2010 February | NickComan.Com

Forgetting Ryan Reynolds: A Vancouver Olympics Retrospective

After 17 days of worldwide camaraderie, gratuitous amounts of sex in the Olympic Village, a lot of very pale white people doing activities that nobody “actually” does, and commercials featuring Canada’s finest celebrities, it is time to break down the 2010 Vancouver Games…

Best Event: Men’s Hockey…

I’m usually the first to say it: Hockey is a niche sport that is demographically doomed unless something really drastic happens. I don’t think I or anyone who watched the Olympic tournament is suddenly going to start following the NHL on a daily basis, but something did happen: We all realized that we actually really do enjoy hockey. The Canadian, American, and Russian squads were a joy to watch, and the Slovakians, Czechs, Finns, and Swedes were all compelling too. While I think the “greatest hockey game ever” talk about the final may be a little much, you can’t deny that Vancouver really did go out with bang.

One sneaky reason it was so good: Subway 5 Dollar Footlongs brought us the coverage with “limited commercial interruption”. Basically, Hockey felt like Soccer on TV (which is a good thing) – even if there wasn’t much scoring, you got to watch the entire thing without breaks and could really get a sense of the flow of the game.

The NHL should seriously consider finding a way to do this for all of their games. It may be that “drastic something”… because as much as the Olympic Tournament and Crosby OT winner was the perfect Canadian Fairy-Tail, it doesn’t change the reality that the NHL is back on today, and it is in danger of falling behind soccer as America’s 7th most important sport?

Tongue Bolt? She's Definitely Down...

The NHL has some separate problems though:

1) A talent pool that is 15X diluted compared to what we saw in the Olympics, with the vast majority of players being boring, foreign, and generally unmarketable…

2) Teams that mean nothing due to the expansion and movement. It’s not just an issue of whether or not people in Nashville ever give a crap about hockey… it’s an issue of people in Calgary watching their team play Nashville and thinking “What is this team we are playing?”

3) Markets that are hockey relevant: Winnipeg, Quebec City, Hartford – Well they are about as financially viable as Enron.

4) Terrible TV contracts and coverage… What channel are games on?

But at least we know we like the sport… I think we really had forgotten.

Olympics Babes: Vonn, Mancuso, and Torah Bright… but mainly Cheryl Bernard and Carmen Schaefer.

Given the S.I. Swimsuit Issue exposure (really underwhelming this year if you haven’t seen it) and the way that NBC decided that she was going to be one of the featured athletes for the Olympiad, Vonn was a shoe-in for this award, but her tearful gold medal speech made you have to love her… Her games thereafter were a letdown (let’s be honest), but either way, I’m excited about seeing her marketing Folgers or whatever for years to come. I mean: can you honestly tell me that the Under Armour ad below isn’t “doing a good job”?

Click Clack?

Her slightly more badass counterpart, Julia Mancuso, is actually considerably hotter. Part of it is her Scarface style upbringing with papa Ciro Mancuso, but most of the credit has to go to Mancuso herself, who has aged incredibly well… actually getting substantially hotter since her Torino gold medals. This was her in the wake of that:

Solid... but she kept getting hotter.

It’s crazy, but that picture doesn’t remotely do justice to the 2k10 version of Julia. She seems like she’s down for the sex-appeal attention, so let’s expect her in Maxim in the relative future… with outside shots at Playboy or somebody “leaking a video”…

One girl who likely will not be going that route, the most successful and hottest Mormon in Vancouver – Australian Snowboarder and Half-Pipe Gold Medalist Torah Bright. It seemed almost a foregone conclusion that Americans Teter-Clark-Bleiler would go 1-2-3 in some permutation, but Torah Bright, who is actually considerably better looking than any of the American girls, stole the show. So here’s to the nice “bring home to mom” girl… named Torah after the “five books”… doesn’t smoke cigarettes or drink coffee… likes dancing and partying without drinking. While this isn’t a lifestyle that I’d choose, how can you not respect her? And she’s a really nice looking girl… in that Australian sort of way:

Here's the the Chaz in the background...

You’re still probably wondering who the “tongue bolt” girl was as if it’s the mystery of the “Sailing Stones“. That is, of course, one of Switzerland’s biggest winter sports stars (shes no Simon Ammann), curling prodigy Carmen Schaefer. I haven’t confirmed this with any sort of in-depth research, but can you think of another female athlete with this kind of piercing? She also rocks the nose stud… so you can 100% know that’s the kind of girl we are working with… if you know what I mean. Apparently, she does Maxim-style photo shoots over in Europe:

The Reflective Water Shot... Classic.

But did you notice who else sneakily has a nose stud? The real star of this Olympics – Canadian Womens Curling “Skip” Cheryl Bernard. Bernard, very simply, may be the hottest 44 year old woman alive with no background in Supermodeling/Plastic Surgery/Excessive Cocaine Use/Pop Stardom. She’s Demi Moore Caliber… and that’s a really really good caliber.

This brings me to the next point…

Breakout Event: Women’s Curling

Off the Charts on the MILF Scale...

If you were sickened by the figure skating monopoly on NBC primetime, then like myself, you probably retreated to daytime coverage on USA Network or the night owl pre-opening-bell coverage on CNBC to catch some “real sports”. On those channels, more often than not, you’d find women’s curling – a sport that really has “Base-ketball Style” catch-on potential. Sports Guy Simmons has been raving about taking curling, going co-ed with it, having cheerleaders, doing it in a packed arena of wasted fans, and generally WWE-ing it up, and I think he’s spot on. This is the kind of sport that is really easy to understand- making it accessible, but also has so many strategic nuances and angles that it is never boring and a constant learning experience. It has constant unintentional comedy with all of the brooming and screaming; it seems like the kind of sport that “anybody can do”; it has ridiculous team sweatsuits; and most of all, it has hot athlete women who don’t look so “athletic” as to not be feminine, but not still athletic enough that you think they are “cool”. If I’m Donald Trump and I want to launch a ridiculous sports league, I’m looking at Xtreme Curling with Cheryl Bernard as my franchise player… even if her collapse in the last two ends against Sweden in the finals was the biggest heart-breaker of the games.

Most Overrated Event: Half Pipe

Now that we’ve conquered the medal count, we get to hear how we only won because “we invented a bunch of BS events to do so”. When this argument is made, the first sport to be implicated is Half-Pipe. I actually think this is unfair… What makes half pipe any less of a sport than “Ice Dancing” (clearly an “activity” not a “sport”)? Nothing… Does the USA dominate it? Well, Torah Bright is a clear argument to the contrary… though we did win 4/6 of the medals awared, but China decided to go and dominate Women’s Short Track and won every gold in the sport… and nobody is saying we should remove that from the games.

Going to Miss British Columbian Kim Cattrall... Who has looked 35 from the time she did "Police Academy" to the present.

My issue with half-pipe is totally different. It’s that it is boring and anti-climactic. First of all, only like 4-5 people ever have a chance to win based on starting scores and degrees of difficulty, and that number would really be closer to 1-3 if people didn’t make mistakes. When Shaun White won the gold, I couldn’t have been less interested – nothing was at stake. He landed a high degree of difficulty first run without even whipping out his “Double Croissant Bearclaw Stalefish” or whatever it was that was his “new move” (which he did do on his victory lap of a 2nd run). The point is – there was no story. Also, the sport has always depended on the guys “going bigger” each and every time that we see it, but we may have reached the plateau where no more rotations and inversions can be added, and the judging is based on nitpicking and “amplitude”… which is sort of lame. And who can tell a trick with 5 rotations 2 inversions and a method grab from one with 6 rotations 1 inversion and a mute grab? I know Shaun White was supposed to be the story of the games… but I’m sticking with Cheryl Bernard.

Thoughts on Canada: Vancouver was the right kind of venue, but as an American, it just wasn’t that interesting…

With the minor exception of Torch-gate and the major exception of the Georgian luge tragedy, you’d have to say that this was a pretty smooth Olympic Games and that the venues were totally up to par. I can’t knock any of that… or that the Canadians did well as hosts. While we may not consciously seek out the Olympics for such, a major point of enjoyment for me and I believe for many is being able to learn about a foreign place and people.

Who doesn't love Michael J Fox? Seriously... He's the Faith Hill of Canada.

You can call Canada a lot of things: “The 51st State”, “America’s Hat”, “Iced Texas”… they are all partially true, but they all indicate something: Canada isn’t very foreign to us. In fact, most of the Canada coverage either seemed like something we had seen in South Park or elicited the “Oh, I always assumed Ryan Reynolds was American” response. NBC struggled to make Canada interesting… not because it isn’t… simply because we already know so much. I guess Bhutan wouldn’t have proper facilities though right?

Events That Could Go Away: Too Many Events That Seem Like the Same Thing…

So why do we need to give out a gold medal for “Normal Hill” ski jumping and “Large Hill” ski jumping? and then make matters worse by giving out gold medals for 10k Nordic Combined Normal Hill and 10k Nordic Combined Large Hill (Nordic Combined = Ski Jump + XC Skiing)… Why is there a 2 man bobsled and 4 man bobsled? What is the major difference between 1000M short track and 1500M short track races when nobody makes moves until the end anyway? Is the Super-Combined just an excuse to give another medal?

I guess I’d much rather see more distinct events than extra medals given out for people doing the same thing that they just did… Ski Cross was new this Olympics, and I thought that it was a really cool addition. Why not look to add more inventive events like that in the future?

Final Verdicts on Figure Skating: Too Much Primetime… But I’m In Every 4 Years…

Every four years, males are forced with the conundrum: I’m supposed to be watching the Olympics for the sake of “bro-knowledge”, but watching figure skating is pretty emasculating? I really enjoyed the skating when it came in small doses, but the issue was that NBC, in their 17 nights of coverage, managed to put figure skating in primetime on 11 of them (2 for mens, 2 for womens, 2 for pairs, 3 for dancing, 1 for the exhibition, and 1 in the closing ceremonies), and that was a Jim Morrison level overdose.

Johnny Weir was surely a "free spirit"...

Here’s what I got out of it: Kim Yu Na was sick… so sick that I really am glad that I got to watch her do her thing. The Japanese girl was gnarly too, and the Canadian girl was a classic “good Olympics story”. The Americans, though, just didn’t have it… and weren’t attractive enough for me to be invested given such.

On the men’s side, everybody dresses like they are going to a Halloween party at a gay bar, but they are really impressive too. I don’t know why Lysacek beat the Russian dude with the mullet despite doing tricks that were less impressive, but I guess that’s an indictment of all sports with subjective “judging systems”. I even thought that Johnny Weir got hosed; he clearly deserved a Bronze given that his performance was clean, and the guy who got third fell…

As for the dancing and pairs… who cares? (I suspect these are really “girl things” even more than the individual events), and why do we need 3 nights of ice dancing? If I were the showrunner for NBC, I’d televise the men’s and women’s long programs in primetime in full, show the big guns’ short programs as well as the pairs/dancing medalists’ long programs, and relegate the rest to the CNBC zone…

But every four years, I guess I’m down to halfassedly follow the skating for a couple weeks…

Thoughts on the NBC Coverage: They really brought their A-Squad, but the programming was well… slow.

Love Costas (we can cryogenically freeze him for the next 2 years), love Michaels, love Collinsworth… Mary Carillo grew on me, but how much of the Olympics coverage is totally filler? Lame human interest pieces on Canadian culture? In studio interviews with whichever random American got a Bronze yesterday? Mary Carillo undercover in Mounty Training? Lenghty segments introducing athletes who NBC knows is going to win since it is on tape delay? Really dragged out podium ceremonies to the point that national anthems make your stomach churn after 2 weeks? I just want to see some sports… and not tape-delayed sports that I already know the results of. That’s just not NBC’s angle.

The Opening/Closing Ceremonies: Canadians are a goofy bunch.

While both the opening and closing ceremonies were a little more “relaxed” and “cozy” than the gongshows that we got to see in China, they did feature a lot of “native canadian” Indians dancing like they were in the Village People or Michael Jackson “Black or White” music video, vast quantities of Canadians dressed in whites using snowboards as props, and a constant reminder of why we make fun of Canada: the musical lineups featuring Nickelback, Bryan Adams, Nelly Furtado, Alanis, Avril Lavigne, and Simple Plan. Quick poll: Name a single artist on that list whom you can admit to being “really into” without being snickered at? Avril Lavigne may be your best bet… (even though we ironically listen to all of the above on the radio constantly). I mean… this Nickelback…

(Actually a solid music video…)

Breakout American Stars: Ryan Miller and Patrick Kane…

The Foremost Couple in Canada before RR upgraded to American Scarlett Johansson. Guess it's Avril Lavigne and the Sum-41 Guy now.

You could go with Vonn, but as much as we appreciate her good looks, crying, and gold medal performance despite her bum shin, she didn’t really blow us out of the water with a “Phelps-job”. In fact, nobody did.

Apolo Ohno got medals, but they weren’t the right color… and the cat has been out of the bag on that guy for years. I like Apolo, toolish as he may be, and I really appreciated his positive vibe and “Olympic Spirit”, but he didn’t “kill it” this time around.

Bode Miller was a pretty good story, but he only got one gold… and he started off so far in the red with the fans that even that performance won’t really make him a star in America.

