And I Thought I Couldn't Be More Excited For Die Hard 4.0 Than I Already Was

Ever since sophomore year of college, my buddy Falkow and I vowed that we'd see Die Hard 4 together if, and when, it was ever released. Those were back in the halcyon days where the mere speculation of a third-sequel was draped in mystery and the premise "John McClane in a Brazilian jungle" was being tossed around. Now that dream is a reality, as Live Free or Die Hard is scheduled for a June 29 release and I'm to the point where I'm watching the trailer at least three times a day. Bruce Willis is doing his part to get everyone excited, including doing interviews with Canadian television stations at NBA Playoff games. While drunk. George Clooney?

Et Tu, Bobby Wilson?

The NFL Draft begins in 18 minutes and, thanks to an afternoon wedding, I won't have to sit through much of it. Tom Boswell wrote in yesterday's Washington Post that the Redskins trading for Lance Briggs is the only thing that makes sense and, as usual, he's exactly right. This, of course, means the 'Skins are taking either the 19-year old or the safety. Neither pick makes much sense. Okoye is a project, at best and Landry is a safety, perhaps the position the Redskins need help at the least.
Gotta give some love to the New York fans who just booed Michael Vick during a weirdly-timed Virginia Tech tribute. That's all I got. Enjoy the reading of names.

(Update: Why the hell is ESPN broadcating this in standard definition? The Draft's ratings will double any, and every, NBA playoff game this weekend, which is where most of their HD equipment ostensibly is. To relegate the NFL's "second biggest day of the year" to a standard feed is absurd. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure last year's Draft was in HD.)

The Cynicism of Redskins Fans

8:52 a.m.
From: Jaffe
To: Chaz

Snyder talked to press yesterday

---------------

8:53 a.m.
From: Chaz
To: Jaffe

That totally means we're trading up to get calvin johnson, doesn't it?

---------------

8:53 a.m.
From: Jaffe
To: Chaz

Exactly what I was about write

---------------

Tuesday Thoughts

Between now and Monday night at 6:30, I have a lot to do. Normally when I say that I mean that I have a haircut later that afternoon, but this time I actually have a bunch of stuff to do over the next six days. So, posting might be sparse until then, which isn't that big a deal since this is pretty much the most dormant sports period of the year. Hopefully, I'll emerge unscathed from all this. Wish me luck. See you on the other side.
(P.S. Every time I write that I'm not going to post any entries during a given span, I tend to post frequently, so keep checking back if you're really bored at work. I'm looking in your general direction, Falkow.)

* After one season, the NCAA rescinded a college football rule that began the game-clock once the ball was set after a change of possession. The rule was passed in 2006 in order to shorten college football games, which often ran an interminable three-and-a-half hours. It was a fine rule in theory, as pretty much everyone agreed college games needed to be shorter. But, in execution, the rule was absurd.
Having the game-clock start running before the ball was snapped after a kickoff felt completely contrived. It was weird, it was forced and it didn't work, most notably when Wisconsin deliberately ran offsides on a kickoff four times to run the clock out in the first half (since the clock started when the ball was kicked).
Why the NCAA didn't lengthen the play-clock or continue running the game-clock on first downs is anyone's guess. Mine is that they're stupid, but that's neither here nor there.
Anyway, the rule has been changed and, in its place, the NCAA hopes to shorten games by moving the kickoff-line back to the 30-yard line and cutting ten seconds off the play-clock after TV timeouts. These measures should shorten the games by approximately 47 seconds. Morons.
From the AP story about the rule change:

Some coaches complained the 2006 changes, which resulted in about 14 fewer plays per game in Division I-A, had altered the game too much. Others said it prevented teams from rallying late in games.

Not noted, of course, is that the greatest comeback in NCAA Division I history took place last season, with the rule change in effect.

* Dice-K : Baseball announcers :: Brett Favre : Football announcers
Look, Matsuzaka throws some nasty stuff, but he's getting behind in almost every count and opposing hitters are teeing-off on the strikes he's forced to throw. This doesn't stop announcers from slobbering all over him and his 62-pitch arsenal, despite the fact that he's often getting hit hard. I think he'll settle down, learn how to pitch to Major Leaguers and eventually an All-Star pitcher. But he's not there yet. (Oh, and he was definitely throwing at A-Rod.)

