Damn It Ref!

Sports are one of the greatest parts of our society, but the thing is a lot of times they suck.  They suck big time.  Damn It Ref! is here to correct all of the problems with sports today by letting all of you bitch about them as well.  Keeping you up to date with all you ever wanted and didn’t want to know about sports is our very own Sports Editor Brian.  This page is our complaint form to all sports.  Occasionally there will be some intelligent sports discussion but don’t bet on it, in fact don’t bet on anything said on this page, it probably won’t work out well for you.

 

If for some reason you feel the need to tell Brian what you think, feel free to email him, although we should warn you, he really doesn’t care what you think.  You can try though if you really want to.

 

The Running Diary – Brain – 5/10/07(Posted just a bit late on 5/28/07)

Now that your friendly sports editor is settled in (somewhat) I figured it is time to write a little update.  There will be 2 parts to our next update here.  The first part, the one you are currently reading, is going to be the running diary of my drive across country.  For those who aren’t aware, I recently made a move from Syracuse, NY to Phoenix, AZ, and yes I was logging notes while driving 70 on the highway of things I deemed important enough to add to MSIMM.  The second part which will come in a few days will involve a much needed update/rant by me in the world of sports.  A lot of things have pissed me off in the sports world and you all need to hear about it in the upcoming sports related update.

 

As I mentioned I drove from Syracuse to Phoenix, covering roughly 2400 miles while keeping notes a long the way.  The trip, as expected, was rather long and obnoxious.  Here’s what transpired.

 

Monday April 30

 

3:25 – Last trip to Wegmans while living in Liverpool.  Hard to believe that I have lived in this town for 27 years now and this is my last hurrah at Weggies.

 

3:43 - After saying the last goodbyes to everyone at the old place of employment (oh god I have worked at Wegmans ever since I was 16….how messed up) it’s time to hit the road.  Next stop NYS Thruway!

 

3:48 – This trailer is rather obnoxious to be pulling.  I am driving a 2002 Mazda Protégé and pulling a 4’ X 8’ u-haul trailer.  This is setting itself up to be the worst fucking road trip in the history of road trips.

 

3:55 – At the request of my father, I am not going much above 60 MPH to keep things “safe” with hauling this trailer.  At this rate I should be the Arizona by August. 

 

4:00 – If I really keep staring at the clock every few minutes I am gonna go crazy.  I’ve been on the road for about 15 minutes and I’ve glanced 4 times at the clock.  I feel like I am back in one of those horrible Gen. Ed. Classes at Oswego.  Good times being OCD with the time.

 

4:26 – Is that a space shuttle?  There is seriously some sort of aircraft that is not moving like a plane would.  It just took a weird 45 degree right turn and is definitely going up.  The sad part is this might actually be the best part of this day of driving.  Great, I just wasted it in the first hour. 

 

4:53 – I wonder how long I am driving for today.  Did I make enough CD’s?  Let’s see, I made about 6 mp3 CD’s and 5 regular CD’s.  That might be enough music.  Shit this trip seems to be getting longer by the minute.  I am barely past Rochester and already dreading this.  If only I could teleport.  Did I really just consider teleportation as a means of transportation?  I think I am already going stir crazy in the car. 

 

5:50 – Buffalo “An All America City”.  Probably the absolute worst sign to welcome you to a city I have ever seen.  I am sure this makes sense to some, but shouldn’t that sign read “An All American City”?  Maybe that’s why the city of Buffalo has had such a drought with their sports teams. 

 

7:13 – Goodbye NY, hello PA.  Thank God I am only in PA for a little bit of time.  If I was taking route 81 south, then going West across the country I might have been in PA for about 12 hours.  Is there a worse road to drive then route 81 through PA?  I might find out the answer when I get into the shit middle of nowhere.  I will get back to you on this in the next 20 hours of driving.

 

7:58 – I am glad I chose this exit to get gas.  I found some random Sunoco in random town, PA that closes at 8.  I guess I should get used to this since I will most likely pass through 476 more shit small towns on this journey.  The good news is the lady working the gas station was nice enough to lock the doors while I was in the bathroom so I couldn’t get out for a minute.  It was almost like she forgot I went to the bathroom. 

 

8:25 – Well there goes PA.  I was only in that state for just over an hour and I was already starting to hate it.  I think Ohio is going to be the first stop for the night.  Dad gave me 3 places to stop at to make this a 4 day trip.  I will stop at the first place but something needs to happen over the next couple of days to make this trip shorter then 4 days. 

 

8:40 – Wow.  Ohio is just as boring as PA was.  When will I get to Phoenix?  Wednesday….Thursday…great.  I feel like this trip is going to be rather boring.  I was expecting to see some things and maybe stop at some places but now that I think about it, I just want to get this drive over with.  I think the fact that I am driving at night now kind of sucks.  The only scenery I get is headlights and taillights.  Lovely.  On a good note I have been driving about 3 MPH faster now that I feel more comfortable with this trailer. 

 

11:47 – I fast forwarded a little bit.  Ohio sucks and there is nothing to write about it.  The only thing exciting about my drive through Ohio so far is there are WAY too many fucking trucks.  Not only are there too many trucks but they don’t care that they almost kill you while driving.  I think truck drivers must drink while on the road cause I have almost been run off the road 4 times already.  Luckily I am not far from my destination for the evening. 

 

12:45 A.M. – Arrived at the hotel in Springfield, OH.  This is the stop for day 1.  I feel like I haven’t really gone very far.  This trip might really suck.  I am thinking after getting some sleep I will start a bit earlier then 3:45, and just drive for 15 hours. 

 

1:07 A.M. – This Days Inn is rather ghetto.  The TV in this room only gets about 9 channels.  They apparently don’t know how to clean either.  I took a shower and saw 3 different longer hairs stuck to the shower walls.  I might end up with herpes before this trip is over without getting the pleasure of railing a hooker or anything.

 

Tuesday May 1

 

10:53 A.M. – Leaving the hotel.  I know, I wanted to start at 10, but the fact of the matter is I am kind of slow.  To put it in the words of my good friend Marlena, “I am on minority time.”  (Word to the readers, she is Puerto Rican and allowed to say such things…I find it funny and quote worthy for the purpose of this article)

 

10:54 – Asked the guy at the gas station if there is a Dunkin Donuts around.  No dice.  Shit.

 

11:06 – Let’s just get Ohio over with.  The good news is I am more comfortable with this trailer, hence the driving at 65 MPH today. 

 

11:48 – Indiana.  This is officially the first new state I have been in.  How exciting.  I can’t wait to see how terrible this state is.

 

11:55 – More trucks, more trucks, more trucks, more trucks.  I hate trucks.  They just won’t find a new road.  I think they should build trucker only highways.  That way they can drive recklessly/drunk/tired/whatever they are on the same road and kill each other.  Why do we have to suffer?

 

12:25 – It’s official, I am going to be driving for a while today.  I have decided to try and make it to Oklahoma City.  If all goes well that will be almost 900 miles of driving covering 14 hours. 

 

12:55 – Passing by Indianapolis.  Actually, going around Indianapolis.  The city most likely sucks too much to see anyway.

 

1:47 – I just passed a sign that said “Report Impaired Drivers”.  The fact that I am in Indiana almost has this sign make sense.  I wonder if that was a big problem in the state of Indiana.  There was a meeting of the minds with the Governor of Indiana and the Mayors of all the cities, and they all got together and decided “We live in such a bumfuck state that we can only afford 30 police for the whole state, and everyone likes to drive drunk through our state since it sucks so much, so let’s have the motorists driving through helps us do our job!”

 

 (Can you tell I am sick of driving already?  Oh and also I may be jumping around a bit on the timestamps…the drive was actually not that exciting to cover too much in this article.  Guess that makes sense when you do a total of about 40 hours over 3 days)

 

1:52 – Just passed a truck with an Opie and Anthony WoW sticker.  I wish it wasn’t Tuesday or I might stick around this truck for a while to see if anyone will flash the driver.  I could only hope for such excitement on this trip.

 

1:58 – Is it coincidence that a car with 2 really attractive girls just passed me minutes after seeing a WoW sticker?  Damn it, they have a University of Indiana sticker in the back window too.  Those sluts would have definitely flashed the driver!

 

2:32/1:32 – Time zone change since I crossed into Illinois.  I am officially on central time and doing the same hour over again.  Shit.

 

2:00 – Stopping at a McDonalds in Marshall, IL.  What an exciting place Marshall is.  There is a McDonalds, a couple of gas stations, and a porn shop next to one of the gas stations that is appropriately named “The G Spot”.  Why didn’t I go in?  I did buy a Mega Millions ticket here though, cause it does almost make sense that I should buy one.  It’s always the bumfuck towns that sell the winning tickets.

 

2:10 – Still haven’t found a Dunkin Donuts.  I might have to settle on shit coffee.  I hope there’s a Dunks in Phoenix or I won’t know what to do with myself.  I am NOT settling on Starbucks!

 

3:04 – I just passed the biggest cross I have ever seen.  And when I say cross, I mean a big Jesus cross.  I am definitely in the middle of Jesus freak country.  There have been signs all over praising God….I even saw a trucker that had the word of the Lord on the back of his trucker doors.