Who am I most excited about in 2014? Without a doubt, Ryan Miller and Patrick Kane. American hockey seemed to have been in a minor lull this decade as Russians, Swedes, and Canadians even more than usual came to be the NHL’s biggest stars (another major reason for the lack of excitement about the game), but the performances by these two went a long way to dispel that notion. These guys aren’t just good; they are as good as anybody in the world – so much that we should be really excited about their development as players.

America had sort of lacked an alpha dog in the post Brett Hull / Mike Modano era, and now we don’t. Kane is the guy. Forget Crosby and Ovechkin – they’re really really sick, but the NHL needs to start marketing Kane as the guy if they want to get the ship on track. He plays in a perfect market to do so with the Blackhawks, and they are a team that really could win the Stanley Cup this year. If Kane can continue to become a superstar, it would do a whole lot of good for the sport.

Miller, simply put, has probably announced himself as the best goalie in the world in the post Hasek/Roy/Brodeur era… or at the very least put himself in the center of the conversation. He was amazing for the entire tournament. He didn’t let in bad goals; he made amazing saves; he couldn’t have done more. In 2014, he will give us a chance to win gold… just like he did this time around.

Best American Performances: The 4 Man Bobsled Team and The Bros of Nordic Combined…

As cool as it was to see Shaun White win half-pipe and have our squad pick up medals in skiing and skating and all of the things that we are normally half-decent at, wasn’t it way more exciting to see USA beat the German juggernaut squad in bobsled to get our first gold since the Truman Era? or see Bill Demong and Johnny Spilane pick up a gold, two silvers, and a team silver in an event that we NEVER are remotely competitive in? Those were the performances that made me the most proud – America dominating by… actually dominating.

How to Make it Better: Well, lots of ways…

1. Get rid of the BS filler pieces and show us actual sports the entire time…

2. Figure Skaters dress in country-specific athlete uniforms like everybody else… not like it’s a costume ball.

3. More Women’s Curling.

4. Put the Olympics somewhere crazy. I’d never heard of Sochi before this year- maybe it’s gnarly. Have the good people in Dubai not considered building mile high complexes to house every single winter event indoors, including the alpine skiing?

5. More new events like Ski-Cross. Actual races are way more fun to watch than the “clock races” that dominate the games. Why is short track more fun to watch than long track is? It’s pretty obvious.

6. NBC/The IOC should let people on ESPN/Youtube/elsewhere have access to the footage and not be total d-bags about it. I recognize it is a money thing, but come on…

7. Help develop teams around the world to make this thing global. India had like 3 athletes in the entire games despite having over a billion people. Brazil? Barely involved… Nigeria? Indonesia? Don’t even think about it… Look at the medal count here:

Notice What's Missing?

Thanks Kazakhstan for getting a silver in Women’s Biathlon to get yourself on the list, but you’re the only country that one wouldn’t call Soviet/Developed/Monied/Nordic… I want to see Jamaicans winning in the bobsled, not because Cool Runnings was that good of a movie, but because the Olympics are supposed to be bigger than what they are now…

I brought it up already, so I’ll rest my case on this music video:

The Vancouver Games hardly missed the point as badly as Michael Jackson did here in trying to get what “the world coming together” means, but we can always do better…

We should start with more Women’s Curling…

Word,

Nick

A Week in the Life of Twitter – 2010-02-27

just made it official – in nascar, i’m a kyle busch fan… we’ll see how this goes for the next few decades. #
Just trust me on this one – go download this album: http://bit.ly/bMtL1s – new Girl Talk ftw… if you pick one, go “viva la cabeza” #
% Chance Tomlinson is in the league in 3 years? I’d put it at about 20… When RBs go… they really go. #
only one Ivy Leaguer on this year’s basketball academic all american team? What’s the actual point of the award? #
totally forgot that Ice Dancing isn’t just 2 night’s like all of the other skating events… we get a bonus 3rd night. 9/17ths of primetime? #
she works behind the cash register at her parents’ japanese restaurant? that’s the best they can come up with for womens’ skating promos? #
still cant believe the Hawks havent won at Utah since 1993… think my theory about the Jazz home court is that crazy? #
Check out all these Pac10 Locks in this edition of Bubble Watch (great feature actually) http://bit.ly/aLWFwV – Big 12 FTW… #
get over their actual record, UCONN is a lock to make march madness… quality wins son… #
Don't think this bro is "pulling it off"...
“I invented the Piano Key Neck Tie. What have you done Derek? NOTHING” – Zoolander is almost Anchorman level rewatchable… #
great fox soccer channel coverage of olympiakos – bordeaux…. panned to the stands to show a shot of 5 random greeks smoking cigs. #
Tony Kornheiser just spoke the truth… sucks when you get in trouble for doing that… #
he may have scored today, but the Zlatan-Eto’o trade is still inexplicable and made both teams worse… it’s pretty obvious. #
review of the SI swimsuit issue: Shouldve put Bar or Esti on the cover. The hot israeli fetish never ceases to amaze me. #
This is the best we can do… really? http://bit.ly/9×5KxG #
Only thing better than “From Dusk til Dawn” on TV… it’s land before time 19-esque straight to video sequels: http://bit.ly/cnrXlQ #
A Great “I had no F-ing clue where this term actually came from” article: http://bit.ly/9bgZ4D #
Donovan needs to stay in England… as does any American who wants to represent the team internationally. The MLS is B-Squad. #
Don’t tell me Kobe’s clutch stats are actually mediocre and he’s just high volume, the guy is 1/4 a notch below MJ. #
Texans CB Dunta Robinson is going to be a free agent (and a good one) – best part about Dunta… it is actually pronounced “Dante” #
How much would you pay to see some “amateur video” of Cheryl Bernard set here: http://bit.ly/cwyFkX #
While I’m sure he’s going to get himself into trouble in about 3 days, the ChiSox need to let Ozzie tweet. #
Not sure which is more ludicrous: Caron Butler chewing straws while playing in NBA games… or the NBA banning him from doing so. #
I could watch Cheryl Bernard broom ice all day… We really need to consider beach curling though… women are too hot not to capitalize. #
re Zydrunas going back to the Cavs…. should we be worried about the lack of identity when you rotate that many big men? #
http://bit.ly/bkGkNR sick #
this is bizarre: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb7Uja4JjTE #
The Cheryl Bernard choke job really really hurt… #
praise the lord: http://www.rbr.com/tv-cable/tv-programming/21732.html #
totally forgot that once figure skating ends, you still have to watch the random exhibition night on saturday… i get why it’s every 4 yrs. #
the eliza dushku swimsuit montage in “the new guy” really brings me back to a gentler time. #
tiger losing gatorade begs the question: do golfers sweat enough for you to see what color it is anyway? these earthquakes=day after tomorow #
@sportsguy33 that doesn’t crack the top 100. consider ‘righteous kill’ or all non j-maguire cruise movies. or… battlefield earth. #
Never sure what to make of Brandon Marshall the person: http://bit.ly/cOlmNW – the guy has a moral compass… it’s just not always active. #
What’s with the Chargers’ firesale? I’m intrigued as to whether or not they are “rebuilding” or just changing their angle… #
0 Surprised by Tennessee beating Kentucky. Pearl is one of those coaches who gets big wins… UK didn’t need it. #
total hose-job on stoke by the refs. giving arsenal penalty kick in the 90th on a clearly inadvertent handball… Soccer needs replay. #
was that kim catrall in the visit britishcolumbuia ads? she’s british-canadian? apparently she was a B movie legend pre sexncity. buzzkill. #
norway curling’s Kevin Martin >> the guy Houston just traded Tmac for… #
correction: Kevin Martin is Canada’s “skip”… taking on Norway in the gold medal match right now on the killer CNBC coverage. #
grieves vasquez… remember the name in march (and april)… but how does the ACC have 7 teams in the tourney in bracketology? #

Weekend Breakdown: Tsunamis, Sick Soccer Vids, and Hoops Gone Wild

I got up surprisingly early on Saturday morning after falling asleep in the middle of “I Heart Huckaebees” earlier than expected the night before – so early that I could catch an entire soccer day in England before all of the college hoops games and even a few gold medals.

My fondest pubescent SI Swimsuit Memory... pre-Tsunami

About at noon (I was a little late), I noticed on Cnn.com that there was an 8.8 Earth Quake and that there were worldwide tsunami warnings. I continued with Arsenal-Stoke City and Wildcats-Vols because I figured: if it was a really big disaster, the sports coverage would switch to it or at least mention it. By early afternoon I was getting messages about friends pre-gaming tsunami landfall and seeing joke Facebook posts about the tiny tsunami lanfall in southern California. At this point, unless it’s a disaster that we haven’t already seen a bigger Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich, or real life version of, it’s just normal depressing news… people don’t want to watch normal depressing news. I’m not sure that’s really a terrible indictment, but it is something that at this point an 8.8 quake falls into that category… (But it wouldn’t if Petra Nemcova had been stuck in a tree fighting for her survival for 48 hours – that was gripping). I guess it has just been a bad run for natural disasters and we’re really used to it. It seems like we are about at the point in the movie where volcanoes erupt in Los Angeles. Luckily, I don’t think the movies are that realistic…

But let’s start with the soccer…

Rooney doesn't really look "like an athlete" does he? (Wife Coleen)

The finals of the “Carling Cup” (The fourth most important trophy for English teams?) took place today with Manchester United taking down Aston Villa 2-1. What is the Carling Cup? It’s the “English League Cup” sponsored by Carling Beer of course… not quite at “Winston Cup” level for mildly unacceptable product sponsoring a major competition… but close. Apparently, the League Cup is different from the “FA Cup” (The 3rd most important trophy for English Teams?) in that in the FA Cup, literally any registered English or Welsh soccer team with a home field can enter, encompassing all 8 “levels” of English soccer, while in the League Cup, only teams from the top 4 Levels (Premier League, Coca Cola Championship, League One, League Two) are eligible. Basically, in the FA Cup, local beer league softball teams get to play against the Yankees. In the League Cup, the strangest thing you could see would be A Ball squads like the Lynchburg Hillcats playing the “Bronx Bombers”… which still would be pretty damn weird. Does English soccer need both of these competitions? Probably not… it seems like the FA Cup is the cooler version and that the Carling Cup is just an excuse for another team to get a trophy with a cool sponsor, but that seems to be the point in English (and European) soccer systems. In America, our sports goal for each year seems to be to definitively determine the best team… to have “a champion”. That’s why College Football pisses everybody off so much. It fails miserably in that capacity. In England, they just say: Let’s have four simultaneous slightly different competitions going on (EPL, European Cups, FA Cup, and Carling) and give every team and their fans a bunch of different situations to be excited about that all hypothetically carry the claim “Best Team in England”. Congrats to the Red Devils… you are the first team to get to make that claim this year… we’ll see who the other three are…

So who is gonna win the EPL:

One of soccer’s best attributes is its ability to be translated to sick Youtube Highlight Videos.

Let’s take current “best player in England” Wayne Rooney’s reel from this year for example:

Note how good Rooney is at making himself accessible to his teammates while making runs toward goal. His ability to finish or put himself in great position with his first touch is exceptional, but so much of his success is simply in putting himself in the right place at the right time…

Who does Rooney think the best player in the world is? Barcelona midfielder Andres Iniesta. If you want to see the Steve Nash of soccer, then check out this guy. His comfort level with the ball at his feet, even when surrounded by defenders, is out of control. Just watch this… The dude just clowns on people one after another…

Iniesta has footskills unlike anybody in the world, but on a team like Barcelona that features Lionel Messi, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and Xavi among others, you almost forget about the guy… You shouldn’t. He isn’t, though, what one would call a “pure scorer” like Rooney or Chelsea striker Didier Drogba. If you could equate Drogba to an American sports figure, he would basically be the entire 07 Memphis basketball team – the announcers had no clue how to describe how “raw”, “athletic”, and “physical” they were… but they didn’t really have to. It went without saying…

Drogba is clearly… uhh… “imposing”. The sad thing is… none of these guys are remotely as good as this tool is when he’s healthy:

So who is actually going to win the EPL? We are about 28 games deep and the relevant standings are such:

The Other 13 Teams Don't Matter

I would say that the race for first breaks about 38% Chance for MUFC, 37% Chance for Chelsea and 25% Chance for Arsenal.

Arsenal has the easiest schedule – only Tottenham on the road and Man City at home, but Arsenal also is 3 points off of the pace and is always the team most likely to lose to lesser competition…

Chelsea is one point clear of MUFC for the lead, but they have a bunch of tricky games left: Villa at home along with Liverpool on the road, MUFC at Old Trafford, and Tottenham at White Hart Lane (again, English Stadiums have great names…). Their form against lesser competition has also been somewhat shaky of late. They aren’t beating every random mediocre team 5-1 like they could. It seems like opponents are able to play up to their level… or vice versa.

MUFC is one point off of Chelsea’s pace and has many tough games left on the schedule, but they nearly all at Old Trafford where the Red Devils have been sick. Chelsea, Tottenham, and Liverpool all travel to Manchester, and the only major road test for United will be at cross town rivals Man City… It seems like the stars are aligning for United to squeak out the title, especially given that they seem to be the team least likely to slip up versus lesser competition.

As for the race for fourth: Villa and Liverpool have the easiest schedules; Tottenham’s is by far the hardest; and Man City really controls its destiny as it plays both Tottenham and Villa. I’d say the most likely result is Man City gets the 4th Champs League Spots… with about a 34% Chance. I’d say Villa and Liverpool are about at 26% and 25% respectively, making Tottenham least likely at about 15%. In April, Spurs get Arsenal, MUFC, and Chelsea back to back to back… that’s rough.

