Last night a new king of dog shows was crowned. Stump a Sussex Spaniel won Best In Show at the Westminster Dog Show. Of course, this decrowns, or retires, or whatever you want to call it, Uno the Beagle as the king of dogs. Graciously Uno did a final tour, he even went to the top of the Empire State Building, before making an appearance at Westminster on Monday night. I guess he wanted to make sure the transition went smoothly.
Oh well, all good things must come to an end and this is no exception. I will borrow an idea from the Vatican, which when the pope died referred to John Paul II as John Paul the Great. Uno the Great it is!
Also, tonight we got to see the debut of Jay Beagle for the Caps. (Yes the Caps lost, but it was in a shootout... against a team that is seemingly built for the shootout... and who has a ridiculous number of wins from the shootout.) Anyways, I'm hoping Beagle does well if only so that I can get Gilligan a jersey.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Monday, February 09, 2009
ESPN's Sports Guy is off his rocker - Part 2
I wrote up the first part of this rant soon after the ESPN's Sports Guy (Bill Simmons) absurdly called DC a "top-3 lousy/indefensible major sports city" but I didn't post it immediately. I rediscovered it this past weekend cleaned it up and posted it today... but I felt like it wasn't complete. I needed to rank, in my opinion, who should be in the "top-3 lousy/indefensible major sports city". (BTW, this may make more sense if you read the first post before reading this one.
So here we go: My thoughts as to who should be considered the "top-3 lousy/indefensible major sports city". First though, we need to establish a few terms and such:
What is a "Major Sports City?"
It seems a bit obvious that we should stick to the traditional "Major Sports" of NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. (Sorry, MLS I'ld include you but until us soccer fans become more of a force I'm keeping MLS off the list. Take it as incentive to build.) But then how do we define the cities?
Do We Include Cities With Only One Sports Team?
There are various teams that only have one sports team: San Antonio (NBA), Salt Lake City (NBA), Portland (NBA), Jacksonville (NFL), various Canadian NHL cities, etc. Since these cities only have one sports team, competition is less and the following is usually pretty good. And when the following isn't all that good, it's usually a result of suckage on the part of the team and consequently it's too easy to pick on the city. For those reasons I probably won't make much mention of them.
There are, however, cities that only have one team but could be joined with neighboring cities (Orlando to Tampa, San Jose to San Francisco, Green Bay to Milwaukee, Columbus to Cleveland and/or Cincinnati, Raleigh to Charlotte, Memphis to Nashville, etc.)? This is tough because I'm going to have to make a rather arbitrary line. We'll go ahead and put the line at being within approximately a one hour drive. So for the purpose of this evaluation, Orlando is now part of Tampa and San Jose is part of San Francisco. The rest remain by themselves. So cities such as Green Bay, Raleigh, and Memphis won't figure much in this discussion for the reasons listed earlier.
Roughly put, if a city only has one major sport AND we can't combine it with another city... you don't really count as a "Major Sports City".
What about "Major Sports Cities" with two sports?
The way I figure there are 11 cities in this category: Baltimore, Buffalo, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Nashville, New Orleans, San Diego and Seattle. First, and to drive home the point from the previous post: When it comes to NFL fans, none of these cities' fans can match Redskins fans (the Chiefs probably come closest). Of course, Milwaukee doesn't have an NFL team, but no one would believe you if you tried to say that Brewer or Buck fans are as fervent as Skins fans. The only city whose combined sports fans come close to Washington's fans may be Buffalo... but that is only because DC would be pulled down by the lack of Nats fans (like I said, they're still new). And in "defensibility" Buffalo has the upper hand, since they have no Stanley Cup wins and no Super Bowl wins (their last championship win was an AFL Championship in 1965).
To make things interesting, I'm not going to include these cities. That way, it will be even more obvious that Simmons doesn't know what he's talking about.
What about "Major Sports Cities" with three sports?
This is where things get interesting. By my count there are 5 cities which definitely fit this category: Cleveland, Houston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Toronto. Now if we we're to include these towns, Houston would probably be the only one in consideration for the top side of lousy/indefensible sports cities. Not to say they're definite but Cleveland and Pittsburgh have great football fans, St. Louis has great baseball fans and Toronto has great hockey fans. Houston's best fans are probably their football fans, but they gave up on the Oilers and were given a team most because of the efforts of the city of Cleveland to get their football team back.
