Nothing’s So Far Away As Yesterday

by dave on March 11, 2010

In some ways today is very different from the world in 2004.

In 2004, a huge budget science-fiction movie won the Oscar for best picture as well as 10 other Oscars. This year, a similar film lost in practically every category that matters.

In 2004, the last Oldsmobile was manufactured thanks in large part to GM’s inability to compete with the Japanese auto companies. This year, one of those Japanese companies can’t figure out how to keep their cars from running out of control.

In 2004, the Boston Red Sox was everyone’s sentimental favorite, lovable loser baseball team. This year, they are an underperforming, overpaid team with the most obnoxious fan-base in the country.

In 2004, Ronald Reagan died. This year, he was resurrected by Ron Howard and Jim Carrey.

But in one way, 2004 and 2010 are very similar. Jake Delhomme, LaDainian Tomlinson and Terrell Owens are three of the biggest stories in the NFL.

Three former super stars well beyond their playing primes are some of the marquee names still available in the NFL free agency. In 2004, every team would have vied for the services of the best running back, (possibly) the best wide receiver and one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. Today, all three are greeted with the deafening sound of silence.

Today LT visited the Vikings and may be off to the Jets tomorrow. Delhomme’s name has been mentioned in connection with Cleveland. At the other end of Ohio, T.O. just departed Cincinnati and left such an outstanding impression that the Bengals immediately went out and signed Antonio Bryant whose ceiling as a player is as a less consistent Braylon Edwards.

In case you have forgotten – that isn’t good.  

So, where should each of these veterans end up?

Tomlinson

Current Interested teams: The Vikings and Jets are both looking at LT to replace the departed Chester Taylor and Thomas Jones respectively. Which is sort of like trading in your Hyundai Sonata for a Hummer. Sure the Sonata isn’t flashy or exciting but it is generally dependable. The Hummer was really cool several years ago but is now just a relic that needs constant attention.

If LT was replaced as a third down back by Darren Sproles in San Diego, I am not sure I understand the rationale of moving him into that role in Minnesota or New York. LT’s strength is getting in the end zone: he isn’t explosive anymore and doesn’t make people miss in the open field. Do you know what the strengths of both Adrian Peterson and Shonn Greene are? Getting in the end zone and the tough extra yard. Plus they maintain explosive ability and can make people miss. How does LT help either of these teams?

Where he should go: LT’s weakness is speed and explosiveness and an ability to break the big play. Doesn’t it make sense to pair him with someone that can do that but can’t take the play to play pounding? How about in Philly with LeSean McCoy? LT can take some of the hits absorbed by Brian Westbrook last year.

My personal favorite idea though is to move him to Chicago. Matt Forte is a nice quick running back that can catch the ball but last year demonstrated he isn’t ready to be an every down back. LT can come in and take the short yardage runs that stuffed Forte last year. Plus LT and Jay Cutler can share notes on how big of an a-hole Phillip Rivers is.

Delhomme

Current Interested Teams: Jake has visited Cleveland in the wake of Derek Anderson’s less than magnanimous exit. Derek made Jay Cutler’s whining and moaning exit last year from Denver look almost humble and appreciative. There have also been rumors that the Cardinals have debated bringing in Jake as a competitor or back-up to Matt Leinart, which is ironic given that it was the Cardinals in the playoffs over a year ago that picked off Jake 5 times and turned him into the quarterbacking equivalent of Charles Barkley on the golf course.

While thematically, I can understand why the Cardinals might be interested in Jake (just like Kurt Warner: picking up a formerly successful quarterback that has fallen on hard times in his last couple years), it is in the details that makes this scary. Warner was successful because of his accuracy. Jake’s accuracy is about as good as Rip Torn driving home after a night at the bar.

The idea of Jake trying to complete passes to the receiving corps in Cleveland is also absolutely frightening. If he can’t complete passes to some of the best receivers in the game (Steve Smith, for example) what would he do with the Browns contingent? Not to mention how his fragile mental state would handle boos reigning down from the Dawg Pound. If the Cardinals turned him into Charles Barkley as a golfer, the Browns could send him all the way to becoming Charles Barkley behind the wheel of a car.