Soccer box scores of note:

Spurs 2 Everton 1 - Important Win for Spurs… Everton’s winter hot streak seems to be over after this and their loss to Sporting Lisbon earlier this week.

Fulham 0 Sunderland 0 – Matchup of 2 of the “less cool” London Clubs… Sunderland, who has been awful of late, actually dominated this game. Fulham was lucky to get a draw.

Liverpool 2 Blackburn Rovers 1 – Torres scores; Gerrard scores; Pepe Reina makes sick saves; It seems like Liverpool may be back… maybe

Man City 4 Chelsea 2 – Dos Red Cards for Chelsea… and the typical “when Craig Bellamy gets involved, the team clicks” game from City. Impressive that Man City beat “The Blues” twice this year.

Arsenal 3 Stoke 1 - The score doesn’t really tell the story here. Stoke came out on fire and dominated the first third of the game. Arsenal tied it. A horrific injury took up the better part of the second half, and then an inadvertent handball was called as a PK in the 90th minute to give Arsenal the win… really not that impressive.

Wanderers 1 Wolves 0 - Beating Wolves is never that impressive, but Bolton’s form has been half decent of late.

Final soccer note: Friend and podcast guest RR has been sending me ridiculous links to Arsenal forward Andrei Arshavin’s website. The guy does all of these “myspace style” Q/As and quizzes, and it seems like either the dude has some sort of “Russian Napoleon Dynamite” sense of humor… or a lot is lost in translation. Check out this: http://www.arshavin.eu/en/news.php?id=505 and this: http://www.arshavin.eu/en/news.php?id=511

Lets get to basketball now…

The nation’s #1 and #2 lost yesterday, and it didn’t seem remotely surprising at all. We are finally in that part of the season where teams really are desperate for “signature wins”… and if you are on the bubble and playing at home against a highly ranked team, you show up. While Oklahoma State and Tennessee were already likely “in the field of 65″, they were both teams that could have ended up as 11 Seed At Large bids or 4 Seeds if they really won out. They made major moves in those directions with OKST 85 KU 77 and Tenn 74 UK 65.

Who would have thought that New Mexico 83 BYU 81 would be such a big deal? The #12 team in the country (crazy) defeated the #11 team (even crazier) in Provo – a nearly Helms Deep level home court advantage… “The Lobos” are now 6-0 against ranked teams, but that is more of a sad commentary about the Top 25 this year. Their wins include: #25 Cal (joke), #24 Texas Tech (joke), #18 TAMU (impressive-ish), #10/#11 BYU (ehh), and #25 UNLV (pretty much a joke too). In fact, check out Joe Lunardi’s “Vegetarians” List:

They're fun, but you can't trust mid-majors...

The Biggest Game of the Weekend: Clearly Syracuse 95 Villanova 77, a game that the Wildcats really let go of at the very end of the first half. After leading or being close for much of the first period, Cuse made a late run and got a 10 point halftime lead. From that point on, it was never ever close and bordered on ugly.

The Carrier Dome... Really not "Multipurpose"

Nova was typical Nova: explosive perimeter scorers and slashers without a typical front court. They went into a terrible shooting slump against the 2-3 Zone and that was that. Syracuse really looks like a title threat. 1 Great Coach, 1 Incredible Talent (Wes Johnson), 1 Great Leader (Rautins), Effective Scheme (2-3 Zone), Set Rotation (Always play 7 guys)… I’d break down the elite landscape like so in terms of “chance to win it all”…

Favorites:

Kansas, Syracuse

Quasi-Favorites:

Kentucky, Duke, Nova

Feasible:

Ohio State, Michigan State

Hypothetically Possible:

KState, WVU, Pitt, Georgetown, Texas

If somebody outside of that list wins it all, I will be shocked…

Other games this weekend: OSU 66 Michigan 55 – With Robbie Hummel out, the Buckeyes have to be the class of the Big 10 now.

Georgia 78 Florida 76 – The mediocrity of Billy Donovan’s program between elite seasons is really amazing. This team is really “on the bubble”.

Baylor 70 Oklahoma 63 – I can’t plug them enough. Baylor is my sleeper…

TAMU 74 Texas 58 – Another “home team with a lot to play for” game. Texas is gonna be out of the top 25 after being #1 less than 2 months ago…

Notre Dame 78 GTown 64 – I don’t trust GTown at all…

You Don't Want to Know Whats up in Looking Glass...

Maryland 104 Va Tech 100 – The Terps… my other sleeper. 40+ for Grieves Vasquez on the road…

In the NBA, you just expect good teams to lose terrible games on a weekly basis, but we really hit a new low with the Celtics losing at home to 6-52 New Jersey. This wasn’t some sort of blown lead or flukey game… Boston was losing after each quarter. Some people like the idea that “on any given day, any team can beat any team”, and of course that needs to be true, but when it happens so frequently and so haphazardly, it becomes a sad commentary about the league.

Elsewhere: Kings 103-Jazz 99 – Utah is a very mediocre road team… The Kings clearly are not missing Kevin Martin that much…

Hornets 11 Magic 93 – 40 Points for David West and Darren Collison playing great basketball, the Hornets barely miss CP3…. right? No, but still…

Bulls 115 Blazers 111 – Chicago suddenly looking like the same dangerous playoff team that it was last year… Psyched for more coach Luke Wilson on the sidelines…

Bucks 94 Heat 71 – More than almost any other team, the Heat just throw up total stinkbombs when they lose. Milwaukee is suddenly sneaky good (for an East team), and John Salmons looks good again. Is this just what Salmons does? Suck and then get traded because he is overpaid, and then be good for the remainder of the season post trade?

Mavs 111 Hawks 103 OT – The Mavs are very clearly the #3 team in the West… and probably one of 3 teams that actually has a shot. Talk of Atlanta going after Big Z and putting Hortford at the 4? Makes sense to me…

Spurs 113 Suns 110 – A game in which both teams played really well and got a lot from their entire squads, but in the end, you can always count on the Spurs defending home court…

Thats a lot more than you can say for the Celtics.

I’ll end it with this “floating hotels” video from friend and podcast guest Phil. How does business travel work in a world where hotels move? Do companies start having giant floating airships that move as necessary? Does the P.O.T.U.S. have a floating White House? Seems like it has more “upside” than Air Force One or even Cold War Doomsday Machine Legend “Looking Glass“… I’m unsure on how technologically feasible all of this is, but world would look very different if it came to be… in a good way. Check this out:

Real,

Nick

Giant Killer Birds + Modern Nomads: Secrets of Mongolia Exposed

At just five people per square mile, Mongolia is far and away the least densely populated nation on the planet… but that doesn’t mean it’s not home to some of the strangest phenomena out there…

Let’s just start with this:

Now we all know that Golden Eagles are “birds of prey” and falconry is ridiculous but it’s not really new news, but did you know that these birds could pull off this kind of thing:

Mongolia or Naboo?

I watched that one five times before I finally decided that it wasn’t CGI, but what else is there to say except that these birds are the real deal? They don’t just take out rabbits or little things, but they are swooping large sheep into the air, mauling wolves on command, and there is even some footage out there of them attacking grizzly bears. The crazy part: how well Mongolian nomads have trained them to hunt. Apparently in a laughably sparsely populated spot like the Mongolian Steppe, the best way to hunt is to cover as much ground as possible by driving a car/horse and having your Eagle survey the land. Check this out…

(But first, how identical is this Mongolian Royalty outfit to the clothing that Queen Amidala rocked in Star Wars Episode One. I guess we can add her to the list of ridiculous token racial figures in the movie that includes Jamaican Jar Jar Binks, Japanese “Viceroys”, and Jewish/Arab (you choose) slave dealer “Watto”. That could be a black and white promotional photo of Natalie Portman for all I know.)

At this point, we “get it” that these creatures can take down large predators, but isn’t it kinda crazy to see birds hunting in packs? Multiple eagles, of course, implies that multiple eagle master nomads have to be present. In fact, the semi-nomadic people of the steppe celebrate by coming together to watch their eagles collectively maul stuff in what is apparently one of the biggest festivals of the year…

Which vaguely reminds me of this…

But how do the Mongolians train their Eagles to be such efficient hunters? They maintain a relationship with the birds from birth and teach them to hunt with skins and small prey until they can cut it in the big leagues: wolves… and how do they get them to come back? It’s simple: they need their masters for water. Eventually though, all of these birds are released into the wild. Only females are used as hunters, and by age 10, the birds are too ornary to handle because they want to make a nest of their own… Check out this Eagle Hunter talking about his birds… (Interview starts at 2 min – note how they wear GAP clothing in Mongolia).

Who are these people? Of Mongolia’s 2.7 million people, 1.2 or so live in the capital Ulanbatur, a city that has been growing at a pretty crazy rate. Check out these pictures of the world’s northernmost Capital from 2005 and 2009 respectively:

Four Years Earlier...

Four Years later...

You’d barely be able to tell, but those two pictures really were taken from the same physical spot (try matching up objects in each scene… I promise you can). Mongolia is modernizing at a crazy rate. Last decade, they went from having 30,000 internet users to having 300,000, but given that 40% of the population lives in one place, that means the other 1.5 million are spread out over 600,000 square miles… and there are only 1500 miles of paved road in the entire country. So what do they do? 30% of Mongolians (800,000) are semi-nomadic, living in portable yurts where their herds of animals can graze and moving ten times a year to find viable meadows. While such may seem primitive and many Mongolians live on under 2 dollars/ day, the nation boasts a respectable life expectancy of 67 years, and the way of life has been incredibly sustainable for centuries. Under communist rule (you see the occasional token commie smokestacks still here and there throughout the Mongolia footage), the semi-nomadic lifestyle was oppressed: herds were confiscated, and these people were forced onto collectives. The return to capitalism, though, has seen a return to relative prosperity for these people, who even occasionally make it into Ulanbatur to rage at the hot new clubs before heading back out to the steppes. Check out this great mini-documentary on the Mongolian Steppe Peoples…

And how do you take a yurt (funny word) up and down? Like So:

Step 1)

You could grow some killer Ivy on that...

Step 2)

Put the tarp on it...

Step 3)

Tie It Tight...

When you ask “people on the street” what they know about Mongolia? The first answer you get is probably “Mongolian Beef” (which isn’t Mongolian at all) or “Mongolian Barbeque” (which is Japanese). In a great irony, the first American franchise to open in Ulanbatur (and it’s become very popular): B.D.’s Mongolian Barbeque of course:

This one is in the Chicago suburbs... but I'm glad the namesakes approve.

Mongolia is clearly a world very alien to the west, one whose geographic realities have lead to a lifestyle and culture that seem nearly unfathomable. The country is surely barren and surely poor, but how beautiful do these landscapes look? and could you call the fortitude and industry of the semi-nomadic people anything but incredible? Also, you can’t ever quite forget this:

The Biggest Empire Ever...

Real,

Nick

Sick Podcast Doubleheader: Tyler Potpourri and Sills “Sporcle Off”

Basically Everything Right about Sarah Palin Without the Baggage

After a 10 day hiatus, Tyler made his return to the podcast in perhaps our greatest session yet: breaking down the Olympic Hockey, curling, random events as well giving his thoughts on the Tiger Woods speech, the best Disney Movies of all time, and in a much awaited event, we finally break the ice and talk a little bit about “adult cinema”. We even “go deep” a few times and debate the future of sports in a globalized world… but mainly try to focus on Canadian “Skip” Cheryl Bernard and our potential own Olympic dream – training for curling for the 2022 Winter Games. Hope Yall Enjoy…

Of course, the Itunes Subscription Page can be found here: http://bit.ly/9xK1Ys

The podcast can be downloaded here: http://nickcoman.com/gtsolympics.m4a

And can be streamed below as always:

We have another whole podcast for everyone though. If you are familiar with the internet and like wasting time (most people here), then you are probably familiar with the website http://sporcle.com – a place where you can waste 5 hours of your day doing mindless trivia (not an oxymoron) without blinking. To honor this great cultural institution, podcast legend Sills makes his second appearance in a week to take me in on the first ever NickComan.Com Podcast “Sporcle Off”. We go four rounds: MLB Pitching Wins Leaders in the 90s, NFL Rushing TD Leaders in the 2000s, Schwarzenegger Movies, and College Bowl Games.

To Follow Along with each of these four parts, hit up these links:

Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4.

The podcast can be downloaded here: http://nickcoman.com/sillssporcle.m4a

And streamed here:

Much more to come later today…

Also, check out our new Facebook Page Here.

Word,

Nick

Power Rankings Frenzy: EPL and The Inaugural Hoops Poll

Huge White Rip Hamilton / Academic All-American Legend

It had been too long since the EPL rankings had been updated, and at this point in the sports calendar, College Hoops have not only taken the spotlight, but even have reached a point where you can actually figure out who’s good. It’s time for the inaugural College Hoops Rankings.

Let’s do the Soccer First:

1. Chelsea F.C. – Far from dominant in form, but 4 points clear at the top of the table… and Didier Drogba back from the African Cup.

2. The Manchester United Football Club – Wayne Rooney isn’t arguably the best player in the world right now; he IS the best player in the world right now, but the team has major defensive issues.

3. “The Gunners” – Despite the Champions League Leg 1 blooper video, they have a really easy remaining EPL schedule and are within striking distance.