* Speaking of A-Rod; definitely pencil him in for MVPL: Most Valuable Purple-Lipped Player. The 14 homers through 17 games are fairly nasty though. Don't forget that Albert Pujols set the record for most homers in April last season and finished 2nd in MVP voting. Plus, he doesn't choke when the games actually matter.
It's also pretty sweet that the Yankees aren't winning during A. Rod's hot-streak. Here's hoping he hits 65 homeruns, bails out the Yanks twice during a Divisional Series loss and then bolts those spoiled, crybaby New York fans in the off-season.

* There seems to be a direct correlation between ESPN's increased saturation of NFL Draft coverage and my disinterest in said Draft. Much like fantasy football and Entourage, I preferred the Draft when there wasn't as much hype and we didn't constantly hear about how important it is. I'll still be watching this Saturday, of course, but other than the names of some future-busts the Redskins are looking at, I only have three thoughts:
1) In the three games I saw Calvin Johnson play this past year at Georgia Tech, he impressed me in exactly zero of them. In the ACC Championship, Wake Forest gave him a large cushion which enabled him to get eight catches for 117 yards, but at no point did it seem like Johnson was going to take over the game. Maybe it's because the inconsistent (to be nice) Reggie Ball was playing QB, but that's pretty much the problem with receivers in a nutshell. Calvin Johnson will only be as good as the quarterback he plays with. No position, in all of sports, is as dependent on someone else than a receiver is a quarterback. Look at Randy Moss, Alvin Harper, Gary Clark and other names I'm pulling from the way-back vault beacuse I'm tired and have about 31 things due in the next six days. But you see my point. Receivers are worthless without a quarterback. So unless Calvin Johnson can hook-up with a good one, it'll be bust-city.
2) I hate when people make definitive statements about things they can't be predicted. But I also hate it when people make wishy-washy comments about the same things and then slap themselves on the back about it when their prediction turns out to be true. So, it is with a careful step that I say: JaMarcus Russell has bust written all over him.
I have no clue what that third two point was.

* Two of my favorite sports books, Breaks of the Game and Summer of '49, were written by David Halberstam, who died yesterday after a car accident in California. Halberstam managed to make his sports books feel like a literary exerience, something that is rare in the genre. The Teammates is an example; a book about life and death set to baseball. I was disappointed a few years back when I heard that Halberstam's new book was on Bill Belichick; someone whose biography I wouldn't read if it was written by Hemingway. Now, though, maybe I'll check it out.

* And, finally, while my buddy Phil was awaiting a new entry, he sent me this:

There's this radio station in Baltimore called 92Q, and we can sometimes get it down here (92.3 on your FM dial). They have this running gag called "You know you from Baltimore..." in which callers complete that half-sentence with wild phrases and descrpitions that are emblematic of life in Baltimore. It's sort of like a ghetto-ass version of Jeff Foxworthy's "You might be a red-neck." Usually, the responses involve food stamps, rooting for the Ravens, dealing with STDs, and other such topics.
So the other day, they were taking calls and this woman calls in and says:
"You know you from Baltimore ... if the Eastern Motors commercial come on the radio, and you be like, 'Girl, tha's my SONG!' "
If you can't get a column out of that ... I mean, I don't know what to tell you.

In the words of Milli Vanilli, "girl, you know it's true." The aformentioned DC/Baltimore classic:

Great Reads

1) In today's Washington Post, David Maraniss writes an eloquent, sober narrative of the horrifying Monday at Virginia Tech. The exceptional reporting and writing exuded in this piece is one of the reasons newspapers will always survive. Their role and dissemination will change, but the written word provides so much more than a bunch of talking heads yelling over each other on television. Maraniss takes you to VT's campus on a Monday morning that began like all others and ended like none before. His narrative, filled with rich details and never-before-heard stories, is stunning and a must-read.
The author, incidentally, wrote the acclaimed biography of Vince Lombardi a few years back.