 

3:12 – The Altamont hotel in Altamont, Illinois advertises on their highway sign that they are “American Owned”.  Makes me glad I am American since this part of the country probably kills foreigners and feeds them to the pigs. 

 

3:45 – All I have seen for the past hour and a half are farms, farms and more farms.  This is the part of the country I should be driving at night through.  Damn the luck!

 

4:50 – Goodbye Illinois, hello Missouri!  And wouldn’t you know, I am hitting St. Louis right at rush hour.  I think I will have to navigate around the city to avoid traffic.

 

5:00 – As luck would have it, it didn’t matter that I am going around the city.  I am in some heavy traffic.  To make matters even worse, the skies decided to open up and completely downpour.  This is not turning into a fun day.  The only thing worse would be if farmers were coming after me with pitchforks.

 

5:45 – Still stuck in traffic.  This time it is an actual traffic jam.  Lovely.  I was making such good time too.  Fuck you St. Louis.

 

6:30 – Well after the traffic in St. Louis I figured I would settle on gas station coffee.  Nothing like Mobil coffee!  The only problem is I will have to stop at a rest area back on the highway because after I filled up at the pump, a kid beat me to the bathroom.  To make matters worse, I hung out for a few minutes to wait for the kid but he wasn’t coming out anytime soon.  Finally his mother came in to check on him and it led to the following exchange:

            Mother: “Antonio are you ok?”

            Kid:  garbled words

            Mother: “It’s ok, I have medicine in the car”

 

On that note, I will be heading back to the car.  Thank you Antonio for decided to get sick in a random bathroom at a random gas station at the exact same moment that I am stopping there on a cross country trip to fill up gas, get coffee, and take a leak.  I hope you caught the herpes I was supposed to get at the Days Inn in Springfield!

 

6:30 – “Missouri The Cave State”.  I guess we all have something to be proud of.

 

6:58 – Another random highway sign sighting.  This one read “Hit a worker $10,000 fine, Lose your License”.  I guess that is a problem in Missouri.  So between the drunks on the road in the Indiana, and the homicidal highway worker killers in Missouri I am starting to feel real safe on the roads in middle America.

 

10:55 – Crossing into Oklahoma.  At this rate I won’t reach my destination for tonight till after 2 in the morning.  Great.  I think I also just fell asleep for the past 4 hours.  Don’t worry, you didn’t miss much.  Missouri is just as boring as Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

 

1:00 – I think the road system in Oklahoma was created by a bunch of people with brain tumors.  I had to pay a random toll towards the beginning of Oklahoma to drive on their highway.  I ended up paying about $6 cause I have the trailer.  There were a few exits listed on the piece of paper I received.  If I was to exit at one of these places, then I turn in this piece of paper which dubs as a receipt, and I would get some money back for driving on the road.  This is all fine and dandy except for the fact that after I passed these exits there was another toll.  This time when I reached the toll there was a sign that said cash cars were to go to the right to pay said toll.  If you stayed on the main lanes of the highway you would have to be a “Pike Pass” holder which is apparently a system just like the EZ Pass system in NY.  So like a good law abiding citizen, I went off to the right.  There were 2 booths to pull up to, and upon pulling up to the first one I noticed a sign that said no attendant was available.  I was then supposed to throw change in a basket for how much I owed.  The funny thing is there was a sign listing all the prices to pay based on how many axels you have.  The cheapest price on this list was .75 cents, and I would imagine paying this price would get me through the toll no matter what.  Only problem was I had .65 cents in silver, a bunch of pennies, and a $2 Canadian coin.  After debating for a couple minutes on what to do, I threw all this change in the basket and drove off.  This apparently angered the toll Gods as an alarm was heard as I drove off.  Fuck Oklahoma.

 

1:15 – Another random toll like the one I passed a few minutes ago.  This time I said fuck it and stayed in the “Pike Pass” lane.  Funny thing was there was nothing that had me slow down to scan whatever this “Pike Pass” was.  Apparently the toll roads in Oklahoma are optional as I continued to drive 70 through this toll.  Glad I wasted my time at the last one.  Can’t wait for the random ticket for the Oklahoma highway system to show up at my apartment.

 

1:30 – I think this truck driver is drunk.  I was about to pass a trucker but when I got within a couple car lengths he started swerving.  I just spent about 5 minutes behind this guy watching him swerve around lanes before finally exiting to another highway.  I wonder if I will read about him tomorrow running someone off the road.  I am sick of drunk truckers.

 

1:40 – Wow.  I feel like Britney after a night on the town with Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan.  This is probably the worst I have felt in years.  I just want to get to the hotel, lie down and forget that I am driving 2400 miles in 3 days.  Who’s idea was this anyway?

 

2:30 – Finally arrived at the hotel in El Reno, OK. 

 

2:35 – Checked into the hotel and got the key to my room.  Room 117.  When I stopped in Springfield, OH I stayed in room 117.  This must be the trip from hell.

 

 

Wednesday May 2

 

10:35 – Earlier start today.  And by earlier I mean about 20 minutes earlier.  I love how well I plan things out.  Oh well, by the end of today I should be in Arizona!

 

10:56 – Random highway sign sighting – “Come see the live Buffalo”.  Well, I guess this is better then seeing dead Buffalo.

 

10:57 – Random highway sign sighting within 1 minute of the last sign – “Free 72 oz Steak” for Amarillo Texas.

 

11:17 – Texas isn’t all that exciting.  The most exciting part was about 10 minutes ago when I passed a big open field that had about 100 pinwheels in it.  Welcome to North Texas where we harvest wind!  Good times.

 

12:18 – Random highway sign sighting number 850543 – “Large Texas Shaped Pool” at the hotel on the next exit.  Only in Texas.

 

12:24 – There is a day speed limit of 70 and a night speed limit of 65 in Texas.  Interesting.  This has to be the only state that does this shit.  Why change the speed limit at night?  There are fewer cars on the road and this highway is straight and flat.  This makes no sense to me. 

 

1:13 – I just passed the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere.  This is the exact same cross I passed back in Illinois.  It’s the exact same size and looks the exact same.  I don’t get this…are there more crosses like this?  Would Jesus be happy that he is represented as a ginormous cross as a highway tourist attraction?  If I were the holy one, I would come back and haunt the people of the towns making money off this shit.  Maybe this is where we should send Britney Spears to clean her up. 

 

3:07/2:07 – New Mexico!  Time zone 2 out of 3.  This is going to be the longest stretch of land with nothing I will travel on this whole trip.  I can’t wait for this disaster. 

 

7:10 – I just stopped at a random rest area that was a McDonalds/convenience store with a hotel casino across the parking lot.  There was absolute nothingness until this random exit.  Gotta love Indian reservations.  There are about 300 trucks parked here and I guarantee all of them are in the casino.  The good news is in the convenience store part were 2 really hot girls working the counter.  They had that exotic Indian/Mexican/Latino look to them.  Hopefully this is a sign of the scenery to come in Arizona!

 

7:26 – I must say New Mexico has been flat and boring, but driving into this sunset has made this part of the trip worth it.  On a serious note this has to be the most beautiful thing I have seen in a while.  If anyone gets a chance to drive through New Mexico during the sunset, do it.  On second thought, you can probably just Google the view instead.

 

8:37/7:37 – Last time zone change!  Finally made it to Arizona, now only about 5 more hours till I get to my destination.  If only there was a more direct route I could take. 

 

11:10 – Leaving route 40 which I have been on for approximately 13 hours too long.  Now just a couple hours south into Phoenix.

 

11:30 – Ok this first part of the highway is terrible.  I have to drop from 8000 feet to 1000 feet, and the highway is deciding to do this in a distance of 10 miles.  This doesn’t sound that bad but try doing it with a little 4 door sedan while dragging 1500 pounds behind you.  Just my luck, I will probably die with only 100 miles to go.  Perfect.

 

12:42 – Arrived at the apartment and new place of residence.  The only thing left to do now is go inside and get some much needed rest. 

 

 

And there you have it.  Nothing like a cross country trip in 3 days.  As you can see, day 3 was fairly short as far as things that happened/were deemed worthy to write about.  This was due to the lack of anything interesting as well as me being just too damn tired of driving to keep notes anymore.  All in all the trip went well.  Next time I think I will fly across country instead of driving.

 

Tune in next time kids when we update in the world of sports. 

 

 

No Creative Title – Brian – 4/16/07

Nothing like a long overdue update to the Damn It Ref portion of MSIMM.  In case you haven’t noticed (and I am sure many haven’t) it’s been a little while since I last updated.  By little I supposed I mean over a month, but hey I went to SUNY Oswego where we major in laziness.  Just ask Adam.  Anyways, there is quite a bit of ground to cover here including one major portion, which might end up being the longest rant seen in this update.  I will let you sit on that one for a bit and save it for last in this version.  Let’s just say it involves Rutgers University and the stupidity of this whole country.  Without further do, I present a list of things that have happened during my hiatus (in no particular order).