4. Man City – Tied for fourth with a game in hand, you gotta think a team with this much talent is the favorite to get the 4th Champions League birth. Even the ugly 0-0 Draw with Liverpool was encouraging – the team actually played defense.

5. “Villans” – Maligned for “long balling” (playing boring soccer), you can’t help but face the facts: This team gives up less than one goal per game and features loads of dynamic and “pacey” young offensive talent.

6. Liverpool – The return of Torres and Benayoun is encouraging, but this team sort of feels like the Redskins of the EPL – some great players, some mediocre players, 0 Chemistry.

Why didn't his parents get Crouchie into Basketball?

7. “Spurs” – (Note: You can’t call them “The Spurs” apparently) A team with this much talent shouldn’t be losing to Wolves, but they are as “in the hunt” for the 4 spot as anyone and have a great forward pairing of Defoe (creativity and speed) and Crouch (the giraffe of the EPL).

8. Everton – If only Everton had decided to show up/not had injuries/signed Landon Donovan 6 months ago… This team is playing some of the best football in the EPL with wins over Chelsea and MUFC of late, but they dug too deep of a hole for this season to matter.

9. Fulham – Much like Everton, this team has really upped its form in the second half of the season and have gotten a lot out of guys like Damien Duff (great name) and English soccer legend Nicky Shorey (the only man ever to play in every single level of English football). Still, there is a “talent gap” between these guys and the teams above them.

10. “The Potters” – If you think teams like Green Bay and San Antonio are small market success stories, check out Stoke City. Called “The Potters” as they hail from Stoke, home to England’s pottery industry, this team has perhaps the craziest fans in the EPL and are closing in on establishing themselves as a permanent fixture in the league.

11. Birmingham City – The mid-season unbeaten streak may have been a little bit of a fluke, but who expected a team that was just promoted from the championship to be this good anyway? If Man City had known how good he would be or how good the team would be, I doubt they would have loaned Birmingham keeper Joe Hart.

12. Blackburn Rovers – Talk about “We Must Protect This House”: The Rovers are 8-2-4 at home while being 1-9-3 on the road. How is it possible that home field advantage could matter so much? It’s still the same sport they are playing…

13. “The Hammers” – After being in the relegation zone earlier in the season, it looks like West Ham is going to find a way to stay in the EPL for next year after all and be what they are: a mediocre EPL team.

14. Sunderland – Not much has gone right in the “Stadium of Light” of late (but how sick are EPL stadium names?). This team is lucky to have gotten so many goals out of Darren Bent early on in the season. They’d be in relegation mode otherwise.

15. “The Wanderers” – Of all of the really awful teams at the bottom of the EPL table, Bolton most frequently looks like the kind of side that belongs in the league.

Wigan has the league's lowest attendance... but they have this guy.

16. Wigan Athletic – As has been the case all year, it is impossible to predict the results of the EPL’s youngest club. They can score… but they surely can’t defend. That’s obvious when you look at their penchant for being blown out.

17. “Wolves” – Earlier this year, Wolverhampton didn’t play a single starter against MUFC because their manager felt they had no chance and wanted to rest up for subsequent winnable matches. As depressing of a move as that was, it may have gotten them those few extra points they need to stay in the league.

18. Hull City – It’s fun to watch Jozy Altidore develop as a player with this squad, but they are really outclassed in the EPL.

19. Burnley – After some early season surprises, this team has been abysmal for the past four months. See ya in the Championship (for soccer n00bz, that means they are being demoted).

20. Portsmouth – They showed flashes of light jumping out to a half-time lead against Stoke last week, but as they’ve done all year, the side crumbled down the stretch. Off of the field, the team is so bankrupt that it is petitioning the league to allow it to sell its players outside of the transfer window. Pompey may not exist at all next year.

And now, Hoops:

1 Seeds:

1. Kansas – The odds on favorites to win it all… These guys are about to go perfect in the Big 12, which is suddenly in the conversation for best conference in the land?

2. Syracuse – The class of the Big East. Great Coach. Experience. Know who their guys are. Strategic identity. It’s hard to argue with these guys as the 2nd best team in the land.

3. Kentucky – Dicky-V may love all the “diaper dandies”, but I just don’t trust this team. The SEC isn’t exactly tough treading, and the sports gods have to throw some wrenches at Calipari for his attrocious sports karma.

4. Duke – Sure they aren’t in 1 Seed Zone yet, but these guys have been walking all over the ACC. If they run the table, this is likely where they will end up. Last time there was no ACC team in the top line? 2003 – Wake was a 2.

2 Seeds:

5. Villanova – Most would have them as a 1 with the offensive chops that this team has, but as usual, who are their bigs? Can they play with teams that don’t let them get to the basket if they are having an off shooting night? The Jay Wright strategy has a ceiling…

6. Purdue – The only reason that these guys won’t get a #1 seed is that there is so much competition in the Big 10 and it’s hard to imagine they won’t end up with 5 losses. (1 Seed = 4 losses or less generally)

7. Ohio State – If you take away the blip in the season without Evan Turner, this team would absolutely be in the conversation for a 1 Seed. The selection committee knows that, and even if their record isn’t great, they will get a 2.

8. Kansas State – The surprise team this year… You gotta think that Frank Martin is one of the true rising coaching stars in College Hoops. He’s so intense on the sidelines and is a great interview. You gotta think that the next marquee job to open up will be his.

Little Girl... Big Sign

3 Seeds:

9. Pitt – People expected a huge dropoff for Jamie Dixon’s squad this year after losing Sam Young, Dejuan Blair, et al to the pros, but little seems to have changed in Pittsburg.

10. New Mexico – When Steve Alford left Iowa for New Mexico, you couldn’t help but think he was downgrading, but this team is 5-0 against ranked opponents and have great chemistry. I don’t care what conference they are in…

11. Vandy – Love AJ Ogilvy… Love the Commodores… but if you ever watch their home games, you have to wonder why the court has a 20 yard hardwood buffer around it on all sides? It looks like the worst venue in major college basketball.

12. West Virginia – A classic Bob Huggins team: really ugly to watch, no particularly dominant scorer, no cool defensive or offensive gimmicks, just tough physical play.

4 Seeds:

13. Georgetown – Georgetown has a lot of quality wins (Duke)… but also has a way of losing games that it shouldn’t (South Florida… Rutgers…). I just don’t trust these guys.

14. Michigan State – No matter how good or bad they look over the course of the year, it always seems like Tom Izzo’s bunch finds their way into the top quarter of the tournament field. Is this team as good as last year’s? Nah… Are they dangerous as always? Of course.

15. Texas – A lot has been made of the recent collapse of Rick Barnes’ squad, but come tournament time, would you want to face the nation’s former #1 team? Avery Bradley creating? Dexter Pittman taking up the entire painted area (when he’s not out of breath)? I’m still a believer.

16. Wisconsin – The classic “limit possessions, play good defense, make jump shots” Big 10 team. These guys could lose to any no-talent team on a given night… or dumb the game down to the extent that they could beat Kansas.

5 Seeds:

17. Gonzaga – While not as flashy or as offensively oriented as many of the Zags teams of recent memory, this team is really really big – not “Mid Major Big”, but has as much size as anybody in the country. Nova should really hope to avoid these guys in the tourney.

The "Cougarettes"... Not a particularly "Diverse" bunch.

18. Wake Forest – It’d be hard to believe that only one team in the ACC would be on one of the top 5 lines in the big dance (though it’s also hard to believe that the Pac 10 is going to be a 1 bid league). The ACC’s current best bet to prevent this: Dino Gaudio’s squad at Wake.

19. Temple – The class of the surprisingly deep Atlantic 10 that may get 5 teams into the dance, you have to love what former Penn coach Fran Dunphy has done with this program. The win over Nova is going to ensure that they get a good seed too…

20. BYU – I know that they only have 3 losses and many would put them higher up in the seeding, but this team reminds me a lot of the 2006 George Washington squad that only lost a couple times all year. Great story… but not actually a tournament threat.

Dark Horses:

Maryland – Never ever count out Gary Williams teams. When they show up, they play with more heart than anyone. Grieves Vasquez, in what seems like his 10th year of eligibility, is a really dynamic and dangerous player.

Baylor – Have to love what Scott Drew (brother of Valpo Buzzer Beater Bryce Drew) has done with this program that was death sentenced (no pun… seriously) just a few years ago. Lead by the explosive LaceDarius Dunn, this team has the athleticism to beat anyone.

TAMU – Lost in the heap of Big 12 success stories this year has been the return to prominence of the Aggies. It may have taken Mark Turgeon a couple of years, but this is a solid basketball team.

Butler – Everybody loves the Bulldogs, but they’ve sort of reached that plateau that Gonzaga faced in 2003 or so when the secret is out, and the program has to start really recruiting top flight talent to justify all of the attention that they get. The Zags did it… We’ll see if Butler can.

UCONN – Perhaps the most dangerous #10 seed that the tournament will have ever seen.

Real,

Nick

American Domination: The Podcast ft Dallas and Sills

Among the Healthiest Looking People You've Ever Seen

In light of freedom reigning with an iron fist as had never before been seen in the winter games, I had to sit down with North Dakotan/Winter Sports Expert/ Eastern Bloc Nations Expert Dallas Hansen as well as Manhattan Native/ America Expert Matthew Sills to watch a little biathlon and to discuss the ushering in of a 2nd American Century by our athletes in Red, White, and Blue (not France’s, Russia’s, Britain’s. or Russia’s).

We discuss the history of American performance in the Winter Games, Bode Miller, Ryan Reynolds, Apolo Anton Ohno, Lindsey Vonn, Julia Mancuso, Canada in a general sense, Germany, Scandanavia, and even Transnistria… but mainly, we break down the medal count and what America has done to put itself in this new position of dominance – A little bit of the X-Gamesification of the formerly traditional Winter Games… A little bit of American Training/Sports Medicine/Money brutalizing the competition… and A little bit of Bode Miller skiing only 8 beers deep.

The podcast can be downloaded here: http://nickcoman.com/dallassills.m4a

As always, the Itunes Subscription can be found here: http://bit.ly/9xK1Ys

And yeah… the podcast can be streamed right here in the media player below…

Hope yall enjoy… almost done with the epic Snookinomics post… and there may or may not be another whole podcast already available in Itunes if you subscribe…

Real,

Nick

A Week in the Life of Twitter – 2010-02-20

Hooters edition of “Undercover Boss” tonight. Isn’t this a little early in the season to be whipping out the big guns? #
If you whip out the Hooters Girls on Episode Two, You're not making it more than one season...
Broness level of the US snowboardcross team after Seth Wescott’s winning run is at an all time high-many random uninvolved dudes celebrating #
Infomercial on G4TV right now is called “The Healing Power of Juicing”… Brain just went haywire with Big Mac jokes… #
8am FX gem… Simon Sez… who knew Dane Cook was making awful movies as early as the 90s? http://bit.ly/csgjN1 D-Rodman involved. #
Of course the Raiders sign Janikowsi for 16 Mil… http://bit.ly/9CK075 #
1st beat day of olympics primetime- as rough as pairs was.. really cant handle the dude’s figure skating. http://bit.ly/aIRNT2 W. Rooney ftw #
Blades of Glory may have been the nailinthecoffin for men’s figure skating… it’s impossible to watch without laughing now. #
Harry Potter theme park ads look real sick: http://bit.ly/bB66Ji #
100% hooked on The Michael Vick Project. BET may really expand beyond typical viewership with this one… it’s damn good TV #
Blago’s return to the spotlight in Celebrity Apprentice thoroughly outdoes Elliot Spitzer’s constant OpEd barrages. #
The current italian men’s figure skater(1st i’ve seen not in sequens)is in some sort of “american dustbowl farmer” costume. its gone too far #
The tweets about Johnny Weir post his short program are out of control… mostly including “Gay Marylin Manson”… http://bit.ly/cP0qB8 #
MSNBC is throwing down 99 Problems instrumentals as the background music for their olympics news coverage. #
In the NBA, they quit it because they get fined for ripping refs… in the EPL, they quit to “focus”. Whats it? Twitter http://bit.ly/a3uFjc #
Duke just took a dump on The U in the second half after being doing 12 on the road at the break… Almost a believer… ready to be let down #
White girls droppin like flies on the downhill… Lindsay Vonn rightfully made herself millions with those interviews… #
One of the Best F Bombs on national television I’ve ever experienced… Shaun White’s bro was just getting him amped for the victory lap. #
Julia Mancuso may have the sexiest speech impediment of all time. #
congrats on adding Telfair Cavs… you just guaranteed a Lakers title and even made Lebron to the Clippers a better bet – nice. #
TMAC to the Kings WTF #
thought it would be relaxing to put on Sunrise Earth to crash after writing all night… not so much with “Terns of Cape Cod” squawking. #
@Lord_B Don’t Worry – once the Knicks get involved this trade will totally make sense… NYK has so much to offer both parties… in reply to Lord_B #
Just watched the documentary Poliwood http://bit.ly/9e46fk about the role of TV/Celebrity in politics-negative, but worth watching for sure. #
Bloomberg Sports FTW? http://bit.ly/ckSHox – Really riding the sports analytics trend as hard as we can… smart… but fun? #
The William Morris Talent Agency has the most pretentious/useless website that I have ever seen. http://bit.ly/byEpPG #
really crosby… five hole from out that far to win the shootout? #
Didn’t know Versus showed gems like Tin Cup head to head with the olympics… almost as good as Deuce Bigelow on fox sunday night. #
correction: versus is showing Tin Cup followed by… Tin Cup tonight. #
“he almost crashed into johnny weir during warmups because johnny jumps in the other direction” – your nbc crew #
Kris Allen: Adam Lambert as Evan Lysacek: Johnny Weir? #
Bigger deal: State of the Union Address or Tiger’s Apology Speech? Dead serious… #
Luke Donald on Tiger Woods: “really glad that he’s getting the care and health that he needs and hope he comes back when he’s better” – Nice #
*help… not health #
Re her Proactiv Ad: Do you consider Avril Lavigne to be a “singer/songwriter” … or just another legendary Canadian. #
This is a real wikipedia gem: http://bit.ly/b8tXZK #
The best explanation of “Watchtower” that I’ve ever read: http://bit.ly/9BNUOg #
@yoyosgf The CNBC/MSNBC coverage of the olympics clearly clowns on the 8 nights of figure skating that dominate NBC… but people want it? in reply to yoyosgf #
14 NBA Scouts at the Cornell Harvard Game last night… http://bit.ly/bD2vCv #
just saw the refs take a goal away from portsmouth against stoke that was blatantly legal… name a sport where replay would be a bad thing? #
in light of CNN’s frontpage profiling of the mossad, a walk down memory lane of their various merk jobs: http://bit.ly/b6kgiG #
freestyle skiing is the gymnastics of the winter games, now that the chinese have figured it out, expect 8 yr old athletes in Sochi… #

