Last* Word On Some Overcooked Stories

I have been gone all week, with the only sports channel available being ESPN Deportes ("deportes" apparently means "only soccer" in Spanish), and came home to find that really not a damned thing happened. But some of the sports world's favorite re-tread stories were apparently back in the news this week, and I didn't have my chance to add my rant to the cacophony of morons screaming about them...till now.

Alex Rodriguez is a cheater and lied about when he cheated. So you're telling me a guy that ballooned up like...well, like a guy on steroids, was using steroids? And he lied about it too? Did anyone believe that he had only used drugs on those random days when they happened to test him as he said? Did anyone really believe that he only used in Texas because the pressure was so great on him, but that the pressure of a larger contract on the largest stage (New York) made him go clean? Did anyone really believe anything he said on the issue after he'd already been caught lying and fessed up because he was caught? Guess what, the dude is a lair and cheater. Move on.

Brett Favre wants to unretire. I never thought I would say or write these words, but screw you, Brett Favre. First you blew your chance to ride off into the sunset with your legacy in tact and after a season for the ages. Then you whined like...well, like a professional athlete that you weren't getting what you wanted and shouldn't have to be held to the contract your signed. So then you got what you wanted, had some laughs (7 TD's in a game), but generally were a bad quarterback and had the chance to ride off into the sunset with most of your legacy in tact (since the Jets wear green, most people would have forgotten that you weren't a Packer forever). Now you allegedly want to come back and to play in Minnesota. This whole things makes me sad. (Thanks to Cory Hollenhorst for the above image. Google "Favre Vikings" images...some people are reall good at Photoshop.)

The U.S. Congress is taking time out of their busy pre-campaign campaign schedules to hear a bunch of jackasses argue about the validity of the BCS in college football. Let's not mince words here, the BCS is a money-making scheme that works really, really well. The bowls are too. And while many of us fans like to say we love the bowls and would be sad to see them go, we'd forget that within 2 years of a tournament-style championship. And they could still call the tourney games bowls anyway, so everyone gets his or her way regardless. If the NCAA wants to crown a champion for each of its sports instead of all-but-one, they need a tourney. If they want cash, they keep the BCS. And even that is stupid because let's face it, a football sweet 16 game would get far better ratings than the Holiday Bowl does, which would mean more TV ad dollars, which means more naming-rights dollars and more stadium ad dollars as well. I watched 3-4 bowl games beginning to end this year and I wouldn't miss a playoff game. As for the argument that a playoff would invalidate the regular season, I have two points: who cares how good your regular season is if your postseason is more a pageant than a sporting event, and if you lost 2 regular season games, your chances of making an 8-team playoff would nearly vanish. So how is that different that now?

The San Jose Sharks blew a great season and left the postseason with their potential unfulfilled. And the sun rose in the east this morning.

NBA teams had great playoff games with really exciting 4th quarter finishes. Unfortunately, they had to play the first three quarters first. Plus the Lakers and Cavs are sitting at home waiting for all of their toughest foes to beat one other to death to find out out who will be swept next.

The NFL and Comcast are still fighting about whether the billions of Americans who do not want the NFL Network should have to pay for it on their basic cable bill. Or if the millions of Americans who do want it for about 10-12 hours a year should. Or if the 10's of Americans who want it year round should get it on a premier sports-tier. Why was this so easy for MLB to make happen when supposedly no one in America likes baseball anymore but everyone likes football? And why is the NFL trying to say they're fighting for the right of the people to watch their games when they signed an exclusive deal with DirecTV to charge $11,000,000** a year for the season pass, rather than having such a deal on all TV providers.

**-approximate

The NFL Draft happened. Lots of guys I have never heard of or can't remember made a lot of money and I will never hear of, nor remember most of them. But the Giants got a dude that made the craziest catch in college football history, so that's cool. I will do a draft post-mortem at some point, which will allow me to make fun of people who made mock drafts, so that will be fun.

There are probably more but I am sick of thinking of stories that I am already sick of. This will be the last time I address them. Until next time.

A Draft Worth Mocking

It is NFL Mock Draft season. If you go to any of the major sports sites (Yahoo! and ESPN are the two top visited sites), you will find NFL Mock drafts crafted by experts in their fields that attempt to say who would draft whom if the draft happened that day.

In June, I wrote about the NBA Mock Drafts: "I saw a headline online for Chad Ford's NBA Mock Draft Version 6.0. Seriously? 6? How many times can you openly admit that you were totally wrong and still be considered publishable, let alone an expert?"

So what fields are these people experts in that make them qualified to discuss the draft? Are they former coaches? General managers? Scouts? Players? From what I can tell, ESPN's Todd McShay and Mel Kiper (pictured) are "draft experts" because they like college football and watch the draft every year.

So all of these folks come up with their definitive lists of which teams will draft which players and then the next time someone sneezes, they blow the whole thing up and start over. McShay even said as much in his latest column explaining that the college all-star games drastically changed the outlook for a lot of people, and that the upcoming individual workouts will probably make his current picks irrelevent again. So why do these people have jobs?

If they are experts at evaluating talent, they would be hired by a team to do so and make a lot more money, for one thing. And for another, wouldn't 2-4 years of games be good enough evidence for who has the talent that a diving catch in an all-star game or a good 40 time in a workout wouldn't really sway anyone too much?

The best part is that Kiper, McShay and others always include a paragraph on why that team will pick that player, so you get to see their reasoning. It often makes great sense, but it is funny to have them completely jump tracks and have completely new reasoning for different picks every week or so. Doesn't anyone see that if you constantly have to correct your errors, you are probably making too many errors for your word to be taken seriously?