 

1. March Madness came and went without anything incredibly interesting to write about.  Seriously, I was excited for the tournament cause I felt anyone could beat anyone, and then the final four ended up being two 1 seeds and two 2 seeds.  Even in the rounds before that was the better-seeded team beating the shitty seeded team.  The highlight of the tournament was watching Duke lose quickly (which everyone expected).  The lowlight was Georgetown getting screwed by the Greg Oden fan club of referees that were assigned to these games.  Has any one player gotten more biased calls in his favor?  All you had to do was be near Oden when he had the ball for a whistle to be blown.  It got to the point where I almost didn’t care to watch the championship game, and as it turned out it probably didn’t matter if I did miss it.  I haven’t seen someone get such man love since Jenna Jameson. 

 

2. Baseball has started its long season.  Things that look good this year: Dice K, the Boston Red Sox, the Atlanta Braves, Tampa Bay Devil Ray young players, the Yankees losing a lot of games, career years from Felix Hernandez, Ramon Ortiz, Jeff Francoeur, J.D Drew, and Alex Rodriguez.  That last name is painful to admit.  As much as I hate the Yankees and the way they run a baseball team, A-Rod definitely is looking good early on this season.  He might actually be worth the ungodly salary he is earning this year.  On a side note for baseball, it will be very exciting to be moving to a place where a baseball park is just over 3 miles away from the townhouse I will be residing in.  Sure it’s the Arizona Diamondbacks home stadium, but the fact that there is a baseball stadium that close!  I have already looked into the schedule, and the Red Sox and Braves both have 3 game series at Chase Field.  Look for me in the big pool in right center field! 

 

3. The rape charges being dropped against the 3 Duke lacrosse players because the prostitute turned out to be crazy and changed her story 400 times.  Look, we all have known lacrosse players at some point in life, and we all know the personality of lacrosse players.  Not saying they raped her, but what’s to say they weren’t a little more aggressive with this prostitute then she is used to.  Maybe they all tried to stick it in her ass at the same time.  You just never know.

 

4. Drew Bledsoe retires from football.  Did anyone else find his comments funny?  Drew claims it isn’t cause he is a backup.  What kind of shit is that?  Everyone knows he is pussing out because he is a terrible fucking quarterback.  We knew this when the Patriots got rid of him, and unfortunately for Bills fans they learned the hard way.  How could nobody see this coming?  Now there are questions about Drew getting in the hall of fame.  Sure, I guess we can allow a mediocre quarterback with the IQ of a 5 year old and the mobility of an 89 year old into the hall.

 

5. The NFL schedule was announced and there are a few things I noticed about it.

a)      There seems to be a balance in teams playing on Monday Night.  Hey, I am all for not having to see certain teams not getting multiple Monday Night games, but the Bills having a home game in primetime?

b)      Once again there are 3 games on Thanksgiving Day.  Once again all 3 games are absolutely horrendous.

c)      Why is it that when I am moving to a new city where there happens to be a football team close, the team has to suck.  We all know the Cardinals suck more dick then Richard Simmons, but the fact of the matter is there are all TERRIBLE home games for the Cardinals this year.  At home they play Seattle, Pittsburgh, Carolina, Detroit, San Francisco, Cleveland, Atlanta, and St. Louis.  Not 1 game screams out “Drop $50 to watch me!”  They are all puke teams, come on now.

 

6. Hockey playoffs!  Besides the NFL playoffs, Hockey is the most exciting to watch in the postseason.  Anyone has a fighting chance, plus you can actually find hockey much easier on TV when the playoffs start.  The only down side is having to listen to Barry Melrose and a slew of other crazy Canadians with their freaking accent.  I am really liking the Sabres chances this year.  Talk about a team that can beat the shit out of someone with the bottom of their roster.  But just ask any fan from Buffalo and they will tell you something will happen at the worst possible time in the playoffs for this team.  Buffalo fans are great.  I met a couple die-hard fans when I was in college, and man talk about a bitter city.  Three things you never say to a fan from Buffalo are “Wide Right” “Music City Miracle” and “No Goal.”  Guarantee you won’t leave that conversation unscathed.

 

7. Snow in the middle of April is rather unnecessary.  How is there a blizzard happening on the 16^th of April?!  2 weeks…I keep telling myself that.

 

8. Speaking of bad weather, 6 baseball games were cancelled Sunday.  That has to be some sort of record.  It was also on Jackie Robinson day.  I can’t wait to hear Rev. Al Sharpton on this one…claiming the weather is holding the black man down.  But speaking of that….

 

9. Don Imus.  The funny thing is that name means different things to different people.  Personally, I hate the fact that I am giving time to this bullshit subject, but the fact of the matter is I am sick and tired of a bunch of morons being media attention whores about this.  It’s almost to a point where someone who is white can’t say any word that has to do with color without Sharpton and Jesse Jackson performing a DP up his or her ass.  I am sure we can all agree that what Don Imus said was a bit tasteless, but in no way was it even close to a level of racist that this ordeal has been made out to be.  I am pretty sure when Imus was joking with his producer on air and called the Rutgers ladies “nappy headed hoes”, he certainly wasn’t meaning “fuck you black ladies I hate you all.” 

 

Re-read that last sentence before jumping to conclusions on the point of this rant.

 

This whole story is being made out to be like Don Imus was some sharecropper back in 1820 whipping a bunch of slaves on his land.  There is way more attention to this story then even necessary.  If you think about it, back a few months ago when Michael Richards went on his rant it was forgotten about a couple of days later.  Richards’ rant was 100 times worse then Don Imus, as ‘Kramer’ uttered the most derogatory slur towards blacks multiple times.  We are now into a second week of this bullshit and it keeps getting worse.  Ever since the Rutgers basketball team wanted to meet with Imus to talk things out, everyone wants to jump on that bandwagon.  Hillary Clinton even wants to meet with Imus.  People that have nothing to fucking do with this are trying to stick their nose in for the media attention.  Just imagine you are at work and make some comment towards a co-worker, and then you sit down with this co-worker and talk things out.  Next thing you know Bill from accounting wants to talk it out with you, and Jerry from the mailroom wants to ask you why you used these comments.  It’s just ridiculous.  These people are using the approach of enhancing their image by meeting with Imus and having people say “oh look what a good person he/she is since they care about racial equality.”  The fact of the matter is that the context of this comment wasn’t even remotely racial, it was just a tasteless joke.  Let’s just be reasonable here.  We can go to any comedy club in the country, and there is guaranteed to be someone that is “not white” up on the stage spitting out “racial slurs” left and right, and people will laugh at it.  Shit, there is even some white people that can get on stage and pull that shit, but since they are comedians or a different color then it is more right then Don Imus.  Come on now, a joke is a joke and there was no racial undertone to what Imus was saying.  In this day and age there are two things that I have noticed in language and communication;

1)      People joke about a lot more things now then they used to

2)      Everyone is making things so PC that you have a thin line of what you can say in front of certain people

I am surprised this mix hasn’t caused the world to fall off its axis yet.  The funny thing about this is imagine sitting with a group of friends.  One of your friends makes a similar “tasteless” joke like Imus.  Big deal, people laugh it off and go about their day.  The problem is being in the world of ‘celebrity’ status where anyone that is also a ‘celebrity’ can make a big deal out of something you say to be an attention whore and enhance his or her celebrity status.  Think about it this way, how many of those girls on the Rutgers basketball team do you think actually took serious offence to what Imus said?  I know the answer will never be known, but if you logically look at a bunch of 18-21 year olds and think about the mentality they have.  Most of us have been to college, and we have seen what things are like.  Based on just language, these girls have heard much worse, said much worse, and had much worse directed at them.  How many times to do you think these girls have gotten called hoes?  I can only imagine even in a small group of friends someone has jokingly said “oh stop that you ho.”  Not to mention the music these girls most likely listen to where the language is far worse then just saying ho.  Even better yet, why don’t we take a look at the Rutgers players’ Myspace or Facebook accounts and see how many pictures involve promiscuous poses and/or illegal activities, not to mention what some of the comments on such pages say.  Just cut the crap on being offended by being called hos, everyone these days fits into the category of an attention seeking ho.  I am done with this topic before I puke on everyone.

 

I will have more updates in the near future.  Nothing will go as long as this past hiatus.  Pretty soon y’all can catch Damn It Ref coming at you from a new location, Phoenix Arizona.  Two weeks until your faithful sports editor makes a move that is sure to create interesting stories

 

Stupid Wins Again – Brain – 2/25/07

A giant ‘who cares’ weekend has completed yet I find myself still caring enough to start off an article by mentioning this.  Go figure!  What made this an even worse past weekend is the fact that the Daytona 500 AND the NBA all-star game fell on the same day.  To top that off I couldn’t look at any sort of newspaper or news website without seeing pictures of Britney Spears pulling a Demi Moore and shaving her head.  I almost felt like my head would explode.  This was the biggest ‘news’ story of the day folks.  Britney Spears is a skinhead now and this is what has to be covered by everyone.  That makes me feel great about life when I get force fed these bullshit news stories that really mean nothing to anyone.  Big deal, the girl has completely lost her mind.  It happens to a lot of people.  She has been hanging around with a bunch of cokehead whores, what did you expect?  Ever since Britney ditched Justin Timberlake she has been dealt a nice deck of Karma that only Earl Hickey could understand.  It is a complete opposite trend these two are going through.  Just think about it.  Britney gets knocked up twice by a terrible white rapper, gets her hideous crotch on the front page of papers, and now shaves her head because she has lost her mind, and meanwhile JT is achieving success some can only dream of in music AND is plowing a ton of hot actresses in the process.  So who screwed who over when those two broke up?  Anyways enough of the terrible celebrity gossip, we have a shitty weekend of sports to cover!

