, who I normally respect, say that Brad Childress hasn’t had great luck bringing in veteran quarterbacks. He actually pointed to Kelly Holcomb, Brad Johnson and Gus Frerotte as not becoming significant, contributing quarterbacks in Chilli’s version of the west coast offense. I literally threw my coffee pot at the radio. Lets see, instead of bringing in a veteran quarterback who would be better than all three of those guys ever were in Minnesota and one that would give this team the best chance to go to a Super Bowl, you go after a guy who will probably never be as good as any of the three veterans that our local expert pointed to? I guess the good news is Sage only threw ten interceptions last year. Too bad he only threw six touchdowns. I had six touchdowns. Sage reminds me of a younger Gus without the Pro Bowl capabilities. That is not a good thing.

Last year brad Childress almost won a preposterous statement competition, and yes there was an actual competition, when he said, “We have two good quarterbacks and that is a good problem to have.” So Chilli, is this now a really good problem or a great one? Chances are Gus (now there is a man’s name) will be cut so the choices at Winter Park this summer will be T-Jack, Sage and Booty, aka, John David Booty. We don’t even have a “has been” anymore. The Vikings have “never were’s” and more sadly “never will be’s”.

"A-Fraud" The nickname says it all.

Fri, 13 Feb, 2009 04:48:05 GMT

Saturday’s news that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003 sent shockwaves through the sports world and may have delivered Major League Baseball its most devastating black eye yet. We are past arguing the fact that baseball is no longer America’s pastime. Now we are just hoping that the sport that we all grew up playing and watching doesn’t fall farther down mainstream society’s ladder of relevance.

The number of losers to come out of this story, of which we have only seen the tip of the iceberg, is astronomical. On the macro level, MLB will suffer to a great extent as two of its most prolific hitters of all-time and arguably the greatest pitcher of the past thirty years will forever be linked to performance enhancing drugs. I can’t count the number of times in the last few years in which a conversation about Barry Bonds didn’t end with a comment like, “It doesn’t matter. Pretty soon A-Rod will be the true homerun king and we can forget that Barry Bonds ever even existed.” Oh how we wish this was true. I guess the news is a little less devastating to me because, while Alex may not have been as big off a jerk as Barry, (and lets face it, Bonds was the number one jackass of all time) the Derek Jeter wannabe was not too warm and cuddly himself. Everyone admired his amazing bat but from the get go it was clear that he was in it for of course the money, which we all would have taken (10 years, $252 million) but the vanity in all of it as well. Even A-Rod’s former manager Joe Torre felt the need to throw his ex-third baseman under the bus. In his weak attempt to become a modern day Jim Bouton, Torre went out of his way to make Rodriguez look like a fool. The now Dodger manager hit on a number of hard hitting topics such as, Alex’s unwillingness to get his own coffee and the clubhouse nickname, “A-Fraud” that was tossed around by both players and coaches on a daily basis. Sorry to break it to you Joe but Selena Roberts and David Epstein of Sports Illustrated sort of stole your thunder this week. Good luck on that book signing tour in Southern California next week.

When you take a step back and look at the new “Big Three” in the MLB steroid saga, it would be difficult to find a less attractive threesome to hang out with. You know that game you play in which you name three famous people that you would like to have dinner with? How about picking three baseball stars you would least like to have a beer with? These guys would almost have to be one, two and three in no particular order. I would rather have a John Rocker type at the table. I wouldn’t agree with most of what came out of his mouth but I am sure the conversation would at least hold some sort of entertainment factor with not knowing what was going to be said next. And at the very least, we would get to hear somebody telling the truth. Refreshing.

Ironically, when it comes to a small winner in this tale, the news probably brought a slight smile to the enormous head of Barry “Don’t sit in my Barcalounger” Bonds. It of course doesn’t let him off of the hook but he is no longer the main villain in this sad but pathetically true steroids saga. If everyone cheated in the past twenty-five years do we throw all of the records out? Do we let them all stand with a pathetic little asterisk next to each name that has been tainted? Either way, when it comes to Mr. Bonds he no longer has to worry about his “records” being broken anytime soon by anyone that is or was clean.

