Damn You Versus!

I'm an NHL fan, born and bread. But man, Versus (Vs.) is making it damn hard to stay with the Stanley Cup Finals. Twice tonight already within a period and a half of the Ducks/Sens Game 2 (and that's with flipping to the Red Sox on breaks in action, hence missing small bits of the game) the producers at Vs. have somehow managed to bastardize the action by cutting to commercial during game play. It's like the incompetent employees in the production booth set commercial breaks and said, "Screw it. Even if the game's still on, we need the commercial revenue to keep this ship afloat."

Come on guys, get your heads out of your a$$es. It does not help your cause. If it happens again, I may just boycott the rest of the Finals- and that's from a die hard NHL fan.

A "Quickie" Type Post

Not lots of time to wax philosophic today, so I give you a "quickie-style" (thanks Dan) run down of thoughts:

• How much are the Falcons lamenting moving Matt Schaub off to the Texans? If and when the hammer of Goodell comes down on Vick, something tells me the phrase, "Starting QB" is NOT a label they really had in mind for Joey Harrington (or Chris Redmond).
• "Conley-tanking": That's it, I'm copyrighting the catchphrase right now. What is it? It's when an NBA-bound prospect, disliking his current high draft status, plans to tank his workouts leading up to the draft to lower his stock, thus dropping from the sights of inept GMs/teams with high picks (see: Atlanta Hawks) and, thus, ensuring life is better playing for a team with at least the motivation to improve itself in the coming years (see: Hornets), or, gasp- even better, lucking out with a team that bamboozled a Lottery team (see: NY Knicks) out of their 1st Round Pick, but are already near the top of their Conference (see: da' Bulls). Count on this, it will happen soon.
• The biggest sign yet that A.J. Pierzynski is a d*ckhead... he and Justin Morneau were teammates in Minnesota several years back. Just shows you how far loyalty goes in the land of Free Agency.
• Chuck Lidell- I'm in a quandry. He was the first guy I really noticed in UFC several years back (I have been a passive fan for a while), but I always found a better fight out of guys like Couture and even Shamrock back in the day. Lidell might be the first high profile UFC fighter (by "high profile" I mean ESPN/general sports fan recognized), but he's certainly not the best. And wait until we start getting into the "pound for pound" best fighter argument like we do for boxing. Guys in the lower weights classes- welterweight Karo Parisyan or middleweight Terry Martin, might be better for the sport's health when we look back after their careers play out.
  
• My argument is, the UFC (and MMA in general) needs to be anti-boxing- in other words, to push for a "Heavyweights Headline" the way boxing has always done would kill the sport. Why does everyone flock to see De la Hoya/Mayweather in boxing? Because there is no heavyweight bout to carry the sport and that has just buried boxing.
• So I argue, don't put your sport in that "do or die" position anyway. If you have guys you can root for at every weight division, is that not better for the marketability of the sport anyway? I mean, how many "real" guys out there picture themselves as the 225 pound monster hitter that heavyweights are? Is it not easier to think of yourself as- and root for- that 175 pound firecracker that gets in there and fights like he's 225 pounds?
• I would argue that UFC can fill the gap between WWE and boxing. In other words, be the sum of both parts- the money/marketing of WWE combined with the raw/"real" sports satisfaction of boxing to garner casual fans and diehards alike when the product is- and here's the key- QUALITY. More on this as I give it more thought.
  

Elijah Dukes- You D*ckhead

OK, so Elijah Dukes pulled a Brett Myers and abused his wife (death threats and pictures of a gun, what?!). She called the police and she got a restraining order. Sad stuff and just another example of athletes with attitudes not meant to be removed from the field on which they play. But here's a funny side to it. Dukes' official head shot makes the guy look just like Flavor Flav. I swear, observe...


It's a scary resemblance. Well, when you pull "real" crap like hitting your wife, you are pretty much lower than 15-second fame whoring "reality" TV stars.