schlagging.com

Brett Favre’s Summer Off

Posted on July 15th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: sports.

If we don’t trade him, we may as well let him play. He’s made an ass of himself, and there’s nothing we can do about that. But what we can do is let him lead the Pack yet again. He’s earned the right.

I’ll take a lot of flack as a Packer fan for his return, but if the Packers can have another great year with him like they did last year.. well, they can talk all they want.

Save Brett

1 comment.

#4

Posted on July 11th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: sports.

Brett making efforts to come out of retirement is like a slap to the face of the Packers organization and his fans. He went out on top, despite not making it to his second Super Bowl. He chose to leave, and we accepted it.

He now knows he can’t return to the Packers, who have been busting their asses for the past half a year to play without him. The only option is to play for another team. The Packers won’t allow him to simply be released unconditionally from his contract and sign with the highest bidder (likely the Vikings or Bears). If anything, he gets traded to a non-NFC North team, and the Packers gain some value in return.

He’ll end up on a team like the Ravens, Bucs, or Dolphins. He won’t win another Super Bowl with one of those teams. His best chance was to decide earlier to play one more year in Green Bay, and he gave up on that chance. Brett’s image is now tarnished as a Packer, because of his selfishness. Maybe I’ll feel differently in a year, but I’m truly heartbroken right now… as lame as that might sound.

He is the Shawn Michaels to our Marty Jannety.

1 comment.

Dear David Stern

Posted on April 23rd, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: sports.

There is something wrong with the National Basketball Association.

Sometime in the late nineties, I stopped watching pro hoops. I was sick of watching a disturbing trend. It wasn’t a new thing, but it finally wore on me enough that I couldn’t take it anymore. What am I talking about? Flopping. If you’ve watched Sam Cassell play, or if you’ve seen a Spurs game this decade, you should know what I’m talking about. It’s the practice of playing the game to take advantage of the rules. The rules should keep a game from getting out of hand. They shouldn’t let a game get out of hand in the opposite direction. But they do.

Professional soccer organizations across the globe and NCAA hockey are two examples of leagues that have it right. If you are clearly trying to draw a foul and are over exaggerating your motions and flops - you can get penalized for it. I feel like it should be a form of technical foul in the NBA, to the referees’ discretion. Maybe they won’t always get it right, but sometimes it’s just too obvious to overlook. And right now, refs have no choice but call the foul and let the lame asses take their free throw attempts.

Please take this to heart, and propose the new rule to the owners. The Spurs may object heavily, but I have a feeling most of the league would be in agreeal.

(As a side note, I am not blaming the Suns most recent two losses on flops. They need to play some better ball. It’s just frustrating to see them lose to a team that relies heavily on such tactics.)

Unformatted and Nonsensical Bibliography: Micah Zahler’s email to the masses. Matt Ennis’s soccer wisdom.

2 comments.

Shaq Diesel comes to PHX

Posted on February 7th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: sports.

My dad sent me this email the other day:

Has Suns management lost their minds? An old at the end of his career player, who hasn’t played hardly all season for 2 key players (Marion & Banks) in the middle of the season? Guess they want to lose season ticket holders again!!! What do you think?
Dad

Here’s my response:

my take on the whole thing..

in the first hour or so after hearing the news that it was very likely going to happen, i went through a roller coaster of reactions

at first, i was in disbelief

then, i was in a state of denial, and i too thought it was a horrible idea

then i thought about it some more, and realized that kerr isn’t an idiot. he must know what’s up. he must have a game plan in mind with d’antoni to make this work

then i read up on some espn and azcentral articles, and they made some good points. losing marion and banks, and adding shaq could be a really good thing for team chemistry. things between matrix and stat had become, well.. awkward. and we all know about marion’s recent history with the team and trade talks. and we know about banks’ complaints about play time

on top of that the money isn’t too different. there’s about a 3 million dollar difference to add shaq and lose the other two - banks was set to make a good chunk of change that he wasn’t really earning

aaaanyway. so what about shaq’s ability to add to our team? well, when it comes down to it, i wanted to believe that the suns could do it all with their team. but frankly, it was hard to convince myself. and i dont think there are many suns fans who would feel otherwise. it’s the same as the past two years pretty much, so why would we suddenly be able to take down teams like the spurs? i dont think it would have happened

but with shaq on board, we finally have someone to match up with the big men on teams like the lakers (they’re scary now), the spurs, the mavs, and the jazz

he won’t be playing big minutes (at least, i don’t think) - especially not early on - and he will be needed a lot more come playoff time, which gives some time to not only get to 100% health wise but also become acclimated to the suns team and allow the coaching staff to figure out what to do with him

in the end, i may be becoming a steve kerr apologist. i’m okay with that. he’s my uofa boy. i really want this to work out for him, and i hope the shaq move is praised come june. only time will tell, and i think suns fans can only support the team at this point and not be too critical unless the big man gives us reason to criticize

2 comments.

