. . .

I was shocked, shocked, I tell you, to hear that a professional athlete competing at the highest level possible with millions of dollars at stake, would dare use a sort-of-illegal substance to gain a theoretical edge over his opponents. In my view, the only thing we can fault A-Rod for is being dumb enough to continue using detectable substances when he knew a test was coming.¹

The tests were supposed to remain confidential, but were seized by your federal government as part of its $55 million prosecution of Barry Bonds for "lying" about using a legal substance. The absurd persecution of the greatest baseball player since Willie Mays has led the prosecutors to raid the home and threaten prosecution of the relatives of ancillary figures in the case.²

The story that is being conveniently ignored is former Cincinnatian Dana Stubblefield "cooperating" with the BALCO case, apparently naming fellow NFLers who also used. Like with Bonds and A-Rod, I don't really have any sort of problem with Stubblefield using, but I think the sports world's relative silence on this matter is interesting. Other NFL drug weirdness:

• Star OLB Shawne Merriman gets suspended for four games for steroids. The silence of NFL writers is deafening, especially that of noted moralist Peter King, whose columns are regularly filled with rhetoric decrying Bonds, Clemens, and other baseball steroid users.
• Luis Castillo uses steroids before the 2005 draft combine, is caught before the draft, and is still picked in the first round. Last year, he was on the cover of the Spanish-language Madden 08.
• There's more public concern over the Patriots' videotaping "cheating" than their continued employment of steroid user Rodney Harrison.
  

Why the free pass? After all, if we're just considering the effects of steroids -- increased muscle mass, ability to train longer and harder, and increased healing -- wouldn't they be far more useful in football than baseball? If Shawne Merriman is 6-4/270 and run a 4.6, he's most likely going to be a star if he has a modicum of football talent, but if you can't hit the ball or throw a strike, it doesn't matter how fast you are or how much you can bench.³ I think that it's because football has become less a sport than America's favorite soap opera, and the athletes are more actors than anything else, and everything is disposed of after the season; baseball is almost mythic, instant history. I have no proof for this, of course, other than my own probably unoriginal conjectures, but it does concern me. It should concern you too.

---

Footnotes:
1. Interestingly (to me at least) is that this story is being reported on by noted moralist Selena Roberts, a reporter best known for buying in full-scale to the Duke Lacrosse rape fraud. I'm not doubting her reportage on this matter, but I'm not sure how someone who was so stunningly wrong on a major story can maintain any sort of crediblity.
2. As always with these things, I'm reminded of a quote by P.J. O'Rourke: "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
3. The career of Glenn Braggs is an instructive example.

Labels: baseball, football, media

...Actually, so do I.

Labels: football

• First, a little crowing: Madieu Williams is no longer a Bengal, making Andy's dog's name (Madi) obsolete. I believe I predicted this.
• Oh, more crowing: I did enjoy Blogtober ending with a whimper.
  
• For about six hours, Shaun Rogers was a Bengal. Whoops, now he's a Brown. Why can't the city of Cincinnati have anything? More specifically, why can't *I* have anything? Seriously, whenever I start liking a team (Duke excepted) they suck. Example: I've been to roughly 100 Reds games (that's probably low, but it's an estimate). I think I've seen at least 70 losses. Seriously. And now that Dusty Baker is the manager, well...let's just say the outlook is not good. Look: Notre Dame sucks now, the Mavericks, Rangers, Bengals...any team I enjoy = suck.
• This was supposed to be Scrubs' last season, but now it's apparently not. This is only notable for one thing: it's possibly Zach Braff-less. Maybe I'm not cursed.
• The Wire is down to two episodes left. Now, my criticisms from earlier this year are still valid, but the show is still great. The media plot is ridiculous and heavy-handed, and I don't agree with its premise (Journalism, etc.), but it's proving dramatic.
  
• I don't really have anything else.
  