Snookinomics: The Bizarre Economy of The National Basketball Association

Throughout the entire month of January, E!, TMZ, and the like reported an ongoing contract dispute between the cast of “Jersey Shore” and MTV regarding payment for a second season. Snooki, Situation, and Pauly-D felt that they merited $10,000 dollars an episode, a figure that can also be seen as 780K for the “stars” for the season (6 People X 10k X 13 episodes), but the folks at MTV were hesitant. About this dispute: two angles seemed really really obvious – 1) The 2nd Season of “Shore”, even down in the trashy Mecca that is South Beach, is going to be a new low even MTV’s programming (probably not true given the existence of Teen Mom) with zero shot at a season 3…

The Hedo Contract of Pop Culture... (Wouldn't Even Google her "pics")

The gimmick is up, and filming is probably getting in the way of Pauly-D’s DJ-ing career, and 2) $10,000 per episode just isn’t very much money – so even given angle 1, MTV needed to just give in. In reality TV, all of the money goes to the suits- the production companies, the parent company of the channel (in this case Viacom), and the cast members are treated as pawns. Basically, Snooki and JWoww (instead of shopping “pics” on the internet for cash) should be banding together with Russell from Survivor, “New York” from all those Flava Flav shows, and Kenny of RR/RW challenge fame in a union to reach a collective bargaining agreement with the suits who make so much money off of them. They could even threaten to strike/get incredibly lucky and end up with the kind of deal NBA players have. About 6 months before the world got to know Snooki, a guy named Hedo Turkoglu made himself famous with some clutch play, particularly against King James. While more-than-casual NBA fans have known Hedo for a while, he really was never more than “the one who isn’t Peja Stojakovich” when he broke into the league on those good Sac-Town teams and then one of those “tall euro-jump-shooters” who you’d even forget was on Orlando from time to time for the half decade thereafter.

I Can't Believe These Canadians Just Gave Me Oprah Money to Miss 3s and Not Play D

Enter last year’s playoff season, in which Hedo was in the last few months of his contract, absolutely made it rain, and then was offered a contract for 5 Years, $52 Million by the middling Raptors.

It seems pretty obvious: this has about as much of a chance of working out as Season 2 of Jersey Shore…

A few numbers to whip out for everyone while we are here:

The NBA Salary Cap = 60.7 Million Dollars

NBA Luxury Tax Threshhold = 70 Million Dollars ( I will explain this all in a second…)

Actual Raptors Salaries = 70 Mill

The Total Value of the Raptors = Approximately 400 Million Dollars

Yearly Revenues For the “Raps” = Approximately 130 Million Dollars

So why in the world would a team in a questionable market like the Raptors offer a 30 year old quasi-stiff who was a statistically below average guy (PER ~14) both last year and for his entire career a contract worth 1/8 of the value of the entire franchise? … and this wasn’t even breaking news for being one of the dumbest business decisions of all time?

The answer is simple: The NBA’s collective bargaining agreement and resulting business model is so whacked out that this was a perfectly normal thing to do.

The realities of this can be summarized in two points:

Apparently Shes "Not Really Even Italian"

1) In JWOWW TV Land, the employees may receive 1% of the revenues; the figure in normal industries is approximately 30%; in “the association”, the number is above 60%. As a result, it is next to impossible for owners to make money/ have money to invest in their teams – both in paying players and elsewhere, and small market teams are doomed to go out of business or perpetually require new owners/investors who will always be hemorrhaging cash.

2) NBA teams don’t construct teams with “basketball implications” in mind at all. Instead, they operate with frameworks of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) in mind, and the result is the total bizarro world that is the NBA.

Reality #1 is what it is. Either the economy will improve to the point that this doesn’t matter, new gazillionaire investors will constantly buoy teams (though we may have to resort to questionable Russian Oligarchs and Oil Sheiks like the Premier League has), teams will move/go bankrupt, or… the framework will have to change.

Reality #2 – Well… I think it takes some further explanation:

In the NFL and NHL, the salary cap is “hard”. Basically, you aren’t allowed to make trades or sign free agents that put you over the cap (though it is possible with severe penalties – see the late 90s/early 2000s 49ers moves that lead them to their current mediocrity). In the NBA, there is a so-called “soft cap”, meaning that teams are allowed to use a vast array of “exceptions” to exceed the cap. In fact, next to nobody operates under the cap. The so-called “Luxury Tax” is the other important number: for every dollar that a team is over this level, they have to pay a dollar in tax to a pool that is divided up amongst the “non-Tax” teams. Even given this, a large portion of teams disregard the tax and suck it up and pay. (Another side result of this: if a team has an 80 million dollar payroll, then their de-facto player expenditure is actually 90 million, so % revenues going to players is actually upwards of 70%).

So what are the “Thousand Ways to Die” for an NBA GM?

#1) The Way Too Long/Too Guaranteed/Back-loaded Contract:

The Kids Get Better and Better With Photoshop Eh?

Let’s suppose you are the Washington Bullets, and you see this really promising Attorney General of New York named Eliot Spitzer who, while maybe isn’t one of the 5 biggest stars out there, is a borderline top 10 biggest name in the business with White House level potential, so you sign him to be your starting Governor of New York for the next six seasons, and then half way through season two, his hooker problem spirals out of control and suddenly not only is he suspended indefinitely, but he’s pretty much damaged goods for life. This all actually occurred… except that the Bullets are unfortunately now called the Wizards… and Eliot Spitzer is actually Gilbert Arenas.

Oddity #1 of the NBA CBA that needs explanation: contracts are not really negotiated within a free market. You can’t lock up Taylor Swift for the next 10 years for 30 million dollars per year just because you know that she’s a sick investment. Contracts are nearly all based on “scales” with a maximum salary for the year that a contract is signed determined by league revenues, the player’s years of experience in the league, and with the allowed salary increase in future years fixed at certain percentages (since nobody can actually know what the league revenues will be in those future years). The result is that in order to make contracts “rich”, they have to be back-loaded. When you see a “100 million dollar contract”, that usually means that a guy is getting something like 13 Mil in year one… 15 in year two… 19 in year three… 23 in year four… etc… which is particularly problematic if these incremental increases outpace league revenues, both because it is the determining factor for the salary cap, crippling your ability to sign other players, and because this means that an even higher % of the team revenue is going to it’s players, preventing teams from making investments that would result in higher revenues and break the cycle (Basically, revenues won’t increase… but contracts still will given the current situation).

Perfect Enough to Lock up for 10 Years? Yeah Probably...

Teams are forced to mortgage their future to sign players… and in a sport where 1 player makes more of a difference than in any other… they are powerless to do otherwise. Players and agents know this, and that’s how these 4+ year contracts come to be.

Perhaps the biggest issue with this aspect of the system: What happens to Spitzer/Agent Zero after their scandals put them on the bench? They continue to get paid in full. This is an extreme example, but let’s take a more common situation:

It’s 2001 and you are the GM of the New Jersey Nets. After a promising first CD with breakout hit “Faith”, huge second CD featuring “Nookie” and “Rearranged”, you sign budding legend Fred Durst to a 6 year deal. You want the guy for life. In year one, everything is going well and Durst starts in the All-Star game on the strength of gems like “My Way” and “Rollin” off of “Chocolate Starfish and Hotdog Flavored Water” – so good you even sign Durst’s buddy Wes Borland (the one with the sketchy masks/contacts) to a long term deal, but in year two, Durst shows up for the season totally out of shape, he and Borland start having terrible chemistry because they are having an affair with the same hooker, and neither of them are good anymore. What can you do about this? Zero – contracts in the NBA are entirely guaranteed… so once you get a deal, you can feel free to suck (See Eddy Curry).

Quick Break to Appreciate Limp Bizkit’s Masterpiece “My Way” Video:

This brings us to oddity #2:

#2) When Basketball Players Become Expiring Contracts:

The signing of mediocre/terrible dudes to long term deals is so rampant in the NBA, that a huge portion of management strategy revolves not around getting good basketball players, but instead simply clearing cap space to sign more mediocre/terrible dudes to long term deals next year. The most important operator in this game is the so-called “expiring contract”.

Let’s go back to Durst for a second. It’s now 2007 and the Nets have been an NBA cellar-dweller for the better part of a decade because they’ve had no money or cap room to sign somebody actually good. At the end of the season, Durst’s 24 million dollar salary is off of the books, and the team can partially have a clean slate. Given that you are the Nets GM and that you clearly suck at your job, your buddy over at Golden State calls you up and tries to screw you like so:

“We really want to start fresh in Oakland… to see if we can become a contender for the first time since Rick Barry was involved. About 38 people show up to your games… and most of them are there for all you can eat funnel cake night or to ogle at your cheerleaders… You guys haven’t made the playoffs in forever, and even if you will be crippling yourself again long-term, you need to make the playoffs this year before the Saudi Royal Family tries to buy the team and move it to Riyadh.

Montag May Have Gone Too Far, But Ashlee's Work was Spot On...

We accidentally signed Ashlee Simpson (Simpson-Wentz) and Pete Wentz to 5 year deals in 2004, and we owe them 11 Mil each this year with 10% raises each year hereafter, but surprisingly, Ashlee lip-syncs and is only still in our rotation because of her extensive plastic surgery… and Pete turned out to be only a little better than the guy from Gym Class Heroes, but you guys could probably get the 7 seed in the East with them on your team. You’d have to pay them 22 Mil for the next 2 years, but we’ll give you our 1st round pick this year too (as long as it’s not in the top 5) and even our first round pick next year (as long as it’s not in the top 10), if you give us Durst’s expiring contract so we can blow it up and start over?”

Simply because Durst’s contract is imminently ending, it has enough value to justify giving up decent players and draft-picks for it in order to start from scratch. This was pretty much exactly what happened with Tracy Mcgrady. The Knicks got rid of their commitment to pay the miserable Jared Jeffries next year, Larry Hughes’ smaller expiring contract, their most recent #1 pick Jordan Hill, in addition to their 2012 #1 pick and the rights for Houston to swap #1 picks with NY in 2011 all in exchange for McGrady’s massive expiring deal. (As an aside: The Rockets must really love Kevin Martin to have done this…)

Notice how one expiring contract in the T-Mac deal was traded for another smaller one + some other stuff? That’s because one of the rules of the CBA is that the salaries of players going to each team in a trade must be within 25% + 100k of one another if the teams are over the cap (basically everyone is) – the so-called “Traded Player Exception”, and in order to achieve this, teams have to throw in random expiring contracts. The result is the following: instead of teams making trades that make basketball sense, they make trades that make money sense…

For example: The following trade – Durant straight up for Dwight Howard – is a perfectly equitable deal basketball wise (Durant is the bigger basketball talent but Howard is a big man… and the bigger the player the more relative value they have), but as is illustrated in ESPN’s Trade Machine, it is impossible.

For the record, Durant >>>> Howard

But hypothetically, this following would work (even though it couldn’t be more insane):

The Knicks Really Did Agree to Pay All of Those Guys...

So in order to make that first trade work, the GMs would have to throw in a bunch of random expiring contracts (mostly white dudes who don’t play):

Always Knew JJ Redick Would Amount to Something...

See the problem with how this all works?

By forcing teams to make trades that are “money equal”, the system of giving value to expiring contracts and therefore long-term terrible contracts is corroborated and condoned.

It get’s more convoluted though… Let’s say that in the upcoming offseason, the T-Wolves want to trade Jason Biggs’ expiring contract worth 5 Mil a year and Tara Reid’s contract worth 9 Mil a year with 2 years left on it to the Bucks for Sean William Scott- a better player than either of the aforementioned gems, but whose contract is currently 10 Million Dollars expiring this year.

Don't Think A Serious Career is in the Cards for the Stifmeister.