The interesting part is how to include San Francisco and Oakland. Each has a NFL and a MLB team but do we put the Warriors under Oakland or San Francisco? Or both? Hard to say, but I won't worry about it since they not making the Top 3.
Dealing with how "Lousy" and "Indefensible" a fan base is.
The tough part of this is to gauge how defensible the lousiness is. (Did that make any sense?) For instance, Nats fans "lousiness" is defensible in that, aside from an interesting overachieving first season which still ended with a .500 record, the team has sucked since it's been here AND they've only been here for 4 years. On the other hand, the Marlin's fans "lousiness" isn't defensible because they have two World Series trophies in the past 11 years AND are last in MLB attendance by a huge margin. Their only defensible point is that they're relatively young at 15 years of existence.
Finally: The Top 3...
Did I say Top 3? Heck, I'll do a Top 5! Here is my list, in no particular order:
So of the 14 cities (that doesn't include San Fransisco or Oakland) that have four or more professional teams, those are the top lousy/indefensible 5 cities. And if we include San Fransisco, Oakland, and the 5 "three team cities", we would definitely need to give San Fransisco and Houston a good look before even considering putting DC on that list.
So here we go: My thoughts as to who should be considered the "top-3 lousy/indefensible major sports city". First though, we need to establish a few terms and such:
What is a "Major Sports City?"
It seems a bit obvious that we should stick to the traditional "Major Sports" of NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. (Sorry, MLS I'ld include you but until us soccer fans become more of a force I'm keeping MLS off the list. Take it as incentive to build.) But then how do we define the cities?
Do We Include Cities With Only One Sports Team?
There are various teams that only have one sports team: San Antonio (NBA), Salt Lake City (NBA), Portland (NBA), Jacksonville (NFL), various Canadian NHL cities, etc. Since these cities only have one sports team, competition is less and the following is usually pretty good. And when the following isn't all that good, it's usually a result of suckage on the part of the team and consequently it's too easy to pick on the city. For those reasons I probably won't make much mention of them.
There are, however, cities that only have one team but could be joined with neighboring cities (Orlando to Tampa, San Jose to San Francisco, Green Bay to Milwaukee, Columbus to Cleveland and/or Cincinnati, Raleigh to Charlotte, Memphis to Nashville, etc.)? This is tough because I'm going to have to make a rather arbitrary line. We'll go ahead and put the line at being within approximately a one hour drive. So for the purpose of this evaluation, Orlando is now part of Tampa and San Jose is part of San Francisco. The rest remain by themselves. So cities such as Green Bay, Raleigh, and Memphis won't figure much in this discussion for the reasons listed earlier.
Roughly put, if a city only has one major sport AND we can't combine it with another city... you don't really count as a "Major Sports City".
What about "Major Sports Cities" with two sports?
The way I figure there are 11 cities in this category: Baltimore, Buffalo, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Nashville, New Orleans, San Diego and Seattle. First, and to drive home the point from the previous post: When it comes to NFL fans, none of these cities' fans can match Redskins fans (the Chiefs probably come closest). Of course, Milwaukee doesn't have an NFL team, but no one would believe you if you tried to say that Brewer or Buck fans are as fervent as Skins fans. The only city whose combined sports fans come close to Washington's fans may be Buffalo... but that is only because DC would be pulled down by the lack of Nats fans (like I said, they're still new). And in "defensibility" Buffalo has the upper hand, since they have no Stanley Cup wins and no Super Bowl wins (their last championship win was an AFL Championship in 1965).
To make things interesting, I'm not going to include these cities. That way, it will be even more obvious that Simmons doesn't know what he's talking about.
What about "Major Sports Cities" with three sports?
This is where things get interesting. By my count there are 5 cities which definitely fit this category: Cleveland, Houston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Toronto. Now if we we're to include these towns, Houston would probably be the only one in consideration for the top side of lousy/indefensible sports cities. Not to say they're definite but Cleveland and Pittsburgh have great football fans, St. Louis has great baseball fans and Toronto has great hockey fans. Houston's best fans are probably their football fans, but they gave up on the Oilers and were given a team most because of the efforts of the city of Cleveland to get their football team back.
The interesting part is how to include San Francisco and Oakland. Each has a NFL and a MLB team but do we put the Warriors under Oakland or San Francisco? Or both? Hard to say, but I won't worry about it since they not making the Top 3.
Dealing with how "Lousy" and "Indefensible" a fan base is.