Labels: baseball, football, random, The Wire, TV

I have several opinions on the Super Bowl:

• Praise Allah, the city of Boston finally gets its comeuppance. First, they lose out on Johan Santana and now, their precious football team loses a game. Ha!
• On the other hand, the Patriots' whole bit is awesome. One big problem with modern-day sports is that no one wants to be a bad guy. The Patriots, on the other hand, go the other way. They unrepentantly cheat, they roid¹, their coach is a glorious asshole, they run up the score for no good reason...I can't help but love this team.
  
• On an unrelated topic: fuck you, Chad Johnson. If you want to get all the attention and fame when the team does well, don't be fucking shocked if you get the blame when it goes bad. Also, if you want out, fucking say so, don't act like a bitch and drop thinly-veiled comments on local radio and threaten to sit out the season through "sources". Grow up, asshole.

Footnotes
1. What happened to the Rodney Harrison story, BTW? If a Red Sox had tested positive, we'd never hear the end of it.

Labels: football

...Odell Thurman is back.

Labels: football, ridiculousness

(O, you think so, Doctor?)

Goes to Bengals "Defensive Coordinator" Chuck Bresnahan for this one:

"I didn't have them ready to play."

Thanks for that incisive analysis, Chuck. Do you think that the next time you play a shitty team you could hold them to, say, 30 at the most?

Labels: Colonel James Memorial Award, football

The Big Lead » blog » Breaking: Joey Porter Brawls with Bengals lineman Levi Jones in Las Vegas

I thought the Pacman Jones story was the best ever.

I was wrong.

Labels: football, ridiculousness

So, and this is a huge surprise, there was a shooting at a strip club in Vegas over All-Star weekend, and guess who was involved? The Titans' brilliant, both on the field and off, cornerback Adam "Pacman" Jones. Here's the good bits:

Cofield said Jones, accompanied by a large posse, entered the club late Sunday night with a "Glad Bag" full of dollar bills, and soon began throwing the money at the dancers ("making it rain"). Rappers Nelly and Jermaine Dupri were also at the club, and were throwing money at the dancers from "blocks of singles".

Two of the strippers allegedly began to fight over the cash, and in part because of that confusion, the club owners turned on the lights in an effort to get all the patrons to exit the club.

Cofield noted that after Jones and his group left the club, there were allegedly multiple gunshots from automatic weapons coming from Jones' entourage, resulting in two bouncers being shot (both are in critical condition) and a woman also getting hit with the gunfire (condition unknown).

Oh man where to begin with the greatness? I, of course, have a list:

1. You've got an NFL player rolling into a strip club carrying a garbage bag.
2. Said garbage bag is filled with dollar bills.
3. Said NFL player starts dumping the bag out onto the stage.
4. This is apparently a common enough occurance that it has a name: "making it rain".
5. The initial "making it rain" causes Nelly and Jermaine Dupri, who also happen to be at said strip club, to also start throwing around dollar bills.
6. All of this causes a free-for-all onstage, with strippers trying to grab as much money as possible.
7. Of course a fight breaks out between the strippers.
8. All this is bad enough that the strip club managers have to turn on the lights. Anyone who knows anything about strip clubs knows that this never happens unless it's mandated by law. (Strippers, of course, don't look good in real light. Uh, I've heard.)
9. It's also bad enough that the club has to be evacuated.
   
10. And finally, someone gets shot.

Oh man. Oh man. No words can properly express my delight at this story. The Bengals need to sign Pacman Jones stat.

Labels: football, ridiculousness

So it's been a while. Here's what's been happening:

• Went to Medieval Times last weekend for Andy's birthday. Yeah...not my thing exactly. When you go in, they give you a colored paper crown (just like at Burger King) based on where you're sitting and what knight you're supposed to be cheering for. Well, instead of just handing it to me like a normal person, this fucking idiot tries to put the crown on my head. And so, not wanting to a) be touched by a stranger and b) look like a douchebag with a paper crown on my head, I back away and say no thanks. Instead of taking this chance to just hand me the fucking thing, she keeps trying to put it on my head. Well, goddammit, what do you think happened next? I keep backing away, she keeps trying to put it on me. So now I look like an even bigger douchebag running away from a teenager trying to give me a fucking paper crown. I really don't think it's unreasonable not to want a stupid paper crown, but apparently not at Medieval Times.
  