You’re the Buck’s GM, and you don’t have any random expiring contracts to throw into the deal, so you say: well let’s just resign Stifler at 14 Mil a year and then ship him off to Minny to make this trade work. Here’s where a rule called “Base Year Compensation” comes in. Long and short of it: if you give a guy a raise over a certain % of his past salary, for the next 6 months either his past salary or 50% of his new salary are used as his “de-facto trade salary”… basically to prevent teams from doing this kind of thing…. But the following ludicrous loopholes still do exist:

“Pulling a McDyess” – In last year’s Nugz-Pistons trade involving Iverson going to Detroit for Chauncey Billups, Antonio McDyess was sent to Denver to make the money add up. The Nugz immediately bought out his contract, and he resigned with Detroit 30 days later when such was allowed. A lot of people expect this to occur with Cleveland/Washington and Zydrunas “Big Z” Ilgauskas imminently.

“Pulling a Van Horn” – In order to make the Jason Kidd-Devin Harris deal work last year, Dallas needed to add more money to the trade in order to compensate for how brutally overpaid Jason Kidd was. They couldn’t even achieve this with NBA legends Desagana Diop, Maurice Ager, and Trenton Hassell, but they still technically had the rights to Keith Van Horn… who officially had not yet retired… so they signed him to a three year deal with only the first year guaranteed for 4 Mill… and sent him to the Nets… even though the Nets also had no intention of ever playing him and waived him shortly thereafter. All in all, the “2nd Best White Big Man Ever to Go to Utah” got 4 million dollars to do nothing… just because the NBA CBA makes no sense.

This, while not a traditional example of such, also brings me to Oddity #3 on our list.

#3) Why Sign?… or Trade?… When you can “Sign and Trade”?

How killer of a picture is this?

So lets just say that you are GM of the Clippers now, and you’ve had budding talent Michael Cera on your roster since you drafted him in 04 and subsequently resigned him after his rookie deal so that he’s now earning 7 Mil a year, but his contract expires at the end of this year. You have this inkling though that Cera has become a somewhat “one dimensional player” over the years, and that his niche really worked on “Arrested Development” and in “Superbad”, you think he could really use a fresh start before he makes “Youth in Revolt II”. He wants to “develop as an actor like Shia Leboeuf” too, so you and Cera amicably agree that he needs a change of scenery. You could trade him right now… but what if you are in the midst of a playoff push and don’t think you could get much back for him? or potential suitors who you would trade him to are worried that he won’t resign with them in the off-season, and thus they’d get screwed? In baseball, if you waited for the season to end before making a move, Cera would just bolt and you’d get nothing out of it. The principal rules of the NBA “Soft Cap”, though, disincentivize this action.

This is Supposed to be Heidi Montag (Version 3.0) In front of Mount Doom?

Back in the day when Sauron was forging the CBA in the flames of Mount Doom, there was some dude named Larry Bird on the Celtics. Not only was he pretty sick at basketball, but the fans in Boston really dug how Caucasian he was, and the league figured out that things would “hit the fan” if he had to leave Boston over contract stuff. Still, the dude deserved to make bank and get raises… bigger raises than the Cs could offer the guy under the salary cap. The result: the birth of the CBA provisions known as “Bird Rights”, “Early Bird Rights”, and “non-Qualifying free agents”.

The quick summary of what that means: If you have been on one team (or were traded but never were a free agent) for three or more years, you qualify for “Bird Rights”. This means that your current team can resign you for the maximum salary and with larger incremental raises despite being over the cap. Likewise, “Early Birds” are players who have not been free agents for two seasons and can resign for a maximum of either the league average salary or a 75% raise with a similar incremental raise advantages, and “non-qualifying free agents” represent everybody else – but are still able to resign with their current team at a 20% raise even if that would put the team over the salary cap. These rules, basically allowing you to resign your guys despite being over the cap, are the foundation of the “Soft Cap”.

But how does this affect players switching teams? Back to Michael Cera… It’s now the end of the season, and your buddy who runs the Bobcats calls you up and says:

One of the Greatest Debates of our Generation

“We really want Cera. We were worried if we had tried to make a deal with you before the deadline that a hot commodity like that wouldn’t have signed a long term extension with us because we are a terrible NBA town, but we really want to see if we can make an ensemble Superhero RomCom with him, and we think with Owen Wilson, Michele Rodriguez, and Kirsten Dunst on our roster we’d be able to make a sick one… maybe something in which Cera dies freakishly but gets to come back as a ghost with super powers? We have Luke Wilson on our squad, and his contract isn’t even that bad, he’s just out of shape and rusty from only doing AT&T ads, but he still has value as a wily vet. I mean…. “Alex and Emma”… the guy is golden! Come on! How about you sign Cera to a raise that we couldn’t give him if he were just a free agent? and we’ll throw you guys Luke and a first round pick in 2011?

The Clippers win because they get Luke Wilson and a #1 pick (probably a solid one) from the Bobcats instead of just having Cera walk; Cera gets more money than he could have if he had just left as a free agent; and the Bobcats get their prized new star under a long term contract…

Ladies and Gentlemen: “The Sign and Trade”. It is such an institution in NBA dealings that the CBA has institutionalized it as an “atomic transaction” – meaning that the “sign” and the “trade” are treated as one event… so you can’t “punk” Cera by telling him that you are going to “Sign and Trade” him… and then keep him the new contract. With the off-season of the vaunted 2010 Free Agent Class impending, expect to see a lot of this going on. I’d say it’s a good bet that this is how all of the guys: Wade, Bosh, James, Joe Johnson, The Booz Cruise, Rudy Gay, etc.. move if they choose to do so.

We’ve almost made it through the gauntlet here, but I would be oversimplifying the whole thing if I didn’t at least mention one last category of oddities…

#4) There’s always another exception to the rule…

It would be way too easy and make too much sense if the 3 aforementioned monkey wrenches were all that stood in the way of the NBA having rules that made sense, but in the never-ending quest to be “over the cap” without being “over the cap”, five other little rules came to be:

Sure He Turned out Way Better than Darko... but the dropoff was "Precipitous"...

The Rookies Exception: Just like there really isn’t a free market for signing veterans as so much is constrained by salary scales, the same goes for signing first round picks. In fact, each pick in the first round must be paid a designated amount based on where in the first round they are taken. What if the draft has much less talent one year than usual? Doesn’t matter. What if there is a significant drop-off in talent level from one pick to another like in the 03 Draft when the first guys taken were: Lebron/Darko/Melo/Bosh/Wade… and the #6 guy was Chris Kaman – who turned out to be damn good, but was not in the same league as a prospect? Doesn’t matter. Each team has to sign their first round pick for at least the scale amount, and while such counts towards their total team salary, they are allowed to sign the pick for that amount regardless. The only wiggle room: giving the picks up to 20% above the scale amount if for instance, they were playing in Europe and it wouldn’t economically make sense for them to sign otherwise. As usual, this exception tilts “advantage players”.

The Mid-Level Exception: Probably the most famous of the exceptions used on other team’s guys, the premise here is that even if your team is “over the cap” (sound familiar…), you can sign one guy per year to a contract up to five years with a salary exactly equal to the league average for the first year with up to 8% raises each year thereafter. How much is the league average? Around 6 Mil per year – so we are talking about enough money to sign a real impact guy and exceed the cap by an additional 10% each season for all eternity. Why is there a cap again?

Final Verdict: Simpson's Surgeon > Montag's >>>>> Ryan's

The Million Dollar Rule: You’re the Lakers GM this time, and as usual you are the odds-on favorite to win the title, but the whole dynasty thing is getting a little monotonous. Of course you are 40 million dollars over the cap already, so how can you spice things up? How about adding a lovable but washed up superstar who is already loaded and just wants a title for cheap? Maybe Snoop Dogg? Maybe a post-awful-plastic surgery Meg Ryan? Well, there’s (thankfully) an exception that allows this too: “The Million Dollar Rule” allows over the cap teams to sign one guy every two years to a two year deal worth up to 2 Mill per year (It used to be 1 Mil a year, but as always, these salaries have had a way of doubling). This is exactly what the Lakeshow tried to do when they signed Karl Malone before somehow choking in the finals against the Pistons back in 04. They should basically rename this one the “In case it didn’t suck enough being a GM of a crappy NBA team” exception.

The Minimum Rule: This one is real self explanatory – teams can sign as many guys as they’d like to the league minimum salary for 2 year deals even if they are over the cap. What is the league minimum? About 500k for a rookie, 1 Mil for a 5 yr Vet, and 1.5 Mil for a 10 yr Vet… So is this de-facto almost identical to the “Million Dollar Rule” without any limits on quantity or frequency of use? Pretty much.

Doesn't This feel like a long time ago? Even old people love Snoop now. Unfortunately, this wouldn't count as a "Disability".

The Disability Rule: Finally an exception that makes sense: If a player cannot play due to physical disability (not basketball injury, but something like Leprosy or Ebola), then a team can exceed the cap to sign a guy worth the Mid-Level exception or 50% of the diseased dude’s salary… whichever is LOWER (the first time in a long time the word “lower” was involved).

So this is the world in which NBA teams are forced to operate: Knowing that fanbases and revenues largely hinge on fielding not just competitive but star-laden teams, but also knowing that the players have the vast majority of the power and that the CBA is a reflection of that. The nature of the CBA is such that salaries will grow at a rate that outpaces the growth of the Salary Cap – all of the oddities of the system guarantee this. Basketball, moreso than football or baseball, is a team sport defined by the individual, by the superstar. The result has been that labor negotiations have moved in the favor of the players to a level that drastically exceeds that seen in the other major sports. Those other sports may ultimately find themselves in the same position as basketball currently is in, but their evolution has occurred more slowly in light of players being more replaceable. The question is: what is the next stage in sports business evolution? The NBA has inauspiciously become the forerunner in this experiment, and the likely lockout that will result from the renegotiation of the CBA this offseason could provide any of a number of answers. Commissioner David Stern acknowledges that the % Revenue allocated to the players simply must decrease for the league to persist, and that moves towards semi-guaranteed contracts could seriously help to limit the dead money given to the Gilbert Arenases and Eddy Currys of the world. Mavs Owner Mark Cuban favors a move away from salary caps, which he feels actually hurt the small market teams by forcing them to spend proportionately to league revenues and not their own revenues. He also acknowledges that the players receive a huge % Revenue without shouldering any financial risk, and the exact opposite is true of owners. Houston GM / MIT Business Professor Daryl Morey favors a move to “Hard Caps” because all of these exceptions actually allow teams with incompetent management to continue to spend indiscriminately and run themselves out of business in the process. From a “basketball standpoint”, he argues that a hard cap would be the system that would create the purest “basketball meritocracy”, in which good management would be rewarded on the court… and poor management punished.

You can’t help but notice what’s obvious: Players who suck get paid 10s of Millions of dollars to ride the pine. Trades are made solely for the sake of adhering to a ludicrous set of legal nuances with basketball implications only secondarily involved, and most importantly – Nets-TWolves games with fewer people in the stands than you’d see at an 8th Grade Talent Show.

I know the fans go to games to see players and not owners, and that it’s hard to feel as though men who are multi-millionaires or even billionaires are being exploited, but that seems to be the honest reality. The players have fought hard for their rights to get from being treated like Snooki to where they are today, but they have reached a point where they are legitimately threatening their own livelihood and the dream that they are so lucky to be able to live.

It may be an ugly next year or two, but things need to change. At some point, the owners and the players will figure out how to do it. Basketball is worth it.

Word,

Nick

AM Update 2.18.10: DDay in Vancouver + Champions League Knowledge + The Women of Curling/CNBC

After a real blitzkrieg by Germany in the medal count on Tuesday, the Americans landed full force on Omaha Beach in British Columbia on Wednesday (note: WWII references aside, Germany is our friend and sick – beer + Lindsey Vonn’s birthplace involved). In fact, Wednesday night’s 6 Medal killing spree may be the sickest single day of performances in American Winter Olympics history.

Double Fist + The Bird + Classy Lady... Solid Work Bode

While I maintain that it was a real toolish move on the part of Shani Davis to do one qualifier in the 500M and then withdraw to “focus on the 1000″ because doing so prevented another American from “living the Olympic Dream” (banging out some random Lithuanian biathlete girl in the Olympic Village… having Bode Miller vomit on you… that kind of stuff), at least the guy followed through and won gold. The better story though has to be that guys named “Shani” and “Chad” have now medaled in consecutive Winter Games (and not even in Snowboarding or Ski Aerials). While we’d expect people named “Chad” to do well on the ASP world surfing tour or in the X-Games, the Winter Olympics is generally dominated by people named “Olaaf”, “Gunnar”, and “Sergei”. You shouldn’t think that Chad Hendrick really is breaking the mold though. He’s actually a more accomplished inline skater (typical Chad move) than he is on the ice, and he goes to sick parties (he’s the one on the right) with Playboy Bunnies, Carlton from Fresh Prince, and of course… Apolo Anton Ohno.

Yeah... That is actually Carlton from Fresh Prince.

… And then there was the snowboard men’s halfpipe, in which Shaun White was so thoroughly nasty on his first run in which he didn’t even do his “sick new double corkscrew thing”, that he could treat his second run as a victory lap. The highlight of this event: Shaun’s bro encouraging him prior to his victory lap by dropping a real crisp F Bomb for everyone to enjoy (I’m sure this will result in them tape delaying everything even more…). USA also had a nice throw-in Bronze in this one – a habit of ours over the course of this games that has put us in great position in the medal count (The Bronze Throw-In is sort of like getting a random draft pick in a trade or finding out that your girlfriend is really in to those strip aerobics DVDs – it’s not really the point, but these things have a way of coming in handy down the road)…

So now for the main event… the single coolest event I’ve seen thus far (Korean collapse included) – The Women’s Downhill.