Where he should go: Really Jake’s only value now is as a calming presence on the bench for a young QB entrenched as a starter that can in a worst case scenario come in and hand the ball off. How about Detroit? Their back-up last year was Daunte Culpepper. That might be the only position in the league where Jake is a step-up. Even on his worst day.

Owens

Current Interested Teams: With the Bengals signing Bryant and the Ravens nabbing Anquan Boldin and re-signing Derrick Mason there aren’t teams immediately on the horizon with an interest in T.O. Hard to believe that people aren’t beating down the door of a 36-year old, temperamental wide receiver with a history of calling out his quarterback and greatly overestimating his own abilities.

Where he should go: Isn’t it obvious? T.O. needs a coach that is not afraid of players with bad attitudes or players that are past their prime that have been given up for dead by their current teams. T.O. should definitely be the prime candidate for the Bill Romanowski memorial locker in Mike Shanahan’s Redskins locker room. If having a 6th offensive coordinator doesn’t destroy Jason Campbell’s confidence, T.O. berating him and Shanahan drafting a rookie back-up to back him up should do it.

In 2004, we re-elected George W. Bush.

Could sending T.O. to D.C. today really end up any worse?

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In honor of March Madness kicking off next week, we are re-posting my attempt from a couple years ago to rank the greatness of each major American sporting event. This was done two years ago just after the Super Bowl, so some of the comments may be a little dated (even two years ago I made an X-Files reference? Wow. Get with the times. Please insert ‘Flash Forward’ at that point in the text. Thank you.) but in whole I am not sure I can argue with any of the major conclusions.

Looking back, there are some changes I might make (I admit I have gotten hooked on the NBA and now are much more invested in the regular season, let alone the Finals, but that probably wouldn’t change their rankings here) but it is interesting how universal some things have remained.

The NHL is still a floundering fourth (and if Gary Bettman has his way and NFL players don’t play in the next Olympics – you know the first time the US has cared about hockey in about ten years – it could legitimately be passed by English Premier League or even bowling soon) and the Sugar Bowl was a one-sided blowout yet again.

The only critical change may actually be to the Super Bowl itself. We are currently in the midst of a nearly unprecedented string of Super Bowls. In the last three Super Bowls, the game itself has outshone all of the hype. In the Pats quest for 19-0, the fantastically entertaining Steeler/Cardinal game and this year’s emotional Saints win we have seen three straight games where the commercial breaks were the time to go to the bathroom rather than the during the game unlike the majority of their predecessors. Would that put the Super Bowl over March Madness if I re-did these rankings? I don’t know.

Let’s call it a retroactive tie.

How Super is the Super Bowl?

We are now almost two weeks removed from the hype and the fun of Super Bowl Sunday and eons away from the next major sporting event. Now seems like as good a time as any to ask what seems like a fairly straightforward question: What is America’s greatest sporting event?

To answer that question I think we need to break it down into its component parts. Namely, what constitutes ‘great’ and which sporting events should we consider?

Let’s address the sporting events first. I think the only ones really worthy of discussion are sports that are of national interest. Sure Friday night football in Odessa, Texas is magical to anyone that read (the real) Friday Night Lights and the College World Series is as fun as any event in the world when your team faces elimination 3 straight games but the number of people that really care about these events are basically inconsequential in the grand scheme of things (sort of like X-Files fans). So let’s limit the events to the 4 major professional leagues (sorry, soccer fans, I like soccer as much as anyone and even I don’t know who is the current MLS champ…actually that’s not true I think the Houston Dynamo lifted the trophy. I was just ashamed to admit it) and the 2 major college sports.