 

What I love about the NBA is they have their annual ‘who gives a shit’ weekend which is a culmination of the middle of their ‘who gives a shit’ season.  This weekend is what some of you refer to as All-Star weekend.  Such highlights from this past weekend were the usual dunk contest, 3-point shooting contest, and Charles Barkley racing a 67-year-old NBA referee.  Barkley started this challenge by placing a bet that he could beat the ref (Dick Bavetta) when he saw the old man having trouble getting up and down the court in a game that Barkley was commentating.  For those who don’t know, Barkley has what some might call a gambling ‘problem.’  He makes a claim that he can do it cause he has the money, but we are talking about millions of dollars he has lost gambling.  This is the last person that should be placing bets on anything.  This just proves a point that I have always known about money and what happens when stupid people end up with a lot of it (which seems to happen way too often).  Once the actual basketball game started (and I watched a little of it even though I knew I would hate every second) I witnessed what is happening far too often in the NBA, players don’t seem to care.  Kobe Bryant won the MVP and I can’t count how many times players just watched him go by for some ‘spectacular’ dunk that made a highlight reel.  What is the point of playing the game if you just let your opponent go by you for an easy dunk?  This is the trend that the NBA has been setting ever since the Jordan/Bird/Magic era ended.  Nobody seems to give a shit anymore.  I know there are big basketball buffs out there that will argue with me about the NBA being a ‘professional’ sport and these are supreme athletes who have reached their highest level.  Well congratu-fucking-lations, they still don’t play with the passion that is played with at the high school and especially college level.  For homework tonight class, you are required to watch one NBA game and one college basketball game.  If you don’t realize the difference in the level of intensity, then hit yourself in the head with a hammer and try again.  What other professional sport has kids leaving as early on in college then the NBA?  The NBA even had to make a rule that kids have to go to college for at least 1 year before entering the NBA draft because so many kids were coming right out of high school.  That is just insanity!  Anyone who has ever been to college knows that the time you spent in those 4+ years are irreplaceable. (The + indicates those of us overachievers who decided 1 senior year wasn’t enough)  Just think about the time you spent in college…no worries, parties, booze, drugs, so much scattered that you could almost break Wilt Chamberlain’s record.  The NBA is terrible to watch but fun to make fun of.  Which leads me to a couple other things I learned this past weekend:

 

1. The impression the NBA gives is that most of the players are homophobic

 

2. Tim Hardaway ranks number 2 behind Britney for most recent head case

 

The Tim Hardaway issue has completely solidified a point that I made not too long ago about my world of sports completely going bonkers.  For those behind the times by a few years, ex NBA player John Amaechi came out of the closet on his homosexuality and is to publish a book that has to do with his life as an in the closet NBA athlete.  Well not too long after this, Tim Hardaway was interviewed about this issue by Dan Le Batard of ESPN on some obscure radio show nobody listens to.  Well this issue became so huge because Hardaway made blatant homophobic comments when asked about playing with an openly gay teammate.  Well this gem of an interview was filled with such quotes as “I hate gays” and “It shouldn’t be in the world” (in reference to homosexuality).  Well before long this interview was spread further then Paris Hilton’s legs.  Everyone inside and out of the sports world was on top of making sure you were force fed Tim Hardaway’s comments.  In no surprise to anyone, well at least me, Hardaway pulled the ever so predictable public apology a couple days later.  This is what gets me about celebrities who fuck up and say something wrong.  Not only do they put themselves past the point of no return with ridiculous racist/stereotypical/homophobic comments, but they claim they didn’t mean it right afterwards.  I really do love this approach.  Unfortunately this approach never worked when I said something stupid to a girlfriend and then followed it up with the whole ‘I didn’t mean it’ speech.  Instead I just needed to find some Tylenol for the headache I got soon after.

 

As for the first note from above, in light of the recent Hardaway comments, the NBA is giving most people the impression that the common theme among the players is that gay people suck.  There was a poll conducted on ESPN.com asking the readers if they felt the thoughts Hardaway had about gays reflected the same thoughts of other players in the NBA.  This poll didn’t seem to stay up very long but what I did see is after about 25,000 votes it was up to a quick 70% for yes and 30% for no.  This is showing that around 18,000 people that voted believe the mentality of NBA players is towards hatred of gays.  You hear that all you little homos, Lebron, Kobe and all your other heroes in the NBA hate you.  You might as well just stay in that closet forever because you won’t get the approval of people that are looked upon as ‘role models.’  Oh wait, I forgot that the word hate is a strong word.  Let me correct that last statement, the NBA role models will disapprove of you just like your father will.  So don’t  be gay!  (side note to the readers.  I don’t condemn the act of homosexuality.  Please don’t send GLAAD after me). 

 

That leaves us with the other monumental event of the weekend.  The ‘Super Bowl of NASCAR’ the Daytona 500.  How can this be the Super Bowl?  The Super Bowl is played on the first Sunday of February by the top 2 football teams, one from the NFC and one from the AFC.  It is not meant for a bunch of fucking cars driving in circles.  There is nothing ‘Super’ about this.  They got the bowl part right because the track is a circle (well an oval but let’s not get technical) and bowls are usually circular.  But in no way is the Daytona 500 something that should be compared to the most ultimate football game that culminates the season of one of the greatest sports.  So please sports announcers and the like, stop calling this the ‘Super Bowl’ of NASCAR.  I honestly wish I could stop writing about the Daytona 500 here but I need to pad this article with a bit more text.  I did watch a little bit of the race I won’t lie.  I happened to turn to FOX as there were 7 laps left in this ‘not so Super Bowl of NASCAR’ race.  To my pleasure, within 2 laps of turning on the race there were about 5 cars smashing into each other and causing a mess on the track.  This is probably one of the reasons to watch NASCAR, it is extreme bumper cars with the possibility of severe bodily injury and/or death.  Once the mess got cleaned up and the race started up again (and I think they should just keep racing with the shrapnel on the track) there was another massacre of metal smashing!  It must have been my lucky day that I watched about 25 minutes of racing and got to see 2 different major accidents.  This one was extra special because it happened in the last ¼ mile of the race.  Coincidentally enough the accident happened after the kind announcers of FOX told me that NASCAR would throw out a yellow flag if there was another race caution.  This meant that the race would stop right when the accident occurred and the winner would be whoever was in first place at that given moment.  Well low and behold no yellow flag was thrown so I was basically told a bunch of nothing by FOX.  Thanks for wasting my time.  What was unfortunate was the replays that FOX kept showing after the race ended.  FOX thought for some reason that the viewers wanted to see the photo finish of the race about 30 times in a row.  What was severely overlooked (there was only 1 replay shown of this) was that of a guy named Clint Bowyer.  During the last accident, Clint’s car was hit in such a way that it flipped onto it’s roof, skidding across the finish line while still on the roof (and still on the track mind you), and then flipped back onto the wheels in the grass and caught fire.  I think this alone should have given Bowyer the Daytona 500 win.  Nobody else in the history of this race has come across the finish line still on the track and upside down.  Fortunately for me I recently got and HD DVR hooked up in my apartment so I was able to rewind the 1 replay of this monumental finish and watch it 30 times in a row.  I love recordable television.  And congratulations Clint Bowyer, you are the Daytona 500 champ in my eyes!

 

Tune in soon kids when we start the process of Madness which is March.

 

Sabres vs. Ottawa, this past week – Adam – 2/25/07

I really want to write a whole rant on this but quite frankly I am still to pissed off to literally type it out into words.  I guess heres my summary.  Fuck you Chris Neil, Fuck you Ottawa, Fuck you Brian Murray.  Way to stand up for your team, Peters, Mair, Kaleta, Lindy Ruff and Tom Golisano.  Eight guys down and we’re still gonna win the cup bitches, we are Buffalo and we will not back down.  There is nothing you can throw at us NHL that we can’t deal with.  The city of Buffalo deals with living through shit on a day-to-day basis, be it snow, politics, or sports.  We are use to the abuse, bring it on NHL, we are sick of this rut and all the other crap that comes along with living in Buffalo, we want that cup and we will have it.  Don’t believe me, keep watching.

 

Sports Illustrated Colts Super Bowl Champs Package – Adam – 2/25/07

So the other night I was watching TV and saw an unbelievable offer from Sports Illustrated.  Basically you get a years subscription and a limited edition Colts football, a DVD of the Colts road to the Super Bowl, a book, a pile of Payton Manning’s feces, some other stuff, I don’t know I wasn’t really paying attention.  Anyways the point is, I was watching it thinking who the hell would buy this shit.  Then I started thinking, when the Sabres win the Stanley Cup (yeah that’s right, when) I wouldn’t even bat an eye before I bought that package.  I’m the jackass that falls for that sort of stuff.  It was a sad realization.