Pack it up, Packers

Posted on January 20th, 2008 by Josh.
Categories: sports.

The Packers don’t deserve to play in the Super Bowl this year, based on how they played the Giants tonight.

If you know me, you’ll know that things like this can get me quite worked up. And I was definitely worked up for probably about 15 minutes.

But then it hit me - if someone could tell me for sure at the beginning of the season that the Packers would make it to the NFC Championship game, I would have been thrilled to hear it.

It’s a bummer that they won’t be making the trip to Lambeau West.

Good things this year, though - and a lot of progress. I sincerely hope Brett returns yet again to lead a young but maturing team to another championship run next season.

1 comment.

NBA on ESPN

Posted on December 15th, 2007 by Josh.
Categories: sports.

These commercials are fantastic. Enjoy!

Oh, Van Gundy…

I respect Grandma Cora.

0 comments.

Asians in sports

Posted on December 12th, 2007 by Josh.
Categories: sports.

Since my first Google query didn’t produce any results, I’m going to give up easily and resort to bugging those who read my blog posts.

Why are Asian team sports players in America referred to by their first names? I noticed this first when I learned of Japanese baseball player Ichiro Suzuki’s debut in the MLB some years back - his jersey says “Ichiro”. Many know the name Daisuke (Dice-K), but couldn’t tell you his last name is Matsuzaka. And the freakishly tall Chinaman Yao Ming is known only as Yao. (Dude, Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.)

What gives? Is it something about Asian culture, where the surname is given less emphasis than we tend to give it here?

Edit: It’s the end of the work day, and our company’s Christmas party is tonight… so I took a few more minutes to do some research, and this is what I came up with.

Why, then is Ichiro displayed on jerseys, instead of the surname, Suzuki? This is a special case: he became popular as simply “Ichiro” during a special promotion with a Japanese baseball team. He asked MLB if they would grant him an exception, to simply be known as “Ichiro” - and they obliged.

1 comment.

Thanks, Lance!

Posted on December 7th, 2007 by Josh.
Categories: sports, exercise.

The other night, Lance Armstrong cameo’d on my iPod to congratulate me on setting a new PR for the mile.

When I got back to my computer and sync’d my iPod with Nike’s website, I was told that I had just completed a 7′59″ mile!

To most people, that’s not a big deal. But I’m the kid, who back in junior high, would be struggling to break 12 minutes because I was too busy sucking on my inhaler.

So thanks, Lance!

I’ll have to give myself a self high five.

0 comments.

You’re a Towel!

Posted on December 2nd, 2007 by Josh.
Categories: sports.

After last night’s Territorial Game, the students rushed the field.

I criticized the action, because kids rush the field way too often these days. A few weeks ago, the Wildcats fans rushed the field after a homecoming victory over the UCLA Bruins. It was by no means an upset. Last night, the ranked ASU football team beat a - let’s face it - mediocre at best U of A team. Yet the kids rushed the field!? Are you kidding?

Rushing the field should be reserved for games that you don’t expect to win. Games that you are the heavy underdog. The way all those kids were talking, and the way that people were betting in Vegas, that certainly was not the case last night.

The only way I could have seen it as justifiable last night, is if ASU had clinched a Rose Bowl berth. That sure didn’t happen, either!

Anyway, the point isn’t that ASU students are stupid football fans. As a whole, they are. But the same could be said of Wildcats fans, or many other colleges across the nation. The point of this is that after I had made my point to my friends, the guy in front of me starts getting hostile. He starts to defend the kids, and starts ripping into my school and our bad luck in football. He ends his mini-rant by calling me stupid. “You’re the stupid one,” is what he said. Wow. He owned me, for sure. Nice job, old man. Put your headphones back on. I’m sorry if I yelled too loudly behind you at the football game.

0 comments.

National Spotlight

Posted on November 15th, 2007 by Josh.
Categories: sports.

Tonight, the Wildcats are in the sports national spotlight, as they host the BCS #2 Oregon Ducks.

To commemorate the event, I’ve quickly thrown together another graphic, in hopes of an upset:

See you at the tailgate!

0 comments.

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