In the end, once again the real losers are the fans. Baseball is not like football, where we just want to see the biggest, fastest and strongest men in the world bang heads for sixty minutes and then wait for them to do it all over again the following Sunday. We know that the freaks of nature in the NFL are juicing up and we simply don’t care. In baseball we do care. Baseball builds on itself and it has for generations. That is until now. The foundation is crumbling. History is being made and destroyed at the same time. The little trust that was there last week is now gone. When the other 103 names from MLB’s performance enhancing drugs survey list come out there should be no surprises. There should however continue to be anger, frustration and most importantly embarrassment.

Has cheating always gone on in baseball? Of course. But now it has reached a level that changes the game and the history of it as well. Maybe this is the sign of the times. A reflection of our society and what we have become. I guess its go big or go home. Literally.

“Baseball is a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball.” And the fans count how many times and how well players do each of these three things. At least, that’s what we used to do.

A Nation of Bloggers

Fri, 13 Feb, 2009 04:48:31 GMT

The business of sports blogging is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.

I wasn’t sure if I should start the new site out by putting my own twist on someone else’s words but I figure if you are going to steal, do it from one of the greats. I am not the first nor will I be the last to use the words of the late Hunter S. Thompson to jump start whatever it is you want to call this piece of “creative” writing. A blog. A column. An article. Musings. Self-indulgent overrated crap. Whatever you decide to call it, I call it mine. That is the beauty of the World Wide Web. There is an infinite amount of information available on the internet for Americans to read while they are stuck in their 4x4 cubes staring at their Joe Mauer bobblehead dolls waiting for the clock to strike five. While there is an unlimited amount of information at our finger tips, we must remember that it didn’t just fall out of the sky. The number of contributors to the electronic information superhighway has increased to the point that I am willing to bet that on average people spend more time putting things on the internet than they do with their children. While that sounds bad it’s not like they are spending any less time with their kids than they really were before. Many American families spent their nights in the 90’s flopped down in front of the television watching ER or Chicago Hope, checking their emails while the children were learning all about the Cover 2 via Madden ‘99. Those same parents are still on the couch but instead are now watching Grey’s Anatomy. Some, unfortunately, are still watching ER. In addition to still checking their emails everyone is updating their Facebook page with drunken bridesmaid pictures from the last wedding they were in. The kids are still playing Madden, learning about the complex Patriots offenses of the new millennium but they are also slowly figuring out, via Guitar Hero III, that Weezer’s best music actually came out long before “The Red Album”.

Literally five minutes before I started typing this blolumnticle (terrible made up word that I am using to prove a point) at a local coffee shop down the block from my home, I read the latest column from my favorite sports writer. He touched on the subject of blogs and connected it to the real point of his article. I would provide the link to this article but if you are reading this you are either a frequent visitor to something called “Page 2”, you are a friend or family member of mine who has little to no interest in sports or you have simply not stumbled on the phenomenon that is know as “The Sports Guy”. I would argue that Bill is the most famous Simmons since Richard. And please, don’t come at me with Russell. I’m not talking about level of success, which I think Russell is head and shoulders above most people on the planet. I am referring to straight up name recognition. If I were to ask the average Joe who the most famous Simmons was he would probably say Richard. Others may say Gene which isn’t much better but sooner or later I would hope Bill’s name would come up. This is extremely off point but I see a lot of bizarre parallels between Richard and Bill. I promise to delve into this subject further in a future blolumnticle. I already hate my first made up word. It is officially retired.