 

Not So Super Times – Brian – 2/8/07 (Posted a little late)

Ah yes, that famous Sunday has come and gone.  Everyone can now get back to their normal lives after the excitement of million dollar commercials, flashy performances, lavish parties, and lots of food an alcohol has come to an end.  Oh I almost forgot about the football game too.  Was the Super Bowl even that Super?  I have been asking myself this question since Sunday.  I think this was the first Super Bowl in a long time where I felt like I just didn’t care.  What isn’t to love about seeing the best of the best from each conference battle it out in a game that tests your ultimate level of performance?  I think it might be that I never expected this game to be that good.  In the back of my mind I had the voice that screamed out “Good God the Bears and the Colts are playing each other for the Super Bowl?!  Is this a bad dream?”  I doubt I was alone with this thought either.  Congratulations to the Colts though and Peyton Manning finally getting that ‘monkey’ off his back as everyone has been saying.  Ask yourself this question though Peyton; did you actually play against anyone?  You played against a team that had a starting quarterback who plays about as good as any schmuck in a pickup game who says he is a good QB.  News flash Grossman: It was raining the whole game!  Have you never played football even 5 seconds of your life in the rain?  I have played pickup football games in the rain and the very first thing I ever learned is you cannot throw the ball deep.  It is common sense; your hands are wet preventing a good enough grip to heave the ball and simple physics tells you the velocity and distance that a football travels in the air is decreased more rapidly by the rain.  So what did the Bears do?  They decided to forget this simple logic and throw the ball deep for 2 crucial interceptions and an incompletion that could have been an interception.  Not to mention the Bears turned the ball back over to the Colts the play immediately after the defense had just forced a turnover from the Colts.  This happened twice.  

 

The rest of the game wasn’t even that exciting either as the weather caused the game to be even sloppier then I had imagined it to be (my prediction of a sloppy game was under good weather).  What was even worse was the fact that 99% of the million dollar commercials weren’t even good.  The hype was far better then the actual delivery of the commercials.  Godaddy.com was supposed to have one of the best ads and it was terrible.  The K-Fed spot was mildly entertaining only because all of America got to watch it 5 days before the Super Bowl.  Even the Snickers ad lost its entertainment value now that the Gay Rights activists are pulling out the homophobic card.  Why is it that whenever there is something that a majority of the people in this country see, and most of the time it has an entertainment value, someone gets offended.  This is the new trend in the world and it is the aftermath of the lawsuit trend.  Remember when somebody was trying to find a way to sue someone else?  Well look at the can of worms you assholes have opened now.  You can’t put anything on TV without carefully taking out anything and everything that might offend the thousands of groups and activists that are in this world.  Regardless of what you do someone is going to get pissed.  This year it was the homosexuals that got offended by a Snickers commercial depicting two mechanics sharing a Snickers bar lady and the tramp style, and then freaking out when they realize they touched lips and started ripping chest hairs out to look manly again.  I found this ad hilarious and would see that as a reaction I would find myself having had I accidentally kissed another man like that.  Listen GLAAD; get over yourselves because nobody gives a shit if you are gay/straight/purple/pink/elephants/rocks/computers.  Uh oh am I in trouble now because I used purple and pink in my example, the 2 notorious stereotypical colors for a homosexual man?  I really don’t care what you think, and frankly I am sick of hearing people say they are offended by something just to hear themselves talk.  What are you going to get out of this GLAAD?  Snickers pulled the commercial off the air and now YOU are the ones who have pissed off a lot of people for taking away something that gave us a little bit of a chuckle.  Congratulations you took something that was only offensive to an official group that supports gays and ruined it for everyone else out there that is straight or gay who enjoyed the commercial for it’s comedic value.  There were hundreds of homosexuals that were asked if the commercial was offensive and all answered no.  But of course nobody can say anything since then you may just go cry to some high up political figure that your rights are being taken away from you even though it was a commercial for a fucking candy bar.  It’s not like the mechanics were shoving the candy bar up each other’s asses.  Get over yourselves.

 

There’s a new game I have been playing for the past week or so.  It’s called freeze your nuts off and try not to get hypothermia.  It’s really a fun game that Central New York has been more then willing to let me play.  For those of you not experiencing this fun, it is way too damn cold in this area.  Why do people live in areas where it can possibly get this cold?  (End of weather rant, maybe I will stay on task of a sports article)

 

There is one thing that I really need to talk about here because it upsets me probably more then it should.  Luckily this kind of ties into sports because it involves something in my life that I participate in, and anything that I do should is important and should be considered a sport.  Every Wednesday a few of us get together and play a couple games of Texas Hold Em.  It is an excuse for a few guys to scratch their balls, drink some beer, and talk about blowjobs and other manly sexual things.  Well during the festivities there will be a couple pizzas and chicken wings that will arrive during the first game.  What we had been doing traditionally was getting the wings hot as opposed to any other garbage flavor the pizzeria will offer.  One of the guys that started joining our Wed. tradition isn’t a fan of hot wings and instead has forced an occasional switch to BBQ wings.  Well low and behold the BBQ wings have turned out to be spinach for him and kryptonite for the rest of us.  The BBQ wings have such a power over the rest of us that we will get the worst possible cards for a game of poker, while Mr. BBQ will put together a series of dominant hands that end up winning him a game of poker.  Now I have always been very adamant on the fact that nothing should coat a chicken wing except hot sauce.  There is just no other way that a chicken wing should be made.  I am sick of the need to make 20 different flavors of a chicken wing.  BBQ, Teriyaki, Sweet & Sour are you kidding me here?  These are all flavors for the fruitcakes that can’t handle eating a hot chicken wing.  The reason they make hot chicken wings is so you can drink more beer while eating them.  Anything else should be outlawed and your manhood taken away for not being able to tolerate a hot wing.  No more BBQ chicken wings, stop it, I have had enough of this shit.

 

The month of February is flying along (as it should since it is the shortest month) which means not much longer till March and college basketball excitement.  I will make sure to have extensive coverage of the highs and lows of March Madness.  The highs will most likely involve teams that are actually good and the lows will involve talking about Dick Vitale and Syracuse basketball.  Well you know what, let’s just talk for a bit about the low which is the Syracuse Orangemen.  First off I am not conforming to their changed name of a couple years ago to the ‘Syracuse Orange’ so that it doesn’t sound sexist.  This is bullshit because the name had been around forever and you can’t just change it and break tradition.  They are a men’s basketball team so therefore are the OrangeMEN.  The women’s team got to be called the Orangewomen, so it isn’t like they were forced to take on the men’s name.  Anyway I digress.  The Orangemen have reached a completely new low this year.  Watching Syracuse basketball is about the most frustrating thing you can witness in your life.  It’s like trying to watch Rob Schneider be funny in a starring role.  It’s just not tolerable.  Syracuse has this way about playing basketball.  They are apparently under the impression that a basketball game is only played in the first half.  The Orangemen will outplay their opponent and build a big lead by halftime only to completely blow that lead and look like a lower class High School team.  It’s almost unbelievable to watch what appears to be two different teams in each half.  It’s almost as if they go into the locker room, bring in all the stunt doubles who have no basketball skills, and then go out and play the second half.  If college basketball only played one half I think Syracuse would be undefeated right now.  The most frustrating part of this all is the college basketball team is all Syracuse has going for it in the sports world.  There are no professional sports teams in Syracuse, just a AAA Baseball team and an AHL Hockey team.  As far as the college goes the football team is terrible, who cares about Women’s teams, there is no baseball team, and lacrosse is best put in a Carlin skit.  Point being basketball at the University is all this city has for hope since they are consistently above average enough to make or potentially make the NCAA tournament each year.  This year shows only hope if they are trying to make a run in the NIT.  The thing about the NIT is it is the community college of college tournaments.  Someone felt bad for the teams that didn’t get into the biggest college playoff bracket around and set up a tournament of rejects.  Just imagine if other sports followed the trend that college basketball did.  The NFL could have a side tournament for the almost good enough teams to make the playoffs and they can have a playoff to get down to the final two teams.  These two teams can then battle it out in the Not so Super Super Bowl.  I think the NFL almost has the Not so Super Super Bowl concept down with the Pro Bowl, but it lacks the playoff structure.  NCAA please do away with the NIT, it’s a terrible idea to make mediocre teams feel better about themselves. 

 

 

Super Bowl Summary, comments anyone?

This year’s Super Bowl a brief summary.  Game: good (if you were actually watching for the football), weather: bad (finally, it’s about time), commercials: for the most part blah (with a few exceptions), half time show: more painful than kick to the balls (as usual), and finally money made back by Adam: $0 (shit).

 

NHL Editorial – Adam – 1/30/07

If you like the NHL you really need to read this article.  Unhappy Anniversary.

 

Wacky World of Sports – Brian – 1/30/07

There is one thing that I have definitely learned in 26 years of existence on Earth.  Everyone is nuts.  There really is no better way to put it then to say that this whole world is off it’s rocker.  People are blowing each other up with car bombs, packages, human bombs, you name it and I am sure somebody has used it to blow someone up.  There really is nothing that surprises me anymore when I watch the news, or read another story on cnn.com about fathers in Ohio shooting their wives and then themselves right in front of the teenage daughters.  I really think the ‘Wow’ factor has been taken away from me as a human when I read what happened today.  Lately I have gone to a news site to find out which crazy asshole topped the crazy asshole from the day before.  I never thought that my little world of sports, a place that I use to escape this madness, would ever rest on the same level as the rest of life.  What was I thinking?