• Dolph is trying to grow a mustache. I guess he doesn't know he has blonde hair.
• In other Dolph news, he correctly picked the Bengals to go 8-8 this year. So now he's picking them to win the Super Bowl next year.
  
• So if you're keeping score, Dolph a) is growing an invisible mustache and b) thinks he's clairvoyant.
• If you're not watching The Sarah Silverman Show, you're missing out. She's just a brilliant performer. There's this promo running on Comedy Central for tomorrow night's show where she's giving a speech to schoolkids -- just watch her face. She gets all the mannerisms of a school speaker down perfectly, while saying some vile, hilarious shit.
  
• Also good and funny: 30 Rock. I initially stayed away because Tina Fey, former head writer of Saturday Night Live. Given the last time SNL was good was when Will Ferrell was on the show and it has been just unwatchable since then, staying away was a good assumption, I think. Anyway, this is one time I'm happy to be wrong. Best comedy of the year, and unlike other shows I could mention, this actually is great. Hopefully it doesn't get cancelled, which of course it will be.
  
• Andy Richter is coming back, this time as comedy P.I. I give it three shows before it's replaced by yet another hour of Howie Mandel spare-ing up the TV.
• Speaking of Andy, why hasn't Andy Richter Controls the Universe been released on DVD?
  
• Watched Harold and Maude finally. I liked it, even if I now can't get several octogenarian-sex images out of my head. Thanks for that, Ann. Anyway, how did Bud Cort not become a huge star? He's fucking great in this, the Jason Schwartzman of his time. What happened here?
• Hey, so the Shins finally released a new album. Despite the Garden State stigma, they're still great.
• Pitchers and catchers have reported to camp!
  

Labels: football, movies, music, random, TEG, TV

...or at least more of good news/bad news situation(s):

• Good news: The Chicago Bears win, sparing me from hearing 8 trillion Katrina/New Orleans-related human interest stories delivered by token female reporters on sports news channels, with sad, plinkly music in the background. (One thing you didn't see much of in the crowd at the Superdome last weekend: black fans. I guess they're all still in Houston.)
• Bad news: The Chicago Bears win, sentencing me to innumberable human interest stories about Chicago's loyal, beaten-down fans. Expect plenty of "Da Bears" references.
  
• Good news: The Indianapolis Colts win, which hopefully gets the "can't win in January" monkey off Peyton's back.
  
• Bad news: The Indianapolis Colts win, which means that Peyton will do about twenty more commercials in the next two weeks.
  

Labels: football

• Oh, man, I'm seriously procrastinating bad. I have a very large report for my cataloging class that is due in about ten days that I haven't started.
• So, apparently the comments were set to moderate on this blog. I just found that feature tonight and approved them. I switched that off, but I left word verification on. Anyway, there was a comment here that needed a reply.
• People here are going fucking apeshit over the football. You have to be down here day to day to understand the effect the Cowboys' play has on the area -- if they win, they're going to the Super Bowl and everyone's happy, if they lose, Parcells is the worst coach of all time, all the players are shit, they should dump the rest of the season, and everyone is ready to commit mass suicide on Dealey Plaza. It's insane. Also, there were 46,000+ at Texas Stadium this weekend for a *high school* football game.
• Speaking of football, Notre Dame took a big old dump on Saturday. They just don't have the athletes at this point to consistently compete with the state schools and USC.¹ What they should do (and what they're probably doing already, since they're smarter than I am) is identify the smart kids early on and super-recruit them. Unless they're all stupid, which is a distinct possibility, and ND is screwed.
  
• Don't bother with Gilmore Girls this season, it's been god-awful so far. The new producers just can't cut it.
• The Wire has been predictably great so far this season.
  
• Scrubs is back on Thursday!
  