So, how to measure these sports? I have come up with 6 criteria in which we rank each sport on a scale of 1 to 10. Event with the highest cumulative score is the champion (or champion of championships as it were). The criteria are:

  • History – Come on, you knew it had to be on my list. I am nothing if not predictable. If I could have come up with a way to measure the attractiveness of each events’ female fans I would have done that too.
  • Timing – Time of year, Days of week, number of games, etc.
  • National Interest – How much of the country is really interested in the outcome of the event?
  • Attendance Attractiveness – How much would you want to attend the event?
  • TV Coverage – How much coverage and how good is it?
  • Hype – How much do you hear about it? How much in advance do you start hearing about it?

 Let’s dive right in and see how they score, starting with the presumptive favorite:

 Super Bowl

  • History: 8 points. Sure, the Super Bowl is huge but remember that it has only been around for 42 years and the first few years it really wasn’t much of an event. There have been historic moments since, but it is still just hitting middle age. Which explains all the young women and hot cars you see before the game.
  • Timing: 9 points. I am taking points away for being played on Sunday (which you should have guessed) but other than that it is as good as can be.
  • National Interest: 8 points. So, everyone watches the Super Bowl but how many people watch more for commercials than the game? Let’s face it, unless there is a bigger story (going for a perfect season, Namath’s guarantee, etc.) the game is secondary to the ‘event-ness’ of the Super Bowl. Yes, I know event-ness isn’t a word, but I like it and I am using it. Sue me.
  • Attendance Attractiveness: 9 points. Who wouldn’t want to attend the Super Bowl? Not only is it the biggest game of the country’s most popular sport but the party goes all week and is always in a great location. Well, almost always (<cough> Detroit <cough>).
  • TV Coverage: 7 points. The pre-game show this year included Brian Seacrest, a red carpet and Paula Abdul singing which if I am not mistaken was foretold as a first sign of the apocalypse. TV coverage of the game itself would probably be in the 9+ range, but with the ridiculous 7-hour long pre-game show (about everything but football), I can’t go higher than 7.
  • Hype: 10 points. Our first Mary Lou! A perfect 10. Whether it is good or bad (see above), you can not deny that it would be almost impossible for the Super Bowl to have more hype.
  • TOTAL SCORE: 51 points

 World Series

  • History: 10 points. As Cub fans well know, the Series has been around for a really long time. If an event has seminal moments that occurred before your grandparents were born (Black Sox scandal, Cubs last win, the ’27 Yankees, Roy Hobbs walk-off homer for the New York Knights), it has history on its side.
  • Timing: 7 points. There are just too many other sporting events during the months of October and November. Sure, the World Series is still king but at a minimum the other sports are distractions. At worse they can compound the events of the World Series leading to the worst Sports Day in someone’s life.
  • National Interest: 8 points. Sadly, the national interest seems to rise and fall in line with whether ESPN’s favorite baseball teams make the show. Tigers versus Cardinals? Yawn. Red Sox or Yankees? Now we are talking!
  • Attendance Attractiveness: 8 points. Thanks to the ineptness of the Rockies front-office I didn’t get to actually attend a World Series games (those seats was saved for real Rockies fans, like a hedge fund manager from New York passing through town for the night, with a couple grand to spare), but having spent the week in a town hosting, I will admit it was pretty special. With games played over a number of days, a spirit invades a city. Seeing sky-scrapers lit up in Rockies purple just added to the special feeling in the air. It was almost like the Holidays, when everyone is in a slightly better mood, and there are decorations everywhere to remind you. Also, there was crushing disappointment when your team gets swept/you don’t get your Red Rider BB Gun.
  • TV Coverage: 7 points. An innate problem of a 7 game series is that you end up with games being played on awkward days of the week. With Fox unable to decide whether mid-week or weekend games are better, there is just too much variability and the potential for too much other stuff going on. See Timing.
  • Hype: 7 points. Sure we had Dane Cook this year telling us there is ‘only one October!’ (I assume he knows there will be another October next year), but unless the Red Sox, Yankees or your hometown are involved it can be somewhat quiet.
  • TOTAL SCORE: 47 points