The tough part of this is to gauge how defensible the lousiness is. (Did that make any sense?) For instance, Nats fans "lousiness" is defensible in that, aside from an interesting overachieving first season which still ended with a .500 record, the team has sucked since it's been here AND they've only been here for 4 years. On the other hand, the Marlin's fans "lousiness" isn't defensible because they have two World Series trophies in the past 11 years AND are last in MLB attendance by a huge margin. Their only defensible point is that they're relatively young at 15 years of existence.
Finally: The Top 3...
Did I say Top 3? Heck, I'll do a Top 5! Here is my list, in no particular order:
- I definitely agree that Phoenix deserves to be on the list if only because they had problems selling out the D-Back's (who won a World Series 7 years ago!) playoff games last year. Who knows, maybe they're just more into the ASU Sun Devils than anything else?
- Considering Los Angeles has 2 NHL teams, 2 NBA teams and 2 MLB teams, they deserve to be on this list because they don't seem to care about the NFL. Yes, the Lakers and Dodgers have a good fan base, but 2 out of 6 is not good enough for a place with so many professional teams. (BTW, they even have 2 MLS Teams!)
- Miami. If I were ranking them, I would almost put Miami above Atlanta. Despite 2 World Series titles in the past 12 years and 1 NBA title (three years ago), the Marlins are last in attendance and the Heat aren't in the top half of attendance percentage.
- Tampa Bay/Orlando. They've got a Stanley Cup and Super Bowl trophy in the 2000s and neither fan base is "hefty". I guess it makes sense, since the oldest of their teams is from the 70s, and pretty much sucked until their Super Bowl win. Oh well, I guess if I lived in Florida I wouldn't care as much about sports, aside from football, either.
- Atlanta was mentioned by Simmons, but I'm not too sure about their inclusion in the top 3. Their lack of overall support is "defensible" in that, aside from the Braves, they've got no championships. I would put them in the top 5 though, because considering how good the Braves were in the 90s they're barely in the top half in home attendance last year (they're in the bottom half in attendance percentage, i.e. how full their stadium gets).
So of the 14 cities (that doesn't include San Fransisco or Oakland) that have four or more professional teams, those are the top lousy/indefensible 5 cities. And if we include San Fransisco, Oakland, and the 5 "three team cities", we would definitely need to give San Fransisco and Houston a good look before even considering putting DC on that list.
ESPN's "Sports Guy" is official off his rocker
Back in the early 2000s I used to read ESPN.com and CNNSI.com all the time, since they were the big time online sources for sports. Particularly, I liked reading Page 2's "The Sports Guy" (formerly "The Boston Sports Guy") because he melded pop culture references, stretching back to the 80s, with sports. And of course it helped that, growing up in a town without a baseball team, I was a Red Sox fan.
His view of things was helped by the fact that, besides the success of the Celtics in the early 80s, Boston was woeful in terms of sports. The Patriots were the laughing stock of the league. Maybe the Pats weren't the Saints or Lions but they were the Buffalo Bills or Minnesota Vikings. The Bruins, aside from getting pummeled twice in the late 80s by the Edmonton Oilers in the Stanley Cup finals, had done nothing since the times of the Original Six. And the Red Sox were... well the pre-2004 Red Sox.
Additionally, it didn't matter that aside from the NBA and to a lesser extent MLB, he was full of it (for example, listen to his recent thoughts about MLB pitcher Troy Percival). He didn't care about soccer and he didn't talk about the NHL, claiming that he "divorced" the Bruins. He spent a lot of time writing about the NFL, but it was pretty obvious that although he knew a lot about the game, he was terrifically wrong with his predictions and saw the league through his newly Patriot colored glasses. You see right as he got big, so did the Patriots and he conveniently avoided the fact that although technically a dynasty (in terms or Super Bowls won over time), the Patriots were anything but dominating. He also ignored the fact that the AFC consisted of only one true threat to the Patriot's dominance (The Colts) and that their Super Bowl wins were a result of last minute field goals and playing against Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb. By the way, do I need to mention the fact that cheating could very easily account for how slightly better the Patriot's coaching seemed to be?
Anyways, I stopped reading mostly because many of his ideas proved to be wrong and his writing became cocky and annoying. I particularly remember his whiny self-pitying article about how he got beat at the WSOP in the first 3 hours. That article was the point when I stopped consistently reading him. He became like a dumbed-down version of Dennis Miller with too many sarcastic analogies and too little actual information.