2) On a (much) lighter note, this week's New Yorker profiles Manny Ramirez. Ben McGrath writes an interesting piece that tries to get at the heart of what Manny-being-Manny truly means. Read the whole thing. Money graf:

Ramirez, now entering his seventh season with the Boston Red Sox, is the best baseball player to come out of the New York City public-school system since Sandy Koufax, and by many accounts the greatest right-handed hitter of his generation, though attempts to locate him in time and space, as we shall see, inevitably miss the mark. He is perhaps the closest thing in contemporary professional sports to a folk hero, an unpredictable public figure about whom relatively little is actually known but whose exploits, on and off the field, are recounted endlessly, with each addition punctuated by a shrug and the observation that it’s just “Manny being Manny.” When I asked his teammate David Ortiz, himself a borderline folk hero, how he would describe Ramirez, he replied, “As a crazy motherfucker.” Then he pointed at my notebook and said, “You can write it down just like that: ‘David Ortiz says Manny is a crazy motherfucker.’ That guy, he’s in his own world, on his own planet. Totally different human being than everyone else.” Ortiz is not alone in emphasizing that Ramirez’s originality resonates at the level of species. Another teammate, Julian Tavarez, recently told a reporter from the Boston Herald, “There’s a bunch of humans out here, but to Manny, he’s the only human.”

Just 181 Days Until Midnight Madness

You'll recall my dismay last year when Wake Forest was left out of the ACC/Big 10 Challenge for the first time in the event's history while Faux-CC teams like Boston College, Virginia Tech and Miami were included. It was later explained that Wake's absence was due to their last-place finish in the conference. To which I say: I hate John Swofford.
This year, the Deacs managed to stay out of the cellar, so they nabbed an invite to the ninth annual challenge in Novemeber. Wake will take their 6-1 record in the made-for-TV Tournament to Iowa City to face Iowa in the opening-game of the Challenge on Monday, November 26 on ESPN2 (the only contest that night; the ten other games will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday).
Wake also got some good news late last week when Florida shooting guard Gary Clark committed to play in Winston-Salem this fall, joining earlier recruit Jeff Teague.
The real coup for Skip Prosser took place a few weeks back after he gained a verbal committment from five-star, seven-footer Ty Walker. Rivals.com has the junior center rated #2 at the position and #13 overall. Say what you will about Prosser (and, believe me, I do) but the man can recruit. He stole Justin Gray and Eric Williams from UNC and kept Chris Paul in town. It's always said that the most important piece of a recruiting class is the first guy and, hopefully, Walker's committment will bring some other blue-chippers to Winston so Prosser can fritter away their talents.
In related YouTubeing; here's a SportsCenter commercial starring the Demon Deacon (which I hadn't seen until today):

John Swofford Is Now Trying To Get Them In The ACC

The Washington Nationals are wearing Virginia Tech hats tonight during their home game against the Braves. Never before would I have imagined that seeing VT gear on anybody would be cool. For today, I stand corrected.

(Update: The AP reports that the idea to wear VT hats was suggested by a fan in an e-mail to Nationals President Stan Kasten. It's frequently mentioned that Kasten responds to fans, but to turn a great idea from a fan into a classy gesture by an organization is fantastic.
More tidbits: The Nats didn't have the hats on in the first inning because the truck delivering them from a local Sports Authority was caught in rush hour traffic. And because the team ordered the 30 hats so quickly, they were forced to were different styles of hats, as I'm guessing Sports Authority didn't have 30 similarly-designed caps in stock.)

You Had Me At "He Got Hit With Some Type of Sub Sandwich"

Actually, it was pizza, but we'll forgive Jerry Remy because his reaction to yesterday's pizza-throwing situation at Fenway has gotten me off the fence about ordering the Extra Innings package, lest I miss any more of his and Don Orsillo's hysterical back-and-forth.
Watch the whole thing.