 NBA Finals

  • History: 6 points. As the perennial third-wheel of American sports (outside of the Jordan years), the NBA has rarely been able to capture the country as effectively as its championship kin in football and baseball. There have been some great moments (Celtics/Lakers in the 80’s, Bulls of the 90’s) but ask the random stranger and they are much more likely to tell you where they were when Jackie Smith dropped that touchdown then where they were when Willis Reed made his entrance.
  • Timing: 7 points. June is a good time in that there is little competition from other sports but the fact is that basketball is a winter sport. By June, we are tired of basketball, we want to wear shorts and run in green grass, not sit in a stuffy gym. Points are lost for the playoffs taking the better part of three months to finish and the NBA Finals often seeming anti-climactic. 
  • National Interest: 6 points. Sure, this would be a great chance to take a shot at the Spurs, Pistons or Mavericks for doing the unthinkable and being solid well-rounded teams devoid of super-stars and subplots but I won’t. The NBA has had its greatest ambassador and, to me, his shadow is cast over an entire generation of players. Until Jordan’s memory is the stuff of old men in rocking chairs, every other player will be measured against him and fail.
  • Attendance Attractiveness: 7 points. I have no personal experience to go on for this one, but I don’t really see it here. It is like the World Series, less all of the passion. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of traveling circus aspect to being the host town of the NBA Finals. 
  • TV Coverage: 7 points. The same problem of the World Series persists here – games ending up on awkward days. 
  • Hype: 7 points. ABC tries with the relentless hip-hop laden commercials and SportsCenter specials but in the lazy days of summer if you have a choice between sitting on the back porch grilling ribs or getting yelled at by Stephen A. Smith, I think most people will take the simple joy of charred pork any time.  
  • TOTAL SCORE: 40 points

 NHL Finals

  • History: 4 points. If you are snow-bound in upper Saskatoon each summer there are probably some great memories. However, this is America’s greatest sporting event contest. I am sure people in Boston have some sort of Bobby Hull memories but when Mark Messier winning with the Rangers only 14 years ago, is my earliest overriding memory, you aren’t going to score well. Two great personal Avalanche victories since still can’t help here.
  • Timing: 6 points. If I said basketball is a winter sport and shouldn’t be played in June what can you say about hockey? It is played on ice! The only ice I want to see in June is in my gin and tonic…sitting on the back porch, grilling ribs. 
  • National Interest: 3 points. This is sort of self-imposed with the lock-out followed by the TV contract with the Outdoor Life Network (no, I will not call it Versus, that is just a lame attempt at adding a sporting twist to the name of the second best Pearl Jam album). When NBC cut away from overtime of a Stanley Cup Finals last June, you could hear the deafening silence of no one caring.
  • Attendance Attractiveness: 6 points. Similar to the NBA Finals, I don’t see being in the same city as a Stanley Cup game being a ‘not-to-be-missed’ sporting moment. Ask the people of Anaheim how much time they spent worrying about their Ducks while riding Space Mountain last summer. 
  • TV Coverage: 4 points. Yes, NBC chose two hours of pre-race for a horse race over showing overtime of a Finals game. Not the race itself, pre-race coverage. So, NBC believes Americans care more about seeing horse walk around in a circle then the Stanley Cup Finals. That pretty much sums up how far the Cup has fallen. In fact, the only thing keeping the score this high is the probability of seeing a first class mullet on one of the hockey analysts. 
  • Hype: 5 points. It doesn’t help when teams like Tampa, Carolina, Anaheim and other interlopers keep making the Finals but the fact is, ESPN helps dictate the sports conversation in this country and since the NHL gave them a high stick and moved to OLN, the NHL has dropped off the radar of most casual sports fans.
  • TOTAL SCORE: 28 points

 New Year’s Day Bowl Games (including any BCS games played after the fact)