Since the biggest sporting event of the year took place less than 24 hours ago, I thought about being the millionth person to recap the big game. However, like a lot of sports fans I am already looking ahead to next season. This takes nothing away from the 2009 season and the unbelievable exclamation point that was put on it Sunday night but what is left to be said? However, if I were to write about the big game, here are a few of my favorite people, places and things that I took in: Tears filling the eyes of grown men about to play the fame of their lives during the national anthem. Simply referring to Big Ben as #7. Omar Epps. Thousands of gamblers in Vegas losing their shirts on the random Gary Russell scoring a touchdown bet. Twenty minutes into the game before the big two catch a pass. Madden being Madden. Steelers helmets. “The U”. Roman Numerals. “HYUNDAI!” Unprecedented amounts of adrenaline. Tipped balls. Dump offs that work on third and long. Fitz :53 left in half gets first catch. Greatest three play combo in Super Bowl history. Mike Holmgren, I don’t know why but he makes me laugh. The wrong guy won MVP. The Boss…The Glory Days have come and gone.

Last week Simmons wrote, “Thanks to the Internet, 93% of the American population now has a sports column, podcast or blog.” While the man that is affectionately known as, The Sports Guy, is being somewhat facetious, he has a point. Opinions were something that used to be shared with friends and coworkers over a beer at the local watering hole or while waiting for engineer guy to fix the offices outdated fax machine. Now it seems as though everyone feels the need to express there opinion for the entire world to hear or read. To be honest there is nothing wrong with this latest trend and I am honestly all for it. In the words of everyone’s favorite Coor’s Brewing Company pitchman Denny Green, “The great thing about America is that everyone has an opinion. The other great thing about America is that you don’t have to listen to it.” What’s wrong with having a platform in which everyone can comment on everything for everyone to see and hear? The genie is out of the bottle and there is no turning back.

Back in the day, before sports talk radio and a certain company that dominates the world of sports information even existed, fans could pretty much only turn to the television networks and the local newspapers for their local sports fix. Even worse, if they wanted to express their own opinions it had to be in a letter the editor or if lucky over the airwaves of old school radio stations on their Saturday morning sports shows. I will be the first to admit that a lot of if not most of what is said or written on the internet is nonsensical or just flat out wrong (this blog not excluded). But how is that any different than before? The opinions haven’t changed. What has changed is the amount of information at all of our fingertips and what we chose to do with it. Before sports blogging became as popular as a four dollar coffee at Starbucks, people like the founder of this site would not have had a place in which they could say things like, “The Chiefs are in the process of building a dynasty.” I admire his passion but a decade ago he wouldn’t have an outlet to release such asinine comments. To make matters worse, he no longer lives anywhere close to Arrowhead Stadium so it is almost impossible for him to find a fellow Christian Okoye fan that can empathize with his plight over the last few seasons. Today however, he can go online and find a plethora of KC fans all over the world, many of which will agree with him as they too see the world through red and gold colored glasses. That my friends, when you really think about it, is amazing and is the beauty of the internet.

As fans we now feel like we have part ownership of our teams. Yes the players will come and go for the almighty dollar. Yes owners are politicians, and if it were in their best interest most would pack up and move the team to a hungrier town in the middle of the night. Teams will choke. Managers and coaches will make decisions that will haunt their fan base forever. It’s a wonder how we have stuck around as fans this long. Then again, aren’t the sports we follow and love simply an imitation of life? A good friend of mine once said that sports are the purest form of art. I think I could write an entire book on this subject but I’m not quite ready to dig that deep. However, I do know that just like in the real world sports provides us an opportunity to express every emotion. We laugh and cry. Hate and love. Grieve and celebrate. Teams skip town in the blink of an eye leaving you with little more than a memory and your favorite game-worn jersey. This isn’t much different than any other relationship that ends in which you might be the one holding the short end of the stick. You find yourself standing there with a shoebox filled with photos and keepsakes that you don’t know if you should burn or actually tuck away in the attic to dig through years later. While you wrestle with decisions that need to be made you slowly begin to realize that life moves on and you must press forward as well.

As soon as I started watching The Office after Sunday’s big game my sports year was officially over. 2008 was a year to remember but I am looking forward to what lies ahead. The greatest three week stretch is right and the corner. Around that corner is Amen Corner. Tom Brady will shoot to be comeback player of the year while the Cardinals will come back down to earth. And on and on and on…..

"I don't know the percentage of the Internet that's valid, do you?
Jesus, it's scary."
— Hunter S. Thompson