Monthly Archives: July 2010

Favre as Diva? Not Without Help.

The American mainstream media mob is at it again.

From the Duke lacrosse case to the let’s-get-Michael-Vick-back-into-jail drama over the shooting at his birthday party, the big American mainstream media is an odd little monster.

They’ve made Mark McGwire a steroid pariah in 2010, but they’ve completely forgiven their buddies Alex Rodrioguez and Andy Pettitte (hell, they’re Yankees, after all). With Rodriguez chasing his 600th home run, they have forgotten completely that A-Rod only half-admitted his own steroid use, but they still shit on McGwire because he doesn’t want to talk to them about it.

These people stink, and their sick little stench is now on Brett Favre.

The latest media mob war in the United States is to paint Favre as some kind of “diva,” (their word) because he’s 43 years old and he’s probably not going to fully commit to playing for the Minnesota Vikings this season until after the third week of training camp.

Like that’s somehow a surprise.

Take Dan Wetzel’s latest column at yahoo.com, entitled “Favre Stars as NFL’s Biggest Diva.” It was dripping with sarcasm and cynicism, but sounded more like a guy who was pissed that Favre wasn’t calling him every 10 minutes with the next scoop.

Then there is Mike Florio’s NBC column entitled “Favre is more diva than good ‘ol boy.” It’s nasty and probably farther off base than it needs to be.

And now we have Tim Dahlberg’s Associated Press column that says of Favre: “There was major flooding this week in Wisconsin, a state where Brett Favre used to ply his trade. It was getting pretty deep once again in Mississippi, too, in what has now become an annual rite of summer. The drama queen of the South was giving interviews and accepting selected visitors, including one who for some reason still wants to coach him this season.”

That just reaked of, “Please call me, please call me, Brett. I’m important, too.”

It’s kind of sad watching the American news media act like a snooty 13-year-old girl, drooling all over herself, calling Favre “a drama queen,” while hoping beyond hope that when the big decision to play or not play is made, he’ll call her first.

If Favre is a “diva,” and my experience (which is only about a dozen post-game interviews in a controlled team environment) suggests he’s not, it’s because the big U.S. media machine has declared him a diva.

Let’s not forget, you can’t be a “diva,” unless you’re allowed to be a diva and nobody enables Brett Favre like the American mainstream media machine.

Not only is mob wrong far too often, it’s way too whiney.

* * *

Now let me get this straight: First base umpire Gary Darling blows a call (what else is new?), Baltimore’s Ty Wigginton argues, inadvertently bumps the umpire and gets a three-game suspension, but the guy who screwed up the call gets no penalty at all?

Major League Baseball has truly messed up priorities.

Replay, please.

Thanks for the Admission. But WTF?

It’s been quite a week in Crazyland and it’s not even close to being over yet.

Between the incredulous reasoning for dumping veteran captain Mike Keane, and the injury to Blue Bombers quarterback Buck Pierce that started out as one game and turned into “two-to-four weeks,” (if Mike Kelly had kept a player out of post-game interviews as Paul LaPolice did with Pierce after last week’s 28-7 loss in Hamilton — which is certainly the head coach’s right — he would have been publicly eviscerated for “trying to control the message.”), we’ve had the Canadian Football League admit that both its on-field officials and its replay officials “erred” on a play that ultimately cost the Bombers a football game.

Tom Higgins, the league’s director of officiating, admitted on Monday that the league’s “replay command centre” (love the pomposity of that name) officials in Toronto “erred” when they reviewed a Bomber challenge claiming that Ticats quarterback Kevin Glenn had indeed fumbled on a run around the left side in the  third-quarter.

“This is going to go down as an incorrect ruling, because we didn’t allow enough time for the fumble to be recovered,” Higgins said in a written statement. “It’s a shame, because that’s what we have replay for.”

A shame? More than a shame, it’s a firing offence..