 

Good news for Falcons fans, it was determined in a lab test that the “small amount of dark particulate” with an odor consistent with marijuana was not actually marijuana.  This was determined after ‘officials’ ran quick and thorough lab tests on the substance found in the water bottle, which mind you the water bottle had a secret compartment in it.  No charges are being made in this case.  I wonder how many people follow this practice of owning water bottles with secret compartments in which you can store a substance, that when described, sounds exactly like resin.  These are questions I think about after reading stories like this one, and then I wonder how consistent our law enforcement officials would be.  If I was to walk into an airport with a water bottle that has a secret compartment with resin in it, what are the odds that they would kindly send the resin to a lab to be thoroughly tested while I wait around to see if I will be charged with a crime?  I would like to think the odds are in my favor because I don’t really want to be arrested.  Something tells me though I would end up in handcuffs.  I almost want to pay someone a couple hundred dollars to prove this theory.  Any takers? 

 

Now on an interesting twist of our government and law being seriously flawed, there is a 20 year old in a Georgia Correctional Facility named Genarlow Wilson.  Wilson is currently serving a 10 year prison sentence for aggravated child molestation.  What would happen, you may ask, to land this 20 year old (who at the time was 17) in jail for such a charge?  Well it is simple.  Him and his buddies were discussing a New Years hotel party full of booze and drugs.  You know the typical high school type thing to do.  Well the party went off as planned, some girls showed up, and of course when kids that age get drunk they usually tend to do crazy things.  In this example of crazy things one kid pulled out a video camera to start taping, and a couple of the young females started performing sexual acts right in a room full of people.  One of the girls performed oral sex on a more then willing Wilson.  Long story short there was a girl there who decided to have sex with a couple people (which is on camera), and then wake up the next morning in a post-drunken haze only to call her mom and tell her she was raped.  It is no surprise that at this point shit hath hit the fan, as they say.  Cops show up, confiscate video camera, and make arrests.  Young Genarlow ended up getting arrested for an obscure Georgia law that says if 2 teenagers are having sex and one of them is under 16, regardless of if it is consensual or not, then it is considered aggravated child molestation.  The part that makes this whole case is interesting is that if the two were having sex, Georgia law classifies this as a misdemeanor.  If on the other hand, and in Gernarlow's unfortunate case, the two were participating in oral sex, this is considered a felony.  This means deep shit for Gerardo.  During the trial everyone admitted under oath that the act was consensual.  The victim herself even told the jury that she chose to perform this act and she does not consider it rape.  Hell the prosecution even says based on all evidence there was no child molestation that occurred.  But a law is a law, and our friend Gerardo got sentenced to 10 years in prison.  Oh and to make matters worse, legislation signed a new bill that changes this law and makes all sexual acts in this situation being a misdemeanor.  This bill was passed after the trial, so Wilson’s sentence still stands.  Makes you proud to be an American doesn’t it?

 

Speaking of trouble with the law Cincinnati Bengals cornerback Johnathan Joseph was arrested for possession of marijuana.  This keeps up with the current quota of one Bengal player being arrested per month.  Joseph is the 9^th Bengal player arrested in a 9-month span.  I think this team is setting pretty good standards for future players.  If there is ever a college football player that has had legal troubles, then they can feel safe in knowing that at least the Bengals will look at them.  The arrested players have had such crimes as possession, DWI, resisting arrest, BUI (boating under the influence), burglary, spousal battery, and then Chris Henry who has had 5 different charges.  The Bengals almost remind me of what would come out of a prison league team as portrayed in The Longest Yard.  I am just waiting to see Burt Reynolds come out with a group full of convicts to try out for next year’s team.  This is something that should happen.

 

On a brighter side of sports I have found my new official sport.  Pillow fighting!  There are a bunch of crazy Canadians (like you would expect anyone else) that started a pillow fighting league.  They hold events in the United States and are currently traveling around the country performing these pillow fighting events.  Essentially this league is a bunch of chicks that come up with wrestling type nicknames and smash each other with pillows in an organized tournament type of manner.  Some of the witty names these ladies have chosen are Betty Clocker, Eiffel Power, Champain (who is the current ‘champion’), and Sarah Bellum.  If only this was some sort of a topless pillow fighting league there might be more national attention.  Imagine if these girls signed some sort of contract with Playboy TV and have these events aired in a pay-per-view style.  They could have different classes of the girls based on breast size, with the biggest breasts being in the heavyweight class.  But I digress.  Check out their website to see if they will be coming to a city near you, http://www.gopfl.com. 

 

Just in case you were paying attention the Super Bowl is this Sunday.  Not that you would notice because the match-up is absolutely atrocious.  You have a great offense against a great defense on one side of the ball, and a terrible offense against a terrible defense on the other side.  Now that sounds like the game will stay fairly equal but I see one of two things happening:

1)     One of the teams will blow the other out of the water (like Chicago did with the Saints last week)

2)     This will be the sloppiest Super Bowl in terms of bad plays and turnovers

None of that matters though because both of the head coaches are black!  That may be the only thing you know so far about this Super Bowl since there has been a big deal made about it.  Right when the Colts/Patriots game ended this fact was immediately brought to center stage.  There was even a question asked of Tony Dungy on how he felt having two black coaches in the Super Bowl for the first time ever.  Sports analysts started talking about this incessantly and sports journalists everywhere had a topic for their next article.  Why does it matter what color they are?  I don’t give a shit if they are purple I just want to see an entertaining football game.  It’s very unfortunate this country is still stuck on the black/white issue.  Everyone needs to have some sort of issue though to get an advantage on others.  This is a perfect example because nobody is going to say anything against this whole hype of having two black coaches in the Super Bowl.  Listen people, slavery were abolished in the United States in 1865 so get the fuck over it.  The race card is a weak thing to be playing so let’s just try acting like normal people because nobody gives a shit what color you are.  Hopefully there will be some good commercials to keep my mind off hearing about what color someone is about 20 times during the game. 

 

Breaking news in the sports world: Barbaro was put to sleep.  The horse that shattered it’s leg during The Preakness and was the center of the sports world for a while was put to sleep after doctors decided the horse was suffering too much pain.  I find it funny how caught up everyone has been in the wellness of a horse.  Espn.com has even put together a timeline that shows all of the things done for Barbaro since the broken leg.  This horse was only being kept alive so it could be bred.  People were just looking to make a buck on creating offspring and training the offspring to be racehorses to potentially win big money events.  The amount of coverage this horse got is crazy.  I am scared to even watch sportscenter later in fear of having a 20-minute special on the life of Barbaro.  I will just be looking for Barbaro in coming weeks when I am at Wal-Mart, and his name will be changed to Elmer’s.

 

Shaquille O’Neal is not only an NBA player but also a reserve cop for the Miami Beach police.  He was able to use his ‘police skills’ recently to chase down a driver who smashed into Shaq’s Escalade and then fled the scene.  It’s good to see an athlete finally trying to be a good person and follow the law instead of break it.  I think it’s safe to say there was no free throw shooting portion of the reserve cop exam. 

 

It’s hard to believe that the NHL is already in the second half of its season.  I knew there was hockey going on but it caught me off guard to have the all-star game come so quickly.  I blame this on the lack of coverage that ESPN has for hockey.  I don’t think I have noticed one hockey game that is aired on ESPN or ESPN2.  Not much of a worldwide leader in sports if they don’t air one of the 4 major sports in this country.  Hockey is a sport that people don’t give enough credit to.  Having grown up playing street hockey in any type of weather with the other neighborhood kids, and going to school where the only sport they were good at was hockey, I have come to appreciate this sport more then most.  What other sport out there, besides the obvious of course, actually allows participants to fight each other without major repercussions?  If anyone fights in any other sport all players involved are immediately ejected, most likely suspended for multiple games, and fined by the league.  Hockey will just sit both players down for 5 minutes, and then they come back on the ice and pick up where they left off.  I haven’t seen a good hockey fight in a while but thanks to the Internet I was able to catch myself up on current players I wouldn’t want to piss off.  On such player is Phoenix Coyote Georges Laraque.  There are a slew of videos on YouTube showing Laraque absolutely destroying people in fights.  The man is a beast.  He will fight guys that are 5 inches taller and 30 pounds heavier and still beat the shit out of them.  This is why we need more hockey on TV to see more guys like Laraque beating the shit out of each other. 

 

In one last note, it looks as if we will unfortunately see Barry Bonds break Hank Aaron’s record for most career home runs.  The Giants are ‘very close’ to signing Bonds to a contract for the 2007 season.  The deal is said to be just under $16 million for the year.  I think every opposing pitcher that faces Bonds all season should intentionally walk him.  Not one pitcher should throw a ball near the plate.  Unfortunately I don’t see this happening, as he is only 22 home runs away from breaking the record, which is a very reachable goal seeing as how Bonds had 26 home runs last year, and was hardly pitched to.  This will be very disappointing for the sport of baseball to allow a man who is obviously guilty of some sort of performance enhancement to break such a prestigious record.  It isn’t hard to tell Bonds is guilty of something.  Just go look at a baseball card of Bonds when he was in his first couple of years with the Pirates.  The dude looks like he morphed with another body to become incredible hulk sized.  That is just not a natural change in body size.  But in this day and age of sports we see ridiculous amounts of money being thrown around at athletes that are altering their bodies in ways so they have an edge over everyone else.  I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow to see what happens

 

Barbaro – Adam – 1/30/07

Is this still a news story?  It was a fricken horse, let it go.  “He” was not a sports legend nor an All-Star, “He” won’t be remembered for “His” athletic prowess, for the love of God let it go.  “He” was a good race horse, “He” fell, “He” got sick and now “He’s” dead.  Over.  I am officially putting this story to rest, enough is enough already.