  • History: 9 points. The Trojans and Illini just played in the 94th Rose Bowl. Put that in your Super Bowl 42 and smoke it! The bowl games have also provided some of the greatest sports memories of the last 30 years – Miami knocking down Nebraska’s two-point conversion, Penn State’s interception on the goal line of Miami, Peter Warrick’s unbelievable falling, juggling touchdown catch (ok, maybe that one’s personal), Vince Young’s one-man National Championship, and of course the Statue of Liberty from Boise State (sorry, Turner). The only thing keeping it from scoring a Nadia is that I don’t know of too many games pre-1980, of course that could be just personal ignorance. Wouldn’t be the first time.
  • Timing: 9 points. Whoever the genius was that decided to have 12 hours of football the day after everyone stays out late drinking deserves a Nobel Prize. Is there anything better than football starting before 10 am (Mountain time) and stretching to 10 pm, with the requisite constant snacks and beer? I only strike a point for breaking the day up and stretching it out over a week. I personally liked having the Orange and Sugar on at the same time (especially if the match-ups are as universally bad as they were this year).
  • National Interest: 9 points. With the variety of teams playing (almost 20 teams play in New Year’s or BCS games) and variety of locations as well as the universality of the hangover, there is something for everyone. One lost point because there are a few misguided souls who don’t follow college football. Though I equate these people with Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich supporters and can only feel sympathy for them.
  • Attendance Attractiveness: 8 points. We have stadiums full of co-eds in warm locations in the dead of winter – what’s not too love? Ok, points are lost because how much would you want to end up at a one-sided game with two teams that you don’t care about (<cough> Sugar Bowl <cough>)?
  • TV Coverage: 8 points. Despite my ranting against the Fox announcers last month, coverage is pretty solid.  I knock off two points for the bad Fox announcers and the TV driven decision to replace what used to be the greatest sports day of the year, into a decent sport week.
  • Hype: 8 points. We have already had the first projections for next year’s top-25 and the first BCS will be out by October 1st. I think that qualifies as a decent amount of hype.
  • TOTAL SCORE: 51 points

 March Madness

  • History: 9 points. Texas Western; John Wooden and UCLA raising the trophy 10 times in 12 years; David Thompson’s high-flying upset of the Bruins; Jordan’s shot; Villanova’s upset; Keith Smart; Laettner’s stab in the heart of Ashley Judd (and other less important Kentucky fans). Sure it only replaced the NIT as the pre-eminent tournament in the 50’s but it has made up for its short time frame with incredible moments.
  • Timing: 9 points. An entire month is now synonymous with the tournament! The tourney is an oasis in the sporting desert between the Super Bowl and baseball’s opening day. One point deducted for having the championship game on a Monday night. 
  • National Interest: 8 points. Thanks to the popularity of office brackets (and the ease with which they can be managed on the internet), even people who best remember Kareem Abdul Jabbar as Murdock the Co-Pilot follow these games closely. Just ask Rick Neuheisel, he is a huge fan of March Madness brackets.
  • Attendance Attractiveness: 9 points. Ask me again in a month and a half after I attend my first March Madness games (rounds 1 and 2 here in Denver). With four games over the course of the day, early rounds are a marathon of sports-viewing while the Final Four is something everyone should attend once.
  • TV Coverage: 9 points. Is there a better sports moment on TV then the last few minutes of four first round games, when CBS bounces from one arena to the next, showing buzzer-beater after buzzer beater? For my money, no. 
  • Hype: 8 points. You get 3 straight weeks of ever-escalating tension and high-pressure games. Throw in a traditional power or two and a Cinderella and it is tough to beat.
  • TOTAL SCORE: 52 points

 What an upset! A true Cinderella story! Here it is indisputable, scientific proof that March Madness is the greatest American Sport Event.

As we all know, you can’t argue with science. Saying that you disagree with this would be almost as ridiculous as saying you don’t believe in something like evolution. Something proven by science a century ago.

…What’s that…there are people that dispute evolution?

Hmm, we have officially found people more pathetic than Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich supporters.

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