Got this response from regular reader Fort Rouge Ted:

Hey Scotty…it just dawned on me!  Why I enjoy watching curling so much during the winter…a sport I never even tried.
BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE DEAF-DUMB & BLIND OFFICIALS F*%KING UP THE GAME!!!!
Simple as that!
What was really sad about that travesty of a BLOWN REPLAY CALL…In which everyone at the CFL lounge called a fumble….is that it takes great talent to do what that kid did in going for the ball and punching it out in one motion…is that not why we go pay to see these kids play?  To see the athleticism and the natural talent they have to play the game professionally? Just like the kid that threw the perfect game for the Tigers….most likely his first and last in the Show…but just like the fumble…and the England goal…..some INCOMPETENT BOOB f*%ked it up!
Cheers,
FRT

Just Plain Bad

Here’s today’s question: Have we watched the point in professional sport — outside of golf, of course — where we’re going to make up the rules as we go along?

The NFL and NBA have been making up the rules for a long time. Hockey has no rules, or to be more fair, despite a number of changes and league directives, the rules are still different in the third period than they are in the first. Major League Baseball has reached the level of pure, unadulterated joke (Why bother having a strike zone? Play call your own. Don’t waste the money on a homeplate umpire). Officiating in the World Cup was comical.

And there is the Canadian Football League.

Just watched the PVR of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 28-7 loss to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Watched the live version at Assiniboia Downs on Friday night and have just re-watched that debacle once again.

There is NO justification for calling the Kevin Glenn fumble in the third quarter a “non-fumble.” It was a fumble. The textbook definition of a fumble. If you look up the word fumble in the CFL rulebook, you are asked to go to www.tsn.ca to watch the replay of that fumble. And yet, even with video replay, there was some sort of excuse made up to make it a non-fumble.

It happened, of course, at an extremely important point in the game and may have changed the outcome (on the next play, Glenn threw a touchdown pass to make the score 21-0). The CFL should be ashamed.

The Bombers lost and fell to 1-2 on the season, tied with Hamilton for last in the East. It’s really not that big a deal. After all, this 18-game season is only three games old and the Bombers get the lousy Eskimos in front of the beer cup snake at Canad Inns Stadium next week.

But it just makes the league look bad and nobody needs that.

A Week in the Trenches.

The past week sure was fun.

1) LeBron James announced he was leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers and was going to play with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade in Miami. Interesting choice. Wade and james play exactly the same game and Bosh did nothing in Toronto unless he had the ball. The Heat have no Rajon Rondo and no Pau Gasol. It will be fun to watch which one of these guys breaks down first.

If James really wanted to win, he’d have signed in Chicago. Gibson, Rose, Noah and Boozer with LeBron? That’s a winning combination.

In the meantime, his news conference was uncomfortable and embarrassing and it might just have been a little too foreboding for his own good.

2) Watched all or pieces of about 25 Major League Baseball games on MLB TV this week. Saw about 30 bad calls and four ejections. Why baseball is against replay is a question that just can’t be answered.

However, it feels good to be involved in the Northern League. The next time anyone says that umpiring in the NL is lousy, I can just point out how truly dreadful the umpiring is in the majors. Not one of those guys could call their dogs.

3) Had a chance to talk to author Jerrad Peters, the man who wrote, “We Call it Soccer,” about his impression of this year’s World Cup. A gigantic soccer maven, Peters had this to say about the final between the Netherlands and Spain coming up in about four hours:

“Hmmm… Am I happy with World Cup. Good question. I’m not sure whether this is a legendary World Cup, or an extremely sub-par one. I do know this—I am not at all excited for the final. It will be 0-0 after extra time and Spain will win on penalties. I will be shocked if it is an exciting game.”

Thanks, Jerrad. If you’re looking for excitement, the Goldeyes face Joliet at 1:30 p.m. CDT. If you can’t get to Canwest Park, the game will be live, with me and Kenny Wiebe, on Shaw TV Channel 9.

The Bombers Are Back. That Means It’s Crazier Than a LeBron News Conference Around the ‘Peg

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ 2010 Canadian Football League campaign has begun. That means the Loonie Season has returned to Winnipeg.

You might have thought LeBron James’ uncomfortable and embarrassing news conference on ESPN (TSN or ESPN North in Canada) was crazy, but the way the two local newspapers in Winnipeg lead the cheers for the local football side — as long as the football side does what the newspapers want — is a non-stop source of comic relief.