I would still read his weekly NFL picks, mostly wanting to get to the part where he would pick against the Redskins and all but assure a Skins win that week. Of course, he would finish right around 50% with his picks (in other words no better than a coin flip) and to make matters worse he would lose to his wife (who apparently knew zippy about football). But recently, I starting reading him consistently again... I think the Tom Brady injury brought me back. I guess I felt bad but I also (to be honest with some schadenfreude) wanted to see his reactions.
Unsurprisingly, he was just as lost with his predictions (see how he thought Red Sox were still alive and how he blows off his incorrect NFL rankings by calling it the "goofiest NFL season in six years"). But it all culminated in a "chat" he had a while back where he lumped Washington with Phoenix and LA in something he called the "top-3 lousy/indefensible major sports city."
Once again his lack of NFL knowledge is blatantly obvious since he apparently has no idea of the love this town has for the Redskins. That alone would eliminate DC from this list. Not to mention the fact that the Capitals have a DEVOTED following (just do a search for the various Caps blogs on the internet) in spite of their lack of championships, that the Nats just finished their 4th season here, and that DC United has essentially the biggest and most devoted following in MLS (but like I said he doesn't care about soccer). Now, I'll admit that the Wizards following isn't great considering they've got a championship 30 years ago, but then again it was 30 years ago. So I'll agree that the Wizards following MAY be "lousy/indefensible" but he's insane for suggesting that DC is in general a lousy/indefensible major sports city.
His view of things was helped by the fact that, besides the success of the Celtics in the early 80s, Boston was woeful in terms of sports. The Patriots were the laughing stock of the league. Maybe the Pats weren't the Saints or Lions but they were the Buffalo Bills or Minnesota Vikings. The Bruins, aside from getting pummeled twice in the late 80s by the Edmonton Oilers in the Stanley Cup finals, had done nothing since the times of the Original Six. And the Red Sox were... well the pre-2004 Red Sox.
Additionally, it didn't matter that aside from the NBA and to a lesser extent MLB, he was full of it (for example, listen to his recent thoughts about MLB pitcher Troy Percival). He didn't care about soccer and he didn't talk about the NHL, claiming that he "divorced" the Bruins. He spent a lot of time writing about the NFL, but it was pretty obvious that although he knew a lot about the game, he was terrifically wrong with his predictions and saw the league through his newly Patriot colored glasses. You see right as he got big, so did the Patriots and he conveniently avoided the fact that although technically a dynasty (in terms or Super Bowls won over time), the Patriots were anything but dominating. He also ignored the fact that the AFC consisted of only one true threat to the Patriot's dominance (The Colts) and that their Super Bowl wins were a result of last minute field goals and playing against Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb. By the way, do I need to mention the fact that cheating could very easily account for how slightly better the Patriot's coaching seemed to be?
Anyways, I stopped reading mostly because many of his ideas proved to be wrong and his writing became cocky and annoying. I particularly remember his whiny self-pitying article about how he got beat at the WSOP in the first 3 hours. That article was the point when I stopped consistently reading him. He became like a dumbed-down version of Dennis Miller with too many sarcastic analogies and too little actual information.
I would still read his weekly NFL picks, mostly wanting to get to the part where he would pick against the Redskins and all but assure a Skins win that week. Of course, he would finish right around 50% with his picks (in other words no better than a coin flip) and to make matters worse he would lose to his wife (who apparently knew zippy about football). But recently, I starting reading him consistently again... I think the Tom Brady injury brought me back. I guess I felt bad but I also (to be honest with some schadenfreude) wanted to see his reactions.
Unsurprisingly, he was just as lost with his predictions (see how he thought Red Sox were still alive and how he blows off his incorrect NFL rankings by calling it the "goofiest NFL season in six years"). But it all culminated in a "chat" he had a while back where he lumped Washington with Phoenix and LA in something he called the "top-3 lousy/indefensible major sports city."
Once again his lack of NFL knowledge is blatantly obvious since he apparently has no idea of the love this town has for the Redskins. That alone would eliminate DC from this list. Not to mention the fact that the Capitals have a DEVOTED following (just do a search for the various Caps blogs on the internet) in spite of their lack of championships, that the Nats just finished their 4th season here, and that DC United has essentially the biggest and most devoted following in MLS (but like I said he doesn't care about soccer). Now, I'll admit that the Wizards following isn't great considering they've got a championship 30 years ago, but then again it was 30 years ago. So I'll agree that the Wizards following MAY be "lousy/indefensible" but he's insane for suggesting that DC is in general a lousy/indefensible major sports city.
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