A Dark Day In Blacksburg

The easiest thing to do in a time of tragedy is to point fingers, and that game has already begun in the wake of the deadliest shooting spree in American history. It's simple to criticize what the Virginia Tech cops did, and didn't do, particularly when the school president vapidly says of the first shooting, "we thought we had it under control."
The police and administration made a number of mistakes, to be sure. But, come on... Can a group of people normally assigned to deal with underage drinking, parking violations and traffic flow at football games really be expected to execute a thorough murder investigation in real-time on a 2,600 acre campus?
Yeah, the administration should have sent the e-mail out more quickly and probably should have cancelled classes. Those measures might have thinned out the crowd in Norris Hall a little; but, either way, the shooter was intent on killing people and a simple e-mail wouldn't have stopped him. (This theoretical "lockdown" that should have occurred after the first shooting; what were the logistics behind it? How would a campus of 45,000 have been shut down by a relatively small police force that dealt with 43 reported felonies in all of 2005? It's a great idea, but could it have been executed properly? It's doubtful. But the best part about mob mentality is that nothing has to be logical. It just has to make the speaker sound smart.)
As a nation, we're so eager to assign blame and point fingers that we seem to fail to cast blame on the actual perpetrators. Look at it this way: If some crazy-fuck hadn't decided to murder 32 people, we wouldn't be talking about e-mails, or cancelled classes or response plans. Place the blame on the killer. It's his fault. He did it. Not the police, not the administration. Criticize the police all you want, but they didn't pull the trigger. They didn't walk across campus, planning to massacre innocent students in a building. They didn't go out in a blaze of gunfire and take 32 lives with them because they were spurned by a chick. Blame the shooter. Not the guys who couldn't keep up with him.
Again, I'm not condoning the action (or inaction) of police. It sounds like they screwed up plenty. (And don't get me started on their press conferences. The school president spoke like a third-grader giving an oral report his mom had done for him and the chief of police sounded like he had never fielded a question from a reporter before. Why couldn't both have given perfunctory talks and let a PR person do the rest? The administration is opening themselves up to criticism, particularly when they decided to go on the defensive while the bodies were still warm. It's amazing that just hours after the shootings, the main tract of this story was the inadequacy of VT to deal with the original shootings. While I'm semi-defending them on that, there's no excuse for letting the story shift to blame this early. That's on the administration. For them to fail to officially connect the two shootings by now (11:15 p.m.) is appalling.) It's just that in the quickness to figure out what happened, we're glossing over what actually happened: An extremely tragic and rare murder spree that was nearly impossible to prevent.
Over the next few weeks a slew of information will be released about the murderer and people will try to connect dots that aren't there in an attempt to prove that the killer never should have been allowed in the country, on campus, to own guns, etc. That's all trivial today. Thirty-two people are dead and no amount of detective work is going to bring them back.

Redskins 2007 Schedule Breakdown

September 9: vs. Miami
For the second straight year, the Redskins open their season at home with a winnable game against a team with a new coach, no running back, a shaky starting quarterback and a stout defense. Didn't work out too well for them last year, though.

September 17 (Monday Night): at Philadelphia
The last time Washington played on a Monday night in week 2, they came from 13 points down with 3:36 left and stunned Dallas with two Mark Brunell-to-Santana Moss touchdowns. This has nothing to do with the Philly game, I just like mentioning that. (For the record, the 'Skins always play terribly on Monday nights and I expect this night to be no different. This is why the opener against the Dolphins will be so important.)

September 23: vs. New York Giants
Joe Gibbs is 4-9 all-time against the Giants in the Meadowlands, including 0-3 since his return to the Redskins. The last time Joe won a game against the G-Men in the swamp was 1992. I'm not gonna lie, I was upset to see that the 'Skins won in '92, figuring that '91 would have been the last Gibbs win in Jersey, thus making a natural Super Bowl corollary.

September 30: BYE
It's easy to look at the 'Skins having the earliest bye week and cringing, but two things prevent that:
1) With a late bye week last season, the Redskins went 5-11.
2) With the earliest possible bye week in 2005, the Redskins went 10-6.
By the way, it's interesting to note that for the past few years, the "bye season" began in week 3 and ended in week 10. This year, the bye weeks still wrap up in week 10, but begin during week 4. This is accomplished by having two weeks where six teams have byes instead of the usual four. Expect fantasy chaos in those two weeks (6 and 8).

October 7: vs. Detroit
October 14: at Green Bay
October 21: vs. Arizona
It's tough to make grandiose statements about a football team that is trying to decide who they're taking with the #7 pick in the Draft, but these are three winnable games heading into a brutal stretch. 3-0 is the hope; anything less than 2-1 is potentially devastating.

October 28: at New England
November 4: at New York Jets
November 11: vs. Philadelphia
November 18: at Dallas
November 25: at Tampa Bay
After their light stretch, Washington hits the road for four of their next five games. Luckily, Donovan McNabb should have alread suffered his annual season-ending injury by mid-November, so the 'Skins have that going for them.
Side note: Last year, the Redskins were furious at the NFL for scheduling three games against teams coming off their bye weeks. This year, Washington has no such games.