On Sunday, the Winnipeg Sun told us (and this is the lead to the story) “The special teams saviour is on his way back to town.” Huh? Seems Derrick Doggett has returned to the Bombers after being released by the Pittsburgh Steelers and now, all is well. Derrick Doggett?

Yep, that’s it. One player will change the entire special teams performance of the Blue Bombers, a performance that has been pretty shaky so far this season.

So, hey, thank goodness Derrick Doggett is back. Obviously the Cup is on its way.

Yeah right, after two games in an 18-game season, let’s start telling people that the Bombers are another step closer to a Grey Cup championship because a special teams player has returned. That’s just stupid.

Wha…? Huh? It’s not? The big paper has been giving us that kind of stuff since February? The things you miss when you aren’t paying attention.

In fact, the folks at the Winnipeg Free Press were so certain that the Bombers were the best team in the league after they drilled 0-2 Hamilton 49-29 in the season opener, that they had to dial it back a bit on Saturday morning.

Honest to goodness, the Free Press wrote this headline after the Bombers lost on Friday: “Cup parade put on hold.” Cup parade? The only people in the city who had anointed the Bombers as potential Grey Cup champions were the sports writers at the Winnipeg Free Press (other writers at the Free Press will tell you that). Now they’re backing off?

The cheerleading over there is a joke. Not even head coach Paul LaPolice has suggested – not even a teeny, tiny bit – that the Bombers are contenders for anything. He’s been clear, “Let’s just see what happens and hopefully this team can compete.”

Cup parade? That’s almost the stupidest thing I’ve ever read in a newspaper. Even in a bad one.

Another Wild Week: Bombers Tremendous, Goldeyes Go 3-4, Looks Like Netherlands and Germany.

ORLANDO, Fla. — It was another crazy week. Lots of good, lots of bad and lots of ugly.

1) The Winnipeg Blue Bombers looked terrific in that 49-29 shellacking of Hamilton on Friday night. In fact, it could not have worked out better for the Bombers in their season opener last Friday night. Quarterback Buck Pierce threw the longest touchdown pass of his career, 90 yards, to Terrence Edwards, the offensive line played well and the defense did what it had to do to win. Perhaps more importantly, Pierce — who has had countless concussions — ran the ball six times for 89 yards, including a 13-yard TD. His longest run was 30 yards.
 In the end, the Bombers had 502 yards total yards of offense.

The defence may not be perfect yet, but the Bombers offence should be quite exciting this year.

Just as long as Pierce stays healthy.

2) The Winnipeg Goldeyes went 3-4 in seven road games this past week. After getting swept by Lake County, the Goldeyes took three of four from Joliet.

Despite the bump in Lake County and Sunday night’s 11-4 loss to the JackHammers, the Fish did a lot of good things on the road.  The team still has the No. 2 hitter in the league (Kevin West, .335) and the No. 3 hitter in the league (Wes Long, .331), it has a guy with 11 home runs and 34 driven in (Juan Diaz) and even found a guy who looks like a batboy but can actually hit jacks. That’s right, rookie second baseman Prove Kendall is hitting .316 with two long flies.

The Goldeyes are now 24-19 on the season and will open a three-game series against first-place Kansas City tonight. If this team can get three solid starts this week, it has a good chance to be 26-20 or even 27-19 coming home.

3) The officiating in the World Cup and the umpiring in Major League Baseball is still stinky, so I’m not going to whine about it anymore. Suffice to say the jackass behind he plate in the Detroit-Seattle game this afternoon looked as if he was on Cliff Lee’s payroll. The strike zone was so bad, it looked like something was up.

Then again, anyone who claims that Northern League umpiring is bad has not paid any attention to the Major Leagues this year. It’s brutal on good days. MLB needs replay very badly.

4) Speaking of the World Cup, I have Germany and the Netherlands on my Sport Select ticket this week. I have Germany on Sunday.

Don’t forget, we start with NCI and Streetz 104.7 on Tuesday morning, Scott Taylor/River City Sports World Cup Reports are on 92-CITI all week, Scott Taylor/Valour Tri-West Insurance Blue Bomber Reports continue all season on NCI, the next edition of ONE Magazine goes Aug. 19 (there’s a great interview with Bomber president Jim Bell) and the next edition of Grassroots News hits the stands on July 13.