Mancuso (middle) chillin in Sweden with some other Skier Chicks

If you didn’t see it, what “America’s Funniest Home Videos” was for suburban fathers’ crotchs was pretty much what the downhill was for really aryan women: they just got lit up one after another. I’m not talking kinda lit up… these girls would come off of their skis and apparently crash for 200 feet on ice. In the midst of the shock value TV, we also got to see killer performances by two really good looking Americans. I received an instant message from podcast legend Sebastian about a half hour after the event ended with the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciro_Mancuso Apparently, Mancuso’s dad has made an uncanny transformation from West Coast Tony Montena to low key groupie dad. If that isn’t the American dream, well… it is. (Note: Leighton Meester was apparently raised by drug dealers too… is there some odd correlation between drug dealer parents and hot famous daughters? I wonder if people are going to start using the “I only dealt drugs so my daughter would turn out to be hot and famous” excuse?).

The Mirror Shot... Most Commonly Found in Reality Kings type content... Appreciate how hard I worked to justify putting this picture in the article?

After being distracted by Leighton Meester pictures for the next fifteen minutes, I went ahead and began to google image search Lindsey Vonn. When I had gotten as far as “Linds” in the search box, I noticed suggestion #1 was Lindsay Lohan, #2 was Lindsay Lohan Breast, but that #3 Lindsey Vonn had jumped ahead of #4 Lindsay Lohan No Clothes.

She Used to be So Healthy

In order to achieve something that monumental, you have to really earn it, and that’s exactly what Vonn did last night. Even though the announcers inexplicably kept criticizing every single one of her turns, she absolutely dominated the field… injured shin aside. As good as that performance was though, nothing topped her literally perfect (she could not have done a single thing better) celebration/cry/interview that she threw down after the run and win. She was candid, sincere, overjoyed, funny, really good looking… she just nailed it. Every once and a while somebody just nails the post-game celebration. Drew Brees did it two weeks ago with help from the cute baby (kinda cheating)… Vonn did it last night, and in the process made herself millions of dollars. She can do Dancing with the Stars, TheraFlu Ads (the Winter Olympian Cold Medicine Plug is always involved)… maybe even get a skiing reality show on “Versus” or “The Active Network”. If it weren’t for the American love affair with “Ohno Watch”, I’d call her a stone cold lock to be carrying our flag in the closing ceremonies. In case you missed it, check out her interview below:

(Note: This is blatant copyright infringement… so my thanks/apologies to NBC – consider this reparations for your fall lineup)

The only blemish on the US record on Wednesday – two losses in curling to bring our combined men’s and women’s records to 0-5. While announcing the compelling Sweden-UK women’s match, the announcers began discussion of the big curling controversy: a bunch of the world’s top female curlers are posing nude or semi-nude in Andorran photographer/curler Ana Arce’s annual “Fire and Ice” babes of women’s curling calendar (for which the proceeds go to support Women’s Curling of course).

An odd medium between actual photography and a "Blender" shoot.

Outside of the Olympics and the underwhelming NBA Trade Deadline scene, the biggest thing going on in sports world over the past couple days has been the commencement of the UEFA Champions League Round of 16. (For those who aren’t familiar: UEFA Champions League is the competition pitting the best clubs from each European soccer league. The specifics of how teams qualify is pretty crazy, but relevantly speaking, the 32 best soccer teams in Europe break into 8 pools of 4 and play “Home and Homes” with the top 2 teams advancing. This stage takes place in the fall, while the round of 16 commences in February. In the round of 16 as well as Quarters and Semis, the teams play “2 Leg Matches” – basically a full soccer game in each home stadium with the scores being added together and using goals scored on the road as the first tiebreaker. This week featured leg one for half of the matchups; next week will feature leg one for the other half; the week after will feature leg two for the first half of the matchups; and the fourth week will feature leg two for the other half… then we move on to quarterfinals. Basically, the Europeans have managed to make one playoffs system last an entire calendar year… about what would happen if every NBA series went 7 games. The Games that happened this week: Manchester United 3 AC Milan 2, Arsenal 1 FC Porto 2, Real Madrid 0 Olympique Lyon 1, and Bayern Munich 2 Fiorentina 1.

Here is what I noticed in watching these games:

Below is the highlight reel for Arsenal-Porto. At 3:30 and 10:00 you’ll see Arsenal keeper Lukasz Fabianski making two of the most clownish F-ups you’ll ever see a goalie do:

I actually think mistake #1 was way worse than mistake #2. On mistake #2, Sol Campbell is as much to blame as he is, but mistake #1 was a simple case of somebody sucking at their job… Fabianski’s next start is probably more likely to be with the Kansas City Wizards than with Arsenal… or even a team in his homeland of Poland.

I know... It was legitimately hard to look at.

Fabianski aside, Arsenal was far from inspiring against Porto, a team that plays a similar style of football to “The Gunners” but with about 20% of the talent… and Manuel “at least I don’t rock a bleached mohawk anymore” Almunia isn’t much better in goal anyway. Porto came in with the strategy of dumbing down the game and basically intentionally fouling Arsenal as much as possible, and the strategy worked perfectly. Arsenal has so much “pace”, “skill”, and “athleticism”, but couldn’t they use a guy like Man Utd has in Darren Fletcher – who really is none of the above but is constantly involved in the play and indiscrimantly fouls anyone near him? If they managed to sign one of those… and a goalie in the summer transfer window, then they’d legitimately be in the same league as Chelsea/MUFC/Barca/Real. Right now, they just aren’t (but I expect them to win 1-0 at home and advance on the away goal rule).

As for goalies who they should be targeting in the next transfer window, how about Lyon’s Hugo LLoris? He’s almost as creepy looking as their current goalie; he’s young (23 at a a position where guys go til they are 40); and he’s been really nasty of late both for Lyon and France.

Which of these brutally European looking dudes is France's Keeper? The One on the left...

Lost in the wake of the Thierry Henry handball mess in the France-Ireland world cup qualifier was how LLoris kept France in that game in the first place, and now he gets a clean sheet against Real Madrid (basically the Mets of the Soccer Scene at this point… tons of talent… no chemistry). The guy is damn good… too good to stay in Ligue A indefinitely. If Arsenal doesn’t consider him, Chelsea and MUFC should look to him as successors to Petr Cech and Ed Van Der Sar respectively.

Even though they won on a goal that should not have counted (Klose was clearly offsides when he scored)… and they benefited from an awful red card call on Fiorentina, Bayern Munich has to be considered the dark horse in this field of 16 remaining. Their lineup is full of the best Dutch and German players in the world, including kid phenom Thomas Muller – who may even be the most individually brilliant and creative option for Germany in South Africa. The generic lineup for Bayern includes Ribery, Lahm, Van Bommel, Robben, Klose, Schweinstager, Gomez, and Muller among others. How can you argue that this squad is not in the same league of talent as the current top tier of Real/Barca/MUFC/Chelsea?

Who took 1992 Tiffany Amber Thiessen, threw her in a time machine, and had her read about Greece's debt crisis off of a teleprompter for me? ...Not that I mind

As for Manchester United – AC Milan, MUFC played one of those games where they look awful and dominant simultaneously. Time after time, their entire defensive line would just sort of hang out and watch while Milan made through-passes to set up scoring opportunities.

The Rio-Evans-Rafael-Evra lineup just doesn’t work, but it’s hard to say how they get better without a healthy Vidic or waiting on the summer transfer market (and how can England justify Rio’s captaincy when he isn’t really even in form to be starting for the team?). Still, with Wayne Rooney playing at this level (if I had a game tomorrow I’d prefer him to Cristiano… potentially anyone), you have to think MUFC is going to be fine til they match up with Chelsea/Real/Barca… and that maybe Tevez’/Cristiano’s presence at United was really holding his development back?

One final note… when you stay up all night watching Olympic coverage on CNBC, you end up watching the market news after 5am by accident. You’d think I’d just change the channel when this happens, but these shows are pretty much the definition of “white collar softcore”. It’s like Eliot Spitzer was a “Make a Wish Kid” and this was the result. If I had to pick between a “Babes of CNBC” or “Playmates” swimsuit calendar, how could I go against Nicole Lapin? If only she doubled as an international curling star, we really could get one. I quite don’t remember the cable networks having girls like this on air five or ten years ago. 2000 Era Paula Zahn on FNC started the trend… Laurie Dhue really took it to the next level in the NeoCon Heyday… but I think Joe Francis just invited these CNBC girls onto his bus.

America: Truly the land of progress…

Real,

Nick

Wednesday AM Update: Blades of Glory + Vick

So I didn’t just kind of jinx tuesday’s olympic coverage and medal count, I screwed it harder than John Mayer would claim even Jessica Simpson would enjoy.

If you google image her, you get multiple nipple slips on page one...

Going into the day, USA had a solid lead in the medal count and each night of prime time coverage had been somewhere between dece-plus to sick (basically when all those Koreans fell down). Enter last night: Germany somehow leapfrogs us in medals, and a Lindsay Jacobellis DQ in the snowboard cross semis (not that this intrinsically mattered to me… she was one of those names that NBC decided it was going to focus on… but she seemed to not give a crap about her whole “redemption story” at all/ may be the most hipster athlete I have ever seen… h8-u-hpstrz) resulted in NBC covering every single random Czech, Italian, and Belgian man figure skater on top of the Canadasian hometown hero, the Russian with the mullet, an assortment of small Japanese men with lots of hair gel, and the US Delegation: A Todd from Wedding Crashers/Adam Lambert impersonator, some guy dressed in a gay version of “The Crow” costume, and Clay Aiken. Don’t get me wrong… there’s nothing wrong with these guys being gay… or just flamboyant and effeminate – whichever it is… and the shows these dudes put on are really impressive, but I just don’t remember men’s figure skating being THIS FLAMBOYANT.

The Painting was a Gift Todd...

I think I managed to avoid watching this event back in 2k6 and therefore don’t really have any memory of this event since the 2002 Romney Games. As a 14 year old, I may not have fully “gotten” what was going on with these guys, or maybe the movie Blades of Glory somehow became a self-fulfilling prophecy? Earlier this week, I noticed the striking similarity in affect between Amy Poehler in “Blades” and the real Tanith Belbin (has to be intentional), but it almost seemed like every skater who went out there was just trying to do a more over-the-top Chaz Michael Michaels immitation. Directly after Johnny Weir’s performance, I went on google to see what people were tweeting in real time and this is what I found:

Men’s skating: Johnny Weir rocked the pink tassel – the Adam Lambert of skating, it seems like.
siskita – twitter.com – seconds ago
Wow, judging from everyones tweets Johnny Weir must have just gotten on the ice. #gayglittertwitterexplosion
JustinRobby – twitter.com – seconds ago
Just caught the tail end of Johnny Weir’s program. He really is the Adam Lambert of ice skating. OMG, I love it! Might have to stan lmao
FreeEnough2Fly – twitter.com – seconds ago
new gay crush: johnny weir. sorry, christian siriano and neil patrick harris.
k_to_the_t – twitter.com – seconds ago
Words #CTV announcers said re Johnny Weir: dark horse, flamboyant, interesting, chanelling Lady Gaga, different cat.
Ironic_Mom – twitter.com – seconds ago
oh, johnny weir, johnny weir, you are a treasure.
nejsnave – twitter.com – seconds ago
RT @colleenoboyle: Does anyone else think Johnny Weir looks like Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands? #olympics
soopertrev – twitter.com – seconds ago
I really need to take a picture with Johnny Weir & Karlie Kloss
cmbenz – twitter.com – 1 minute ago
Pretty sure I have seen @thinktomdotcom wear the same outfit as Johnny Weir…twice. #van2010
KyeGrace – twitter.com – 1 minute ago
Ok, did any other fallen Catholics notice Johnny Weir does the sign of the cross wrong?
Princess_Holly – twitter.com – 1 minute ago
@magmaeA Oh honey, I don’t think there ever would have been any question with Johnny Weir
beautifulpaper – twitter.com – 1 minute ago
YES! Here comes Gaga for Johnny Weir!
adventurouskate – twitter.com – 1 minute ago
johnny weir: best costume ever
itskas – twitter.com – 1 minute ago
@MichaelHKoch Of course the #Olympics announcer speak in code when referring to Johnny Weir.
tcmassie – twitter.com – 1 minute ago
Johnny Weir can back up the attitude! When he’s great he’s great! #olympics
Im_Barbara – twitter.com – 1 minute ago
Johnny Weir rocked the tassle…and kicked it…good for him…all that hype was actually for real…gorgeous skating!
miixxy – twitter.com – 1 minute ago
So Johnny weir can really skate. Which is what’s important, not fox fur controversies or pink-sleeved corset-like tops.
TonyaPlank – twitter.com – 2 minutes ago
Blows a kiss back to Johnny #weir
JeffreyYYZ – twitter.com – 2 minutes ago
Dipped in pink glitter. RT @kmeganc: Johnny Weir’s outfit is like Marilyn Manson went to the Renaissance Fair. It is awesome. #olympics
jollyjinster – twitter.com – 2 minutes ago
Johnny Weir rocks. But have we ever seen him and Adam lambert together? #ithinkivemademypoint
leapyearcutie – twitter.com – 2 minutes ago
RT @The700Level: Remember that one time Vai Sikahema and Johnny Weir went shopping?
The700Level.com – Philly Sports & Minutiae: Johnny Weir & Vai … – the700level.com
cjrider – twitter.com – 2 minutes ago
The movie blades of glory, might actually be based on Johnny weir, maybe the other way. #van2010
bradpurdue – twitter.com – 3 minutes ago
I’m sorry, is Johnny Weir wearing a corset? Love!
annrafalko – twitter.com – 3 minutes ago

Couldn't land the jumps without feathers...