December 2: vs. Buffalo
December 7 (Thursday Night): vs. Chicago
Nobody likes Thursday night games, but coaches hate them more than most. That's why the 'Skins are fortunate to have their weeknight game at home after a Sunday home game. The Bears, incidentally, play the Giants in a Sunday national TV tilt at Soldier Field prior to their Thursday trip to D.C., which bodes well for Joe Gibbs and company.

December 16 (Sunday Night): at New York Giants
I haven't read anything about the schedule release, so excuse me if this has been covered: Why did the NFL schedule Sunday night games this year during the flexible period instead of setting each game at 1:00 and moving games as necessary in mid-November? Does it make any sense to have this one on a Sunday night when a better game could bump it? What purpose does this serve? I assume it has something to do with the networks. Theoretically, the NFL chose potentially-solid games for the late-season Sunday nighters in the hopes that said games would turn out to be good matchups. That way, FOX couldn't complain about a great game getting pulled from their schedule, since they never had it in the first place. I'm sure this has been discussed somewhere, I just haven't looked. Leave a comment if you've read anything about this though.

December 23: at Minnesota
This will either be a huge battle with playoff implications or one of those games I'll look back on three years from now and have absolutely no recollection of.

December 30: vs. Dallas
For three straight years, the Redskins have ended their season with an intradivisional skirmish. In 2005, they won at Philadelphis to advance to the playoffs for the first time since 1999. Last year, Tiki Barber ran for a career high in a meaningless game for the Redskins and I got into it with a dude wearing an Eli Manning jersey and had to be escorted out of the stadium by my buddy Jaffe after delivering perhaps the greatest insult-line of my life.
Right now, sitting on my couch as I watch the end of last year's Jacksonville game on my DVR, I'm dreaming of that frigid night at FedEx Field with Jason Campbell, Clinton Porits and Santana Moss in the home whites, leading the Redskins against their hated rival with the NFC East title on the line. I'm picturing the tailgate, the 90,000 strong, the "we want Dallas" chant, the post-game celebration and the sports-exhiliration that only the NFL can deliver. We're still more than eight months away but, already, I can't wait.

My TV Pet Peeves

(Note: This entry was edited after my sister, who lives near Seattle, got mad at me because I originally mentioned who had been voted off American Idol before the show aired on the west coast. Amazingly, she visited this site in the 15 minutes between the time I posted this and the time Idol came on. All spoilers have since been erased and my sister has assured me that she wasn't actually mad, presumably because Sanjaya stayed alive.)

When people get voted off American Idol it's usually because they sang a terrible song terribly that particular week. So why does Idol make the bootees sing that song on their farewell show? Why should they be celebrating the tune that led to their premature demise? Shouldn't they be allowed to sing whatever they want, preferably a song that they actually performed well? Why do we, as viewers, have to be exposed to Gina butchering a Charlie Chaplin song with her trashy tongue ring when she could have been rocking out to the dulcet tunes of Pat Benetar? It makes no sense. Just like on Iron Chef when the tasters watch the chefs prepare the dishes and interact with them during their meal. Don't you think there's some inherent bias there? Of course they're going to like the Iron Chef's dishes more than the Challenger's. I'm not saying it's rigged, it's just human nature. Clearly a taster is going to have a preconceived affection for the chef they've seen on TV many times. The judges should have been sequestered during the 60 minute challenge and given the meals blind. If those rules had been instituted, I guarantee more challengers would have won.
Phewwww, I'm glad I got that off my chest. That Iron Chef thing has been bugging me for years.
Come back tomorrow for some NFL Schedule thoughts and maybe my rambling anti-media diatribe ignited by the incomprehensible wall-to-wall coverage of the 567th most offensive thing Don Imus has ever said.

Friday Links

* Michael Wilbon explains the history behind The Curse O'Les Boulez. Be sure to read it, but only if you've taken all small children out of the room.