For argument's sake, here are the top 10 Mock Draft picks as of today, February 4, for some of the big names in Professional Guessing:
1 Lions - Matt Stafford (Kiper, McShay), Andre Smith (Yahoo!), Mark Sanchez (Scout.com)
2 Rams - Andre Smith (Kiper), Jason Smith (McShay), Eugene Monroe (Yahoo!), Michael Oher (Scout.com)
3 Chiefs - Mark Sanchez (Kiper), Aaron Curry (McShay, Scout.com), Matt Stafford (Yahoo!)
4 Seahawks - Michael Crabtree (Kiper, Yahoo!, Scout.com), B.J. Raji (McShay)
5 Browns - Aaron Curry (Kiper), Everette Brown (McShay), Malcolm Jenkins (Yahoo!, Scout.com)
6 Bengals - Jason Smith (Kiper), Andre Smith (McShay), Michael Oher (Yahoo!), Everette Brown (Scout.com)
7 Raiders - Jeremy Maclin (Kiper, Yahoo!), Michael Crabtree (McShay), Andre Smith (Scout.com)
8 Jaguars - Eugene Monroe (Kiper, McShay, Scout.com), B.J. Raji (Yahoo!)
9 Packers - Malcolm Jenkins (Kiper, McShay), Brian Orakpo (Yahoo!, Scout.com)
10 49ers - Aaron Maybin (Kiper), Jeremy Maclin (McShay), Mark Sanchez (Yahoo!), Matt Stafford (Scout.com)

So that settles that. I guess we don't need to go through the whole mess of holding the draft since it is so clear cut among the experts as to who will choose whom.

The frustrating thing about all this is that in the end, Kiper (and likely others) will nail something like 28-29 of the 32 first round picks and likely a good amount of second round picks as well. But who wouldn't be able to do that if it was their only job? If the week before the draft, I spent 8-10 hours a day studying who needs what and what players were available, I could get 28 picks right too. And I am a moron.

So if they all admit that their current rankings are crap, why does anyone care about them? And if the picks aren't accurate until the day before the draft, who cares if they picked right? And when did this become something we care about anyway? Can you bet on it? Did finding out yesterday that the Giants will draft Knowshon Moreno (thanks Yahoo!) make me feel better about losing to the God-forsaken Eagles? And when it winds up not being Moreno, won't I just end up being pissed because I had read what a perfect pick it is?

In related recruiting news, UCLA's incoming class is being ranked ahead of USC's after yesterday's signing day by some folks. This means nothing really since UCLA is a few recruiting classes away from playing in USC's neighborhood (and by a few, I mean around 10). But it is funny to think what Pete Carroll must be thinking this morning. It took Rick Neuheisal one crappy season to have the recruiting pull to out-recruit Carroll (the undisputing recruiting master) or at least to make it a debate.

A Vacation From Obsession

This past weekend I went to Death Valley to see the sights, which to the surprise of apparently many people, there are many. We camped at the aptly named Furnace Creek. It is always an interesting perspective-builder to do trips like this right in the middle of what you would normally consider a really important time at home.

Being a big sports fan, I definitely thought twice about missing the Mets-Braves series, the NFL draft (not to watch it, but just to know where USD's Josh Johnson went), the NBA and NHL playoffs, regular season finales in college lacrosse, my college baseball team is in the midst of a 16 game win-streak, and the epic battle to find who has the worst contract in baseball (Andruw Jones or Barry Zito). [Update: Andruw Jones]

Being out in the desert with basically no radio, definitely no TV or internet, no cell phones (besides in this one parking space in front of the general store, according to one local), no electricity and not even a shower (except one for $5 at the "hotel" down the road), it did not take long for my sports-related concerns to just melt away (perhaps because it was freaking hot). It was nice to get out there and realize that while I would like to watch, what the Mets do against the Braves in April isn't going to make or break them, let alone me.

Now, I am not saying I would do this during the Super Bowl, but it always seems that every weekend is the biggest weekend in sports in ages. Going out and doing something else I liked to do makes it easy to see that rarely is a game really that important. However, if we were doing something my wife wanted us to do and I didn't, then these games this weekend would have been life-alteringly important!

I must admit I did cheat once. We had just gotten back from the "Racetrack" and it was over 100 degrees at about 5 p.m. on Saturday. At this point, whatever cold drinks we had had in the cooler since Thursday were no longer cold, so we went to the saloon and sat in the AC...and I watched a little of the Celtics' game. Surprise: an NBA playoff game was boring!

If you too were out of the loop this weekend, here's what you missed: NFL Draft occurred, but nothing interesting actually happened besides Mel Kiper's hair making thousands of children scream in terror. The Suns salvaged a win against the Spurs but will lose in game 5. Jason Kidd got really, really lucky that no one socked him in the face after a very dirty foul and will likely not be very lucky in game 5 when he is eliminated and will likely spend a lot of time on the ground. Zito took the lead in the worst contract race (ERA of 7.53 and 0-6 vs. Jones who is now up to .159 with 1 HR and 4 RBI in 25 games). If you like boxing, don't miss the Flyers-Habs Game 3 tonight.

As soon as it is ready, I will post a photo slide show of some of the highlights from our trip. And finally, a post I wrote last week (on baseball not punishing steroid users) was featured on Rotohog.com. Please go there and leave a message so I can get paid million and millions of dollars.