 

NHL All-Star Game – Adam – 1/28/07

I know this is Brian’s page to bitch about all things sports but there’s a few things about the All-Star game that I need to get off my chest.  First off, I hate Dallas.  We all know in 1999 Dallas completely screwed over Buffalo and stole the Stanley Cup.  Well I am trying to forget about it when they show the 1999 Stars with the Cup, I almost cried all over again.  Regardless, Dallas should not be allowed to have a hockey team.  On that note neither should any other city located south of the Mason-Dixon Line, or put in better understanding, that can’t naturally produce more than 6 inches of snow in a given year.  This includes, Nashville, Carolina, Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta, Florida, Tampa, Anaheim, LA, and San Jose.  St. Louis and Columbus, I’ll let you both slide on this but really you shouldn’t count either.  OK back to Dallas unfortunately.  I noticed that the ungrateful fans in that city, scream random words of the Star-Spangled Banner.  Seriously, really disrespectful.  Dallas you don’t deserve a hockey team and you certainly don’t deserve to host the All-Star Game.  The ratings for the game came in tonight and it did almost as bad as every other hockey event on TV in this country.  In its host city of Dallas, it finished 18^th amongst cable programming that night.  Wow, that’s pretty bad, it’s not the worst but still bad.  How’d it do in Buffalo, you might ask?  Well it finished 1^st amongst cable programming.  Maybe because we had 3 players in the game, maybe cause we like hockey, or maybe it’s because we just wanted to see the 1999 Stars holding the cup as a reminder of what we have to look forward to at the end of this season.  Regardless, we we’re watching.  We even got to see our Captain Daniel Briere win the NHL All-Star Game MVP.  The All-Star Game shouldn’t even have an MVP, who’s the best of the best?  Nobody, that’s the answer nobody.  When you have all the best players of the game on the ice together, they are all the MVP.  Even if you had to pick a winner do we need to give them a new car, I’m sure they can afford to buy themselves a nice one when they get home.  Finally, was the MVP really Briere?  I like Danny and all but he only had a 1 goal.  Granted he had 4 assists for a total of 5 points, but if I was on a line with Marian Hossa and Dany Heatley I could’ve gotten 5 points.  He wasn’t even on the winning team.  They lost by 3 goals; I mean how could the best player not be on the winning team.  I find this whole MVP thing rather shady, but regardless of my opinion congrats Danny, and Go Sabres!

 

10 Things I Hate About You: The Sports Edition – Brian – 1/21/07

As the week comes to an end, I have decided to take some time to reflect on a few things.  We have the NFL season winding down, the NBA and NHL are just starting to come onto people’s radar, golf has started a new ‘season’ (for those who actually notice things like golf), and everyday is getting closer to that madness which we just call March.  So with that being said I have decided to take a different approach, which is actually amusing since this will be only my second contribution to MSIMM.  Today I will present to you a list, well more like a collection of 10 things I hate about you: sports edition.  Things you will not see here; Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, confused cowboys, Shakespeare, a spoof that involves Randy Quaid (which is kind of unfortunate), some form of a high school party with scantly dressed girls (another disappointment), token black guys, token white guys, token messages that are ‘supposed’ to come at the end of stories, and most importantly you will not find people falling in love in some moral message you are being force fed by someone who wants to live in a perfect world.  It just doesn’t happen.  What you will find here, well it’s probably not much more exciting then a mediocre chick flick.  Damn the luck.

 

            On a side note, this is what will be known as a new paragraph.  This is because of a guy I work with.  His name is Jeff.  I showed Jeff this website so he could be entertained and pass time at work.  Well before even reading one word, the first thing Jeff said was ‘You should try using paragraphs so it is nicer to read.’ since my last update was all just one chunk.  Well here are your paragraphs Jeff.  I hope you are visually stimulated now.

 

Now back to the program.

 

HOF:

This years Baseball Hall of Fame class was voted upon last week.  With no surprised based on who had the chance to get in this year, Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn received 537 and 532 of the 545 votes respectively.  Congratulations guys you had a great and moral filled career.  This is why this year pisses me off for HOF voting.  One name on the list for his first time eligible for induction was Mark McGwire.  Everyone hears this name and they think steroids.  I certainly think of steroids and cheating when I think of McGwire, but what’s to say he shouldn’t go into the hall?  Did he not at one point have the most home runs in one season?  Was he not on pace to challenge Hank Aaron’s record like Bonds is currently doing?  The problem is we look at only good things for letting people into the hall.  This year is a perfect example.  Ripken Jr. and Gwynn.  These are two names that had ‘model’ baseball careers.  No drugs, lying, cheating, raping women, raping men, beating dogs, and well you get the picture.  Why are these guys so much better then McGwire?  Don’t we want to educate the future on what happened in baseball in the past?  Even though McGwire cheated and lied to congress, he still revolutionized the game of baseball.  He smashed monster home runs at a perfect time.  Baseball needed something after the ’94 strike, and McGwire and Sosa certainly contributed to that.  Now we want to keep him out of the Hall because of being immoral.  This doesn’t make much sense since the baseball HOF officially caries around the label of ‘museum’ so doesn’t that mean it displays all things related to its purpose both good and bad?  We might as well just tell all future Jews there was no holocaust since it was a bad thing that happened in their history.  How fucking ignorant are we becoming as people?  Baseball HOF, I hate you right now.

Commercials during sporting events:

Is it just me, or is this something that is becoming completely out of hand?  There are only 3 themes to commercials during sporting events, food, beer and manly trucks.  We all know this, we are all fine with that, just please stop playing the same commercials over and over and over.  This has gotten absolutely out of control lately.  Do you realize I have nightmares that involve the Wendy’s $2.99 value meal guy whispering to me while in the library?  I shouldn’t be having dreams like this.  That just tells me something is wrong and I might need psychological evaluation.  If it isn’t the Wendy’s guy, whose nose I really want to break, I will just be beat over the head by either the Coors Light coach press conferences or a truck commercial.  The Coors Light commercial was creative once and only once.  After seeing 20 different coaches get clips of their interviews taken and made to ‘promote’ Coors Light, and this makes up 20 different commercials that are played 20 times during a 3 hour sporting event I just want to slit my wrist.  The other one that I won’t even get into is Chevy and John Mellencamp.  If you have ever seen this commercial, then you know.  This has to be the most overplayed and obnoxious song/commercial that I have ever seen.  Throw in the fact that it seems to only be played during sports, and that is what I mostly watch on TV.  I need to stop before I give myself an ulcer.

 

ACC Basketball:

‘Tis the season where all I hear about from now until they all get eliminated is the ACC.  I really got to thank Dick Vitale for this.  Every year around this time, when I focus more of my attention to college basketball, I have to hear Dick Vitale completely ball wash the ACC.  Sure they usually have a few teams that are consistently good (Duke and UNC), but they are made to sound like the level of basketball all colleges need to be at to be competitive.  I think it might be my bias with living near a Big East school but I also think if you are going to be a sports announcer then you need to be neutral.  As much fun as it is to sit and watch a game where the announcer is telling me how great Duke, UNC, Maryland, or any other ACC team is, well I would much rather have a rusty fork in my eye.  Besides, we all know that Digiorno tastes nothing like delivery pizza. 

 

SAFE Port Act:

The Security and Accountability For Every Port Act of 2006.  What a fucking disaster this thing is.  This is the gem of an Act that our faithful leader signed, which effectively prohibits the transfer of funds from financial institutions (in the US) to an Internet gambling site.  The funny thing about this is that if you look at the fine print of this wonderful ‘Act’ there is a stipulation.  The exceptions to this Act are online lotteries and horse/harness racing.  The funny thing is that the online gambling sites are all set up outside of the United States, which means it is non-taxable money for the Government.  The Government, not liking this, will instead impose an Act that takes away the rights of us as citizens of this country that is the ‘land of the free.’ (Although it seems more and more like my freedom is squashed each day)  The best excuse that anyone could come up with to defend this Act is that Americans have a gambling problem.  Well you know, taking away online gambling, which involves having a computer, a decent Internet connection, and the motivation to spend hours online strategically playing a game in order to win money.  This to me certainly means that we have a ‘gambling’ problem, yet the funny thing is I can still walk down to the gas station and blow my whole bank account load on scratch off tickets.  We won’t even get into the hypocrisy of this as well as the casinos all over the country.  Just know that your Government wants to choose how you can spend your hard earned money that they force you to earn just to be able to survive in this society.  And everyone talks shit about Canada…

 

Manning/Brady Bowl 3:

Well, it is that time of year again where Peyton Manning and Tom Brady meet in the playoffs, Manning chokes and the Patriots go on to the next round.  I am excited about this because this is what football is about.  Rivalries are what make players get more aggressive, and pull more out of their asses to win.  Sure we know Peyton will implode at some point Sunday, but the fun is in seeing HOW he will implode.  Maybe Eli will be on the sidelines so they can both stand next to each other with the same expressionless face.  I think it would be fun.  We should gamble on this, which Manning can look more like a robot.  The only thing you can hope for in this game is some entertaining way for Manning to choke.  I can’t go against Brady because the man has gotten to fool around with Bridget Moynahan and now Gisele Bundchen…damn is all I can say.