Clearly, the winner here is “Marylin Manson at a renaissance fair”, but the point rests: the Weir performance/outfit/persona left a huge portion of America totally slackjawed staring at their T.V. in awe. (As an aside, Weir did get screwed in the judging) The craziest thing about the whole thing, Evan Lysacek’s outfit (pictured) was probably the “bro-est” costume we saw the entire night… and he’s wearing feathers. (Apparently, Lysacek dates Nastia Liukin… so mad props to him for pulling that level of girl in face of 24/7 self-induced emasculation).

No Sequens...

Another repeated oddity you see in figure skating: European men thinking it is somehow quaint to dress up in “American costumes” and perform to swing/big band for their frolicking. I had just sent an IM to my friend Mimi asking if the had seen any skaters not wearing sequens (she said no), when I saw this dude (Sam Contesti of Italy) make his way to the ice. At first I was relieved by his non-shiny outfit… and then enthused by his “Grapes of Wrath” gimmick, but by the time he was 20 seconds in, I felt like I was watching the portion of Zoolander in which Derek returns home to the coal mine and tries to hang out with the guys while wearing his mining costume.

… And we still have yet to experience the “free skate”. I may have the same motivations for watching it, that I have when I watch “disasters caught on home video” type shows on Spike or G4, but I’m sure I’m gonna watch the finals in this circus.

The only bright spots of the day’s olympic coverage: the “workmanlike” win by team USA over Switzerland in hockey… and the beginning of men’s curling – featuring an “extra ends” battle between powerhouses Norway and Canada.

Curling Uniforms have yet to really "mature" in their evolution...

I can’t reiterate enough how cool of a sport this is: imagine if baseball games took about half as long and both teams got to be batting at once. I mean: look at the outfits team Norway was wearing. They look like the dudes who come to your house to set up your moonbounce/astrojump (east/west coastal dialect) or petting zoo, and then awkwardly lurk for the entire party.

Although it seemed to sneak under the radar, BET’s The Michael Vick Project premiered last night as well, and I cannot plug the show enough. On episode one, MV7 dealt with bankruptcy proceedings, outcries against him on Philly talk radio, the support of the local NAACP chapter, speaking engagements with Philly’s urban youth community, and his loyal hood-rich girlfriend. It may sound pretty dry, but Vick is in a truly fascinating situation being both maligned as an evil man and lauded as a story of redemption… being bankrupt despite being a famous athlete… trying to tell kids not to do what he did… yet being on the pedestal to do so because he’s someone to emulate on some level. The one thing that is clear: he seems like a normal guy who just wants a chance to make things right… now lets see if he ends up starting under center for the Rams? Bills? Argonauts?

I also stumbled upon this legendary late 90s music video… TLC’s classic “Unpretty”… the only anti-plastic surgery music video that I can remember being made. Set in some sort of awful CGI 5th element temple and acid-trip meadow approximately 10 years in the hypothetical future… so 2009 or so, the video features a random ghetto gang fight, an obese girl coming to terms with her body, and “Chilli” contemplating breast implants. The best part: the demonization of Chilli’s boyfriend for being enthusiastic about her interest in breast impants. How would you react if your girlfriend sat you down with her computer and said “I want breast implants, what size do you think I should go for?”. She’d probably get pissed off if you tried to talk her out of it… You’d do exactly what this guy does… This video is really a landmark in American cultural history – enjoy…

Big NBA updates and some podcasts in the works…

Word,

Nick

Tuesday 2.16.10 AM Update + Tyler “Ohno Watch Day 1″ Podcast

What if Moon Walk doesn't want to look like Liberace? What if he wants whiteguy dreads like Kyle Beckerman or a hawk like Birdman Andersen?

Lost in the midst of the whole world (the cold developed part) coming together in friendship to do obscure shit that nobody outside of Switzerland would ever consider “normal” is an American weirdo niche tradition that is off the charts on the “I can’t F-ing believe that this is on during Prime Time… and that I’m sitting here watching it” scale: The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. The finals are tonight on USA Network. I’m going with winner of the Toy Group… Poodle “Moon Walk”. (You have to be out of your mind to bet against the Xhibit pimped out Poodle in these things). One of the oddest trends to come to my attention in recent memory: Stair Races. I was happily watching Nordic Combined coverage when I saw an advertisement encouraging people to get involved with “Stair Races”… which are literally just people running/walking/jogging up the stairwells of skyscrapers. While this may not catch on in the developing world for a while… and seems likely to end with “This sucks. I’m taking the elevator and smoking a Black and Mild” four out of five times, I’m glad that this niche sport is putting itself out there. Here is a list of all of the races around the world: http://www.towerrunning.com/races.php and one in the underrated (kinda) city of Des Moines in the building with the best steakhouse in the city (by far): 801 Grand.

I have no words...

This past Saturday night, Tyler and I threw down our weekly podcast while in the midst of night one of “Ohno Watch”… in which Apolo Anton clowned on some asians during prelims before getting a good karma silver medal to go along with his bad karma silver medal from 06… in which he was leading and got knocked down at the last second. I’m not going to exonerate Apolo from any of his tool factors for a second (bandana, soul patch, back story of having a high fashion hairstylist father who tried to keep his son off of the streets by signing him up for ice skating, being named “Apolo Anton Ohno“, and general 15 minutes of fame every four years laughability), but the guy looked legitimately psyched about getting the Silver… unlike a lot of Olympic DBAG types who clearly hate not winning gold. He made it fun to watch. On the podcast, Tyler and I break down Ohno, all of the countries in the opening ceremonies, Twilight, and our friends to the north. The cast can be downloaded here: http://nickcoman.com/tylerohno.m4a and streamed here:

As always, the Itunes Subscription can be found here: http://bit.ly/9xK1Ys – The podcasts find their way into Itunes well before they get posted on the site, so if you want to get them ASAP, subscribe in Itunes…

The NBA All-Star weekend had its ups and downs… mostly downs. Mark Cuban did a sick job of making the whole thing look like a Playboy Mansion ragefest… and the halftime show continued its streak of being the best in Sports, but there are a few problems: 1) The Allstar Game itself isn’t fixable… the guys shouldn’t play hard… they owe it to their teams and fans not to… 2) The Slam Dunk contest hit a new low this weekend with no stars, no cool dunks, and Nate Robinson winning for the 3rd time despite everyone being sick to death of the whole… short dudes getting air… thing.

Shakira: Mastering body suits that falsely make her look naked... and looking eerily like if Beyonce was shielded from the sun for a couple of years...

We all want to see Lebron do some sort of 360 off the backboard, elbow deep slam after trampolining over an Apache Helicopter with propeller at full blast.. or something like that at least? maybe at least dudes who start for playoff caliber teams? and then there is the skills challenge… in which Steve Nash, Russell Westbrook, and Deron Williams all missed on the “chest pass through a tire” toughie. I don’t really know what they could do outside of just putting the guys through “The Eliminator” from American Gladiators to make this event palatable, but that was pretty damn low. The Rookie/Sophomore game is a solid gimmick, but happens way too early in the weekend for anybody to notice… and H.O.R.S.E. featuring the Durantula, Ray Rondo, Zohan Casspi and Chaz Barkley as M.C. was the high point… particularly when the guys kept making shots and Barkley was remarking how TNT was getting screwed out of a commercial break… and of course, Cowboys stadium looked big. We get it…

Did I mention how gnarly Shakira was at halftime? She clowned on Keys even… let alone The Who…

Apparently the powers that be over in England are considering messing with their Champions League nomination process to make a playoff between teams ranked 4-7 for the 4th spot, but they are hesitant to do so because they are worried about having a lesser team make the competition and not make it out of pool play (Article Here)… which could ultimately result in England losing their 4th Champions League spot because of the crazy math system of UEFA Coefficients (if your country’s delegation does well in the Champs league or Europa League, the spots given to your country in those competitions increase in number… and vice versa… but not in a way anybody can explain in plain English). The counter argument for this British fear: is there really any talent gap among teams 4-7 in the EPL: Man City, Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool, and Aston Villa? The answer is pretty obviously a No… and the rules change would only serve to bolster this kind of parity.

Becks is always a good excuse for these pictures...

More importantly, all of the English squads all have more than enough talent to make it out of pool play (in contrast to the Italian and Spanish squads even), and Liverpool’s automatic qualification after finishing 2nd in the EPL last year didn’t stop them from choking this year… And in case you can fit any soccer into your schedule with Ohno Watch in full force and the dog show going on… Champions League Rd of 16 Leg One between Manchester United and AC Milan goes down today in Italy… Becks taking on his old squad. Unlike 2005 and 2007 when MUFC lost in this contest to Milan, the best English sides today are far and away superior to the best from Italy. If United goes down, expect to hear a lot of pissed off old British people freaking out in soccer world.

Shani Davis has continued his quasi-douchebaggerie by withdrawing from the 500 Meters to “focus on the 1000″ (Article Here). Maybe this does benefit him, but isn’t there some American speed skater out there who worked his ass off and really would have loved to have had that spot and to have gotten the “drowning in tail at the olympic village” experience?

Tool Holding a couple CDs?

Shani just took a crap on that guy… kind of like he dropped a deuce on Steve Colbert after Colbert got his whole team sponsored?

I know that it’s early on in the games… and I don’t wanna jinx it… but gotta love the USA Medal Count Performance so far. Maybe I’m a little hazy on the memory, but we usually don’t jump out to first place like this right? We usually get crushed in all the weird nordic stuff before tearing up half pipe and ice dancing later on? At this rate, we may actually take down the medal count in the Winter Games for the first time since 1932 (and only the 2nd time overall)… On tap for today: The beginning of the two most important events at the games: Men’s Hockey and Women’s Curling… I’m not kidding about any of that. If you have nothing to do this afternoon, tune in for curling on Universal HD or MSNBC… hot foreign girls (some not so hot too… and occasionally awkwardly old) screaming at skidding stones in shrill accents while their buddies furiously broom… all in the context of a glorified drinking game/ice shuffleboard. It’s classic. As for the hockey, basically imagine All Star games that didn’t just matter… but were treated like the Super Bowl. The only possible analogy is the World Cup… except that all of the world’s talent is basically in 7 teams: The Canadian and Russian beastmasters and the sick but mediocre by comparison squads of USA, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. I’d put this slightly ahead of the Dog Show for watch priority… but it’s all about personal preference.

I only subject myself to it every once and a while because it’s just hard to watch cars go in a circle for four hours, but I watched the Daytona 500, and really enjoyed it all despite the stoppages (Article Here). During the extended “Red Flags” to fix the pothole on the track (you’d think these problems wouldn’t happen), a lot of the coverage was spent interviewing the drivers as they bro-ed out to pass the time. All of the drivers seemed like really likable “token white dudes”… but in a good way.

J-Mac cares about Kids...

They were funny, self effacing, really got across how much they loved their sport, and all seemed to really bro out with each other… clowning on each other during interviews and such. When the race finally ended, a mediocre/journeyman guy named Jamie McMurray snuck out the victory, and his celebration was so sincerely joyful that anyone with a pulse would have to feel happy for the guy. Mcmurray ran all over the place like a chicken with his head cut off… then dropped to his knees on the Daytona lawn… and then burst into tears in his post-race interviews repeatedly. I’m not gonna try to tell anybody that Nascar is great television… or that the drivers are “cool”, but the sport resonates with Americans as much as it does for an obvious reason: the guys are easy to cheer for. So maybe we should all tune in on Sundays and just click back and forth between Nascar and something else in case it gets boring… like we already do for every baseball game?

I saw the headline “Corey Maggette To Cavs heating up“… and could do nothing but laugh at GM Danny Ferry’s insistence on signing terrible character guys to play with Lebron? Is he trying to create some sort of bizzaro Jailblazers team with an evil King James at the center? Current NBA rumors also have Amare’s interests moving towards Miami (another perfect fit for Amare… never have to worry about fans or pressure to win a title… just enjoy the parties with Ja Rule and get his 22 and 8 and driving D-Wade to the Bulls). Apparently, the Rockets and Knicks are looking for a third team with which to conduct their T-Mac Deal… Messing around on the ESPN NBA trade machine a couple days ago, I came up with this gem (See picture).

Why are the Cs Shopping Ray Allen?

While I’m not saying that this is going to happen… and I think Boston is crazy for even allowing Ray Allen rumors to come up… doesn’t this trade make some sense for everybody?

And who didn’t see UCONN over Nova coming? Desperate team known for its size and freakleticism taking on a finesse squad coming off of a couple wins… Shocker.

Word,

Nick

NickComan.Com

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AM Update 2.18.10: DDay in Vancouver + Champions League Knowledge + The Women of Curling/CNBC

Wednesday AM Update: Blades of Glory + Vick

Tuesday 2.16.10 AM Update + Tyler “Ohno Watch Day 1″ Podcast

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