Category: sports

Stephen A. Smith of ESPN is an idiot.

Stephen A. Smith was on ESPN a few minutes whining that sports organizations don’t seem to be feeling the effects of the recession. For one thing, he cited the cost of the New Yankee Stadium at $1.6 billion. Well, first, New Yankee Stadium began construction in 2006, a long time before the beginning of this recession. Second, how many jobs did that construction create or maintain?

Smith went on to complain about the salaries being paid to various professional sports players. Uh, out of curiosity, how much does Stephen A. Smith get paid per year and what does he contribute to society? Bombastic whining?

According to one website, ESPN Inc.’s revenue in 2004 was $3.2 billion. That’s double the cost of New Yankee Stadium in case you were curious.

Not to mention that those professional players that make however much money a year with salaries and bonuses; how much do they pay in taxes? How much of that money that they are paid is used to create other jobs? When a player gets a signing bonus and moves to a new city, he has to find a place to live, furnish the new place, and more than likely purchases a new vehicle to drive around the city.

And the funniest part of his segment was after he concluded his whining, he walked down into a subway station supposedly to get on a train. Even the announcers on ESPN had to laugh at this, stating something around the lines of: “the recession must be really bad if he’s taking the subway now.”

They need to find a new kicker too.

Richmond Times-Dispatch:

The Washington Redskins will bring in unsigned punters Tuesday to audition for the job currently held by rookie Durant Brooks.

Brooks drew the ire of fans with a short punt from the end zone in the third quarter of Sunday’s 19-17 loss to the St. Louis Rams. After the Rams failed to move the ball, they were still in range for a field goal.

Fire Groh!

What moron schedules a game against #3 USC? How insane do you have to be?

I was predicting a 30 point win for USC — they managed to win by 45! ESPN:

Mark Sanchez threw three touchdown passes in his first game as Southern California’s true No. 1 quarterback and the third-ranked Trojans rolled over Virginia 52-7 Saturday.

The Trojans lead 21-0 after just 11 minutes and weren’t tested, allowing coach Pete Carroll to keep things simple in advance of a home game against No. 2 Ohio State in two weeks.

Virginia had former stars Tiki and Ronde Barber and Chris Long in attendance and a Scott Stadium record crowd of 64,947 on hand, but the Cavaliers had minus 15 yards on their first three offensive series and needed 25 yards in penalties on their lone scoring drive.

In other news, #17 Virginia Tech lost to East Carolina (who?) 22–27.

Maryland beat Delaware 14–7.

Navy beat Towson 41–13.

UVA football goes off their rocker…

First they schedule their season opener against the USC Trojans (I’m taking bets on how much they get crushed, current odds are the Trojans by 30 points).

And now they ban signs at all their games (Charlottesville Daily Progress):

The University of Virginia has banned all signs at its athletics events, a move that some are construing as an infringement of Cavalier sports fans’ freedom of expression.

UVa students were notified of the new policy in an e-mail Tuesday. “Beginning this year, signs are not permitted inside athletics facilities,” the e-mail said. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

The new policy comes roughly a year after UVa student David Becker was threatened with ejection from Scott Stadium during a UVa football game against Duke University. Becker drew the ire of stadium officials for holding up a sign in the front row that read “Fire Groh.”

[…]

However, a Scott Stadium official informed Becker that his sign violated a policy banning any signs, flags or banner that contain “derogatory comments, profanity, impede another guest’s view of the field or cover any stadium signage.”

As of Tuesday, that policy had been changed to: “All banners, signs and flags are prohibited in Scott Stadium.”

[…]

Rich Murray, a spokesman for UVa’s athletics department, said the policy shift came after much consideration and discussion about signs at athletics events last fall. The new policy applies to football and basketball games, as well as all other athletics events.

[…]

Josh Wheeler, a lawyer and associate director at the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, said that although the new policy is a blanket prohibition on all signs, it ironically raises fewer constitutional concerns than did the old policy because it is both content- and viewpoint-neutral.

“The key factor in determining the constitutionality of a restriction on speech in a public place is whether it is directed at what is being said,” Wheeler said. “In other words, does the restriction apply to all speech, and not just the speech you don’t like?”

Fascists.

Moronic fascists.

Hmm…of course, the former is implied by the latter but one has been exact when making hyperbolic claims about someone being a fascist. ;)

Why I’m not watching the Olympics; and why it doesn’t have anything to do with the repressive ChiCom regime.

It’s these sports activities.

Rowing, for example; how the hell is that a sport? Row, row your boat gently down the steam…

And consider this fact: these Olympics are scheduled to be the last Olympics where baseball and softball will be played.

Why is that?

Would it have anything to do with the fact that the sport is dominated by the United States and other nations in the Western hemisphere, plus democratic nations in Asia such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan?

Instead of baseball and softball, you can watch the interesting sports activities of table tennis (that’s ping pong by the way), badminton, water polo (a bunch of doofuses throwing a ball around in a pool), and handball!

And yes, I had to look those up on Wikipedia to see what they are.

Oh, and by the way, if there’s a lot of talk about how many medals the ChiComs end up with consider this: The host nation doesn’t have to qualify to participate in the events; they get an automatic qualification! Anyone else think that might make it easier to win a medal?

And I’ll be waiting for the 2010 Winter Olympics so I can watch hockey, snowboarding, and bobsledding. I’m curious, does anything in the Summer Olympics go 80 mph like a bobsled does?

Hmm…I wonder if the Jamaicans will be fielding a bobsled team in 2010…

Proof that Duke University football sucks.

They admitted it — in court! ESPN:

A Kentucky judge has confirmed what Duke fans have known for years: their football team is as bad as it gets.

Bad enough that Louisville should have to find another football team to replace the Blue Devils without penalty after Duke pulled out of the final three games of a four-game contract last season.

In a lawsuit filed late last year, Louisville asked for $450,000 in damages and any additional damages the court saw fit.

But Duke’s lawyers argued that the Blue Devils’ performance on the field was so poor that any Division I team would suffice as a replacement. Duke is 6-45 over the past five years, 13-90 since 1999.

Judge Phillip J. Shepherd of the Franklin County (Ky.) Circuit Court agreed, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

“At oral argument, Duke [with a candor perhaps more attributable to good legal strategy than to institutional modesty] persuasively asserted that this is a threshold that could not be any lower,” Shepherd wrote in a summary judgment issued Thursday, according to the paper. “Duke’s argument on this point cannot be reasonably disputed by Louisville.”

If I’m not mistaken, the University of Virginia (UVA) had been scheduling their homecoming games against Duke: an easy win for the drunk alumni that go to the homecoming games!

H/t: Ace of Spades HQ