ESPN 2 Ruins My Life, Again

Dear ESPN 2,

What is wrong with you? Seriously.

I get home from work at 10, looking forward to watching the U.S.-Guatamala World Cup Qualifier. However, instead of the match, you are showing the tail end of the Ball State football game. Yes, you're right, they're 11-0. I should be awed. And, on a certain level, I am . . . that there is actually a school called Ball State and they have enough students to field a football team.

Anyway, being a saint, I decide to wait things out and eat some hummus. The Qualifier is to come on at the conclusion of the game. Maybe, I've been to harsh, I think; maybe this Ball State game isn't so bad after all. And then: Boom! on the bottom of the screen, you put up the outcome of the soccer match -- the one that I have been waiting to watch and the one that you are set to show in ten minutes.

Are you just incompetent or is this a plot to destroy me?

Your pal,

Dork 3

Live Blogging During MNF!

Is football becoming soccer?

More specifically, is football becoming Italian soccer?

I ask this question because, this season, I've noticed an increase in theatrics by NFL players aimed at tricking refs into assessing 15-yard penalties.

Larry Fitzgerald, I'm looking in your direction.

The NFL's goal-line idiocy

File under: major football problems with obvious solutions that the NFL chooses to ignore.

In the final minutes of today's Vikings-Packers game, Adrian Peterson broke free and managed to make it at least very close to the end zone, or maybe into it, before he got tackled. Either his knee was down before the ball, in his outstretched hands, crossed the goal line, or it wasn't. Clearly, an ideal candidate for a coach's challenge--except that the geniuses at Fox managed to capture the play exclusively from angles that were utterly useless to determine where the ball was when the runner's knee hit the turf. On the bright side, the number of unhelpful shots they were able to display was impressive.

Is there any good reason why the league doesn't just spring for one camera on each goal line, which doesn't ever move, and which is always filming? Wouldn't this be a trivial cost, with the promise to enhance the accuracy of touchdown calls substantially season after season? Will this change once Barack Obama is President?

[h/t my football-watching compatriot this morning, whose point this actually was]

Victory Day Parade

Fellow dorks: Thank you for the pity. It feels almost as good as winning a championship (or so I've been told).



On a related/unrelated note, when did "voters" turn into "fans"? I guess the presidential race has always had the feel of a sporting event in certain respects, but when the election was called in Obama's favor last Tuesday night people in Philly poured into the streets, honking horns, high fiving strangers, and pumping fists in the air. I guess if I was pressed to identify a difference from the World Series celebrations the previous month, I'd have to go with the notable absence of baseball caps . . . well, that and the fact that rather than getting into fights, turning over cars, and urinating on lamp posts, members of the Obama crowd exchanged warm embraces and kind words of congratulations . . . while metaphorically urinating on John McCain's political gravestone.

World Series thoughts

Thanks, Dork 1, for the World Series congratulations. It was no 86-year drought, it's true, but then again there was never any "curse" lore to hang the losing on; they always just sucked. And yes, my fullest pity now shifts to Dork 3, stuck with the most unfortunate Nats/Skins/Caps/Wiz foursome. Maybe you should think about jumping on board with your new hometown teams?

I will leave aside the obvious rants about what's wrong with the MLB postseason (off days, late starts, Fox, etc.), and just single out a few issues:

--Ratings: Many a pixel was blackened over the past two weeks with talk of the abysmal TV ratings for the Phils-Rays series. My take on this? FUCK ALL OF YOU, I HATE YOU. If you care about baseball at all, then you'll watch the World Series no matter who is playing. If you can only get it up to watch the Sox/Yanks/Cubs/Dodgers, then you should probably (a) go back to downloading porn of Ben Affleck/Billy Crystal/John Cusack/Penny Marshall, respectively, directly, or (b) check out NASCAR.

--Weather: Much has been made of the rain-induced two-day suspension of game 5. Setting aside the correct but boring conclusions (viz., that (a) Bud Selig is an idiot and (b) shit happens), some have pounced on this random two-day weather event in this particular city at this particular time as clear evidence that baseball must move the World Series to a neutral site. Even Buster Olney, someone who I didn't previously think of as a total jackass, has now endorsed this. My only question for Buster et al. is why stop there? Seven games is a lot. Why not, at your neutral site, have the World Series decided by a best-of-three? Or a single game? Or a single inning would be even better! You could line up a great undercard and sell a shitload of ads. I mean, who wouldn't watch that inning? I'd sit through 75 repeats of CGI-ed Craig T. Nelson and Christie Brinkley for that shit! I mean, I did already, right? Asshole.

--Announcers: It is my fervent hope that, when the next World Series rolls around, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver find themselves at a neutral site (or maybe an undisclosed location). One example to illustrate what makes McCarver so fucking intolerable: In post-delay game 5, the Rays found themselves in a somewhat tricky strategic position: they wanted to bring Our Lord and Savior David Price into the game right away, but were hesitant to do so because the pitcher's spot was due up fourth in the seventh inning (their first chance to bat upon resumption). Dem's de breaks when you play in an NL park, I'm afraid. McCarver's assessment? "It's almost as if the Rays are being penalized." Then again, I guess I shouldn't expect much from the man who once speculated that a leadoff walk is more likely to result in a multi-run inning than a leadoff home run is. The real question is, what ever happened to Al Leiter? Do you remember when he was in the booth for the postseason like five years ago and was brilliant?

Okay, rant over. I leave you simply with Chase Utley's summation of the Phillies' season, broadcast live and unedited on local TV and radio: "World Fucking Champions!"

The Palin-ization of the NFL

From a Times story noting that the NFL has recently fined a number of players for illegal hits that didn't actually draw in-game penalties:

"Do the after-the-fact fines and suspensions undermine the officials if a penalty was not called? The N.F.L. said that those sanctions did not.

'You can’t humanly catch all the things that might happen, particularly if it’s away from the play,' Ray Anderson, the N.F.L.’s executive vice president for football operations, said. 'It’s no rap on the officials that they might not catch a helmet-to-helmet hit at full speed on the other side of the field.'”

Except that it totally is a rap on the officials. Aren't there like 7 of them, to watch 22 players? Of whom 6 (the offensive line plus the quarterback) literally never get moving fast enough to commit a fine-worthy helmet-to-helmet hit? And aren't such hits hands-down the most noticeable thing that happens on a football field?

Most charitable interpretation: Anderson was slightly misquoted, and was in fact bemoaning the lack of any popularized rap composition addressing the NFL's blatantly self-indicting practice of fining players for doing things that the officials totally missed.

Congratulations, Dork 2

I'm really glad that it finally happened for you. I mean, it was getting a little embarrassing for all of us. Not since 1980? Really?

Now we can focus the full power of our collective pity on Dork 3. Also, the sports teams that he roots for totally suck.