 

The NFC:

Let’s just stick with the football theme for a minute.  Does anyone else feel like the NFC has become the Paul Pfeiffer of football?  Nobody picks the NFC anymore unless there is no other choice.  It is getting rather comical at how badly people look at the NFC.  After the NFC dominated the mid 80’s to late 90’s by winning 13 in a row, the AFC has knocked out 7 of the last 9 Super Bowls and will most likely make that 8 of 10 in two weeks.  It has been a complete flip of what football was before.  Nobody thinks it’s fun anymore because the AFC is supposed to win.  I don’t really think anyone cares anymore who represents the NFC in the Super Bowl.  Maybe the NFL needs to set up 2 tournaments like the NCAA does.  They could have the main bracket that is like the NCAA tournament (which is AFC only teams) and then the NIT version (for the NFC).  This way it will actually be exciting when the ‘championship’ game happens.  We can do this for a few years till the NFC gets their shit together again.

 

Early Draft Entry:

This is one thing I never understood and it seems to be getting worse each year.  These 'kids' all leave school early so they can be multi-millionaires in a professional sport instead of going through college.  I probably don't understand this because I never excelled at a sport enough to where I could be offered millions of dollars when I was 19.  I do know that I enjoyed my time at college, so much so that I stayed 1 extra semester!  These kids are all hopped up on how much they can make as professionals, even though they will make a shitload of money after graduating college and getting the 1 or 2 more years of college experience.  I don’t want to hear this cop-out about the possibility of ‘getting hurt’ staying in college for 4 years.  If you are going to live in fear of injury, why play a sport to begin with?  Injuries can happen anytime and anyplace.  It just all boils down to money hungry souls who seem to forget that the reason they started playing that sport was because of a passion they had for it.  So stick around kids, college only comes once, and if you are that good at the sport you will still make money when you get through college!  Oh yea, I forgot about that other thing called getting a degree…might help down the road in case of an injury.

  

David Beckham:

The Las Angeles Galaxy signed David Beckham to a $250 million deal.  You would think this deal would span over oh I don’t know…maybe 20 years.  Well turns out it is just for 5 years, and wikipedia was nice enough to have a breakdown letting us know that Beckham will earn about $90 per minute on the field, and this doesn’t cover all the endorsements.  The funny thing is Beckham is 31 years old.  He is also supposed to ‘save’ soccer in the United States.  My question is when was professional soccer ever that big in the US that it needs to be saved?  Soccer in the US is just like lacrosse, it’s good for high school and college but anything beyond that you better have a degree.  Besides, we as the people of the US don’t even bother to call it by the proper name.  Instead we gave the name football (different spelling of course) to what we know and love as the game with a pigskin.  I wonder who decided on this $250 million deal.  Better yet I wonder who is going to be kicking the ass of the person that thought of this deal in a couple years.

 

Drugs in sports:

This is becoming more and more of a known problem.  It all started with Jose Canseco writing his book, pointing fingers at Bonds, McGwire and Sosa.  Soon the whole steroid buzz exploded and everyone was juiced up.  Hell even Lance Armstrong was accused of being on something.  I never knew we cared that much about riding a bike!  The funny thing is all of the shit people go through when they discover or accuse someone of being on steroids.  You have the tests, then if they are proven to be juiced up the suspensions, followed by some fines, then a reinstatement when the suspension is over, so on and so on.  It’s the same when a player gets busted off the field for possession.  How many times am I going to have to read about player X getting arrested for marijuana possession, getting fined by the league and his team, then publicly apologizing to try and save face.  If I got caught with pot at a job, I would get fired.  Why do these rules not apply to athletes?  If anything they should apply more so since now we are sending a message that tells kids ‘ok Johnny, Michael Vick smokes pot but it’s ok cause he is a pro athlete and makes millions of dollars so nobody wants to get him in trouble.’  It’s a bullshit thing to show kids, and every parent should slap their kid when stories like this come out so the kid knows to not get busted with drugs.

 

Tony Kornheiser’s comb over:

This needed a category of it’s own.  Does Kornheiser not understand this looks like an unshaved crotch?  Nobody does the comb over anymore and nobody does the unshaven crotch.  It’s simply the rules of this day and age.  Maybe if we were still in the mid 80’s this freak hairstyle would be acceptable. 

 

On that note, we have 2 football games this weekend, which of course means gambling!  Home team designated by *.

 

Patriots (+3) over Colts*

As mentioned above, I can’t possibly put any stock into Peyton Manning in the playoffs…I just can’t.

 

Saints (+2.5) over Bears*

As much as I hate to do this after the Saints beat the Eagles…fuck, just read the last rambling on how everyone is pulling for the Saints and it’s just that obnoxious that it will happen.

 

 

 

Protesting the NFL Season – Brian – 1/15/07

I am protesting this season of football and I think everyone should.  The NFL should be ashamed of themselves for what they have done.  What do I mean exactly?  Well I only mean the force-feeding I have received all year about this New Orleans Saints/Hurricane Katrina correlation bullshit.  I was forced at the beginning of the year to hear the start of it.  The Saints played the Falcons in a Monday night game in New Orleans.  It was the first game back in NO since the hurricane disaster.  I am under no means trying to sound like a complete insensitive asshole here; I agree that it was very warm and thoughtful to make a big deal about the Saints returning home for the first time.  But you know what...that should have been it.  Sorry New Orleans but that is all you deserved.  What happened instead?  Well the whole season was filled with people talking about the Saints having a 'magical' season, and even went as far as saying that the city 'needed this team.'  How stupid is that?  A city has a natural disaster that wipes everything out, kills a shitload of people, and these assholes are telling me that the city needs this football team to rebuild?  Have we been completely brainwashed to thinking that this makes sense?  What that city needed is what that city got which was a lot of people with money donating it to help the city, or all sorts of organizations setting up charity events to raise money for the city.  This was successful and a lot of money was raised to help rebuild.  The people that were wiped out of homes were also given starts in other parts of the country where they were able to go without being set back too far.  The city is in a cleanup process and is slowly getting back to where it left off.  Under no circumstances should anyone believe that a multi-million dollar football organization with a multi-million dollar president should let the rest of the country be convinced that if the football team wins the Super Bowl then the city is 'saved.'  This whole cluster fuck of a thought has got so many people tied up in knots that it seems like any team playing against the Saints just doesn't play as hard.  This 'idea' has caused other NFL teams to loose motivation against the Saints.  Even if a team loses to them it is 'ok because the city needs this team.'  This is not the way of the NFL.  Guys should be out there taking each other's heads off for MY entertainment!  There is no reason that I should have a feeling of the game already having it's outcome determined when I watch the Saints play...especially at home.  It's too bad the Eagles had to suffer through 60 minutes of football when they knew damn well what their fate was.  I watched that whole game and realized the Eagles weren't actually playing.  Players were dropping easy catches, the offensive line was blocking like it was their first game, hell even the refs were making sure the Saints 'magical' season didn't end that day.  There was a play about halfway through the 3rd quarter, the Eagles were up 21-20 with the Saints having the ball on the Philadelphia 39 just after an offensive holding penalty.  First and 20 and Drew Brees gets sacked, but the ref threw a flag for illegal contact on Dhani Jones, 5-yard penalty and automatic first down.  So instead of the sack making it 2nd and 26 from the 45, it was 1st and 10 from the 34 and of course the Saints went on to score and never look back.  I don't have a problem with penalties, if you do something wrong in football, you are penalized.  They showed this replay once and only once, and it was from an angle looking from behind the quarterback.  The color commentators pointed out where Dhani Jones was on the screen before the replay started, so I focused on Jones ready to curse at him for being stupid.  Yet there was no contact...non at all.  In fact it was so obvious there was no contact that the replay cut away quickly and nothing was mentioned of this play afterwards, it was just focused on the next play.  Everyone wants this Saints team to win and that is going to make the Super Bowl not worth watching if the Saints make it.  This leads me to a proposal for any city that hosts an NFL team.  Somehow create a disaster in your city!  That's the hard part, but if you can do it you can hype the shit out of this disaster, ship your team off to play in a makeshift stadium for a year, then bring them back and talk about how your rebuilt city 'needs' this team.  Some cities can improvise on already occurring phenomena’s of nature.  Buffalo is a great example.  The Bills really do need a Super Bowl win already so the fans don't unite and slay the football organization.  So take your already miserable fans (Buffalo has to rank #1 on a scale of most miserable sports fans in the world), and take the 300 inches of snow that the city gets each year and combine them.  The first big blizzard that occurs, have the people of Buffalo riot and cause mass destruction, ruining Ralph Wilson Stadium.  Then the Bills will be forced to leave the city that next football season, someone will step in and help rebuild the stadium and the city, and once the Bills come back into town the fans will be united once again because of a football team.  The only thing left to do at this point is watch the 'magic.'  The likelihood of this all happen is probably about as good as convincing the whole city of Buffalo to start saying soda, but we can all dream can't we?