• Baseball Hall of Fame voting starts soon. The two most irritating figures from my childhood of sports, Cal Ripken, Jr. and Tony Gwynn, will get in. I cannot stand either of these people.
• Ripken should be obvious. Whitebread, bland, always-with-the-creepy-smile, on and on about how he loved the game, blah fucking blah. The establishment media loves this shit and predictably buys into it wholesale. Great, you played a bunch of games in a row. But you were easily the most talented player of your generation and you never became what you could have been if you had just taken a break once or twice a month. You *know* he hurt his team by playing too often and not being fresh by the end of the season. Does any of this get brought up in the mass fellating that his Ripken media coverage?
• Gwynn is similar. He is one of those guys who presents a great image of himself, as this jovial, roly-poly, safe for white america black guy, a stance which really irritates me and can't possibly be real.² And as a result, he gets very favorable press, based on his one skill, hitting singles. The fact is that Barry Bonds is about 800x the hitter Gwynn ever was or ever could have been, but you still hear about how Gwynn is the "best pure hitter ever", and that goddamn show of him talking with Ted Williams about the "science of hitting" always gets the nostalgists misty-eyed. Whereas you have Barry Bonds, keeping it real -- he's a dick, he knows it, and he's never tried to hide that fact, something that will always get my respect, if not the general public's.
  
• One thing you can be sure of is that Mark McGwire will not get in on the first ballot. First of all, yes he deserves it. For a good ten+ year stretch, he was the best power hitter in MLB, and that counts for something. But you will hear two reasons why he won't be in. The first is that he only hit homers. That's true, more or less, but he still has 583 of them, despite being hurt a lot. Then there's the steroid thing. What really hurts him (with me and the establishment media) is him pussing out at Congress. From the establishment's standpoint, it was basically an admission of steroid use, which in sports media world even the taint³ (see Sammy Sosa) is a capital offense. My problem is that he should have admitted it (if it was true, which there is still no proof of course) and told Congress to go fuck themselves. But he does deserve to be in the HOF.

---

Footnotes
1: Speaking of that how the hell does USC have the talent base that they have? They're a good private school, so I would assume they have great admissions standards (which is why Notre Dame, a school I probably couldn't get into (not that I tried), can't get the great recruiting classes of yore). I mean, they are in LA and have an incredibly hot coed fanbase, but something else is going on there...or else Pete Carroll is the greatest recruiter of all time.
2: See also Kirby Puckett.
3: *giggle*...taint...*belly laugh*

Labels: baseball, blog stuff, football, random, TV

What Keeps Bill Parcells Awake at Night

Michael Lewis the best nonfiction writer going; well, maybe equal with Malcolm Gladwell. I personally like Chuck Klosterman's work better, but almost every article he writes is essentially about him, so I can't really include him in the discussion; I personally respond to it better, but I can make a distinction between the quality of the two. It's like the difference between Bill Simmons and a sportswriter like Gary Smith of Sports Illustrated. Film discussion works this way for me as well. The films I've liked and responded to the best over the past few years are The 40 Year Old Virgin, Kicking and Screaming (Noah Baumbach, not the Will Ferrell abortion), and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, but I can recognize that they aren't "great" films in the sense that say, Citizen Kane or whatever is. (The Third Man is one that combines both; it resonates with me personally and it's "great".) This is probably a false dichotomy that I'm creating here, but whatever. The point is that despite my love for them, I can recognize their flaws.

Labels: books, football

As you've probably heard, yet another Bengal was arrested this week. Unsurpisingly, it was Odell Thurman, getting a DUI and blowing a .17 the night after the win at Pittsburgh.



Oh yeah, Odell was already suspended for the first four games of the year for "violating the NFL's substance abuse policy," one of those wonderfully vague phrases that means so much and so little. (See also: players being suspended for "violating team rules", a press secretary saying "I can neither confirm nor deny that statement".) If it wasn't so hilarious it would be a shame.

There was a mugshot of Henry here, but I edited it out because a) it was too big and b) he's an ugly man.

On a brighter note, Bengals WR Chris Henry was in the car with Odell that night, and puked out the car window. Needless to say, Chris Henry is my favorite Bengal. His litany of stupid acts and utter disregard for his own career warms my heart every time I think about him. Look at what he's done over the past year or so:

• Gotten a DUI,
• while carrying marijuana,
• and driving with an expired license;
  
• Bought a stolen gun,
• Waved said stolen gun around in a crowd of people outside a club, a crowd which included a cop;
  
• and (Allegedly) bought some alcohol for underage girls. Sixteen-year-old girls.

It's clear that this man is a genius. Unfortunately, he might be too much of a genius for his own good. Just as the most brilliant people of their generation are persecuted for their brilliance (see Socrates, Cicero, Galileo, etc.), so Chris Henry is being persecuted for just how much he keeps it real. It seems the rest of the world doesn't share my sense of humor and looks down upon Henry's actions. No doubt under heavy pressure from the NFL and the rest of the square community, Marvin Lewis is said to be upset with Henry, even thinking of deactivating him for this week's game against the New England Patriots.

I know what you're thinking -- Chris Henry is a dumbass, and as such he's going to wreck his career because he can't stop doing dumbass shit. That's obviously true, and that's why we, as Cincinnatians, Bengal fans, and appreciators of unintentional comedy, need to help keep Chris Henry -- and the rest of the Bengals -- on the straight and narrow. If you see Chris Henry and Odell Thurman out at a bar in the East End, take their keys and call them a cab, or give them a ride home. If you see Eric Steinbach driving his boat hammered, tell the boat cops you were driving -- take the hit for your team and city. Jump in front of Mattias Askew as he's about to get tasered for not moving his car -- sure, it'll hurt, but he won't be arrested, you will. Tell Frostee Rucker it might not be a good idea to punch his girlfriend in the face, or at least tell the cops it was you. Come on Cincinnati -- the establishment is united against our fun-loving, probably guilty, team. Let's get their collective backs.

Labels: football

Bomb threat forces Steelers out of theater

...

Labels: football

Any other team besides the Steelers I would have rather seen win, including the Bengals...

• Hey, did you know Jerome Bettis is from Detroit?
  
• Christ, what an awful game, even for an NFL game. The commercials weren't even good, and there was a break every 2 minutes it seemed like.
  
• Fuck Hines Ward. Kimo von Oelhoffen should have won the MVP for blowing out Carson Palmer's knee. That doesn't happen, Bengals win that game.
• Hey, did you know Jerome Bettis is from Detroit?
• The Steelers are the closet dirtiest team in the NFL, going back to the Greg Lloyd days. After every play, they step over the dude and talk shit. It doesn't get reported because they have a white coach with an impressive jawline, so that fools media into thinking he's a disciplinarian. Fucking Cowher, biggest fraud in the NFL.
  
• The sole good thing about Super Bowl week was Chuck Klosterman's blog. Klosterman is great -- he's like Bill Simmons with talent.
  
• Hey, did you know Jerome Bettis is from Detroit?
• I watched The Life Aquatic again last night. It gets better every time I see it; it's probably up to an A- now.
  
• Detroit is a hellhole. Don't belive the hype. They have the highest unemployment rate of any big city in the nation (14%, higher than France even), it is built on an industry that is dying in America (GM & Ford are near bankruptcy and have junk bond ratings, Delphi (GM's parts division) is in bankruptcy, and Chrysler is owned by Germans), and much of downtown is burnt out. That said, it is on the list of cities to which I'd move (oh yes, I have a list).
• Hey, did you know Jerome Bettis is from Detroit?

Labels: football, TV

The Puppy Bowl!!! How did I not find out about this earlier?

Labels: football, TV

Bengals rookie WR Chris Henry got arrested last night in Orlando for pulling a gun on some dude right in front of a cop. Oh, and the gun was stolen. You might remember Henry hitting the dumbass trifecta in December when he was arrested in Covington for 1) driving with expired tags 2) driving with an expired license and 3) marijuana possession.

Labels: football