* Also in today's Post; the paper releases their tri-annual All-Met teams. A few interesting nuggets from the basketball first-team:
- All-Met Player of the Year Austin Freeman has been called one of the best players in DeMatha history, high-praise from a school that has produced Adrian Dantley, Sidney Lowe, Dereck Whittenburg, Adrian Branch, Danny Ferry, Keith Bogans and Joe Forte.
- Both Freeman and presumptive POY-runner up Chris Wright will attend Georgetown next fall. (Wright backed out of a commitment with NC State when Herb Sendek left for Arizona State. He also considered Wake Forest.)
- George Mason has two incoming All-Met players. I don't have any numbers on this, but I can't imagine Mason got too many All-Met commitments before their Final Four run. It will be interesting to see how the Patriots do in two years, when the full effect of their magical run should be on display.

* Glad to see Dan Shaughnessy isn't reading too much into Dice-K's first start. My initial thoughts on Matsuzaka: He's delicately overpowering. His knuckle/curve/slider hybrid is fairly nasty, as is his straight 12-to-6 curve. But let's keep things in perspective here. He was playing the Royals in the bitter cold, an advantage for pitchers. One start makes not a career.
* It's been on PTI all week, but if you haven't seen Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory humiliate himself while throwing out the first pitch on Opening Day, do yourself a favor and watch:

* This is older, but I don't think I ever linked to it: In The New York Times excellent quarterly sports magazine, Play, Chuck Klosterman profiled Gilbert Arenas, in happier times.

* Also, if you frequent the Times web site and have been frustrated when you can't read content behind the Times Select window, if you have a valid .edu email address, you can receive a free subscription to the service.

* Remember that long-haired kid from Third Rock from the Sun? Turns out he's a very good actor. His latest film, The Lookout, is one of the best things I've seen in the theater in a while. Slate's Meghan O'Rourke on Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

* Some more YouTube: Bayern Munich's Roy Makaay scores the fastest goal in Champions League history, just 17 seconds into the game:

* Over at LebowskiDC.com, my buddy Jaffe covered the first annual Dude Tournament. It's pretty much the greatest thing you'll read all week.

A Brilliant, Little Scheme

I'm enjoying the day off by watching Dice-K's first start and first-round coverage of The Masters. The latter started on USA at 4:00, but thanks to the Internet, I've been watching all afternoon with Sportsline's "Amen Corner" coverage. And, if you haven't already taken advantage, it's fantastic.
The golf version of - I can't remember what they called their NCAA Tournament Internet coverage - is different than I expected. Instead of fixed cameras on the holes (as I anticipated), CBS provides actual coverage of Amen Corner's three holes, complete with announcing, graphics, cuts, etc. Pretty great stuff for the first two rounds when TV coverage only allows you to see groups that tee off at mid-day.
Had a thought just now, hence the reason for this post: I'm always impressed by how good golf announcers are. With the exception of Johnny Miller, I've never once been annoyed with a golf announcer or thought I knew more than any of them.
This is an interesting problem when it comes to things like football and baseball. Clearly Joe Thiesmann and Tim McCarver know a whole lot more about their respective sports than I do, but to listen to them on TV you'd never know that. For whatever reason, their schtick has been dumbed down so much I actually feel more stupid after listening to them babble on for three hours.
It's never that way with golf, though. Former players like Nick Faldo, Bobby Clampett and Lanny Wadkins are almost always spot-on with their remarks and observations. TV guys like Verne Lundquist, Jim Nantz and Dan Hicks are at the top of their games when they're on the course. And the roving reporters, such as David Feherty and Judy Rankin, provide instant insight and analysis that's top-notch.
Without getting too much into it, I often wonder if golf announcers are so good because TV execs let them do their own thing instead of molding them into a focus-group-tested robot like NFL analysts seem to be. (There are a whole bunch of generalizations that could be made here as to why this might be, but I'll leave it at that or else I might ramble on for another hour.)
Anyway, my original point was that the guys on TV are amazingly accurate when they read putts. Tiger was just putting on the 10th green when someone (Faldo, I think; but I was also watching Papelbon close out the 9th so I can't be sure) remarked that he'd be wise to put a little extra into the shot because the up-slope is steeper than it appears. Not surprisingly, Tiger read the putt exactly as Faldo expected and was about eight inches short with his putt.
Golf announcers always know how a certain putt will break because they've been watching the hole all day and have seen players with the exact same line miss their putts that exact way. When two or three guys with the same line all do the same thing with their shot on the green, it's easy to figure out why. By the time the leaders are on the course on Sunday, the announcers have probably seen 25 groups come through and are well-versed as to the dips and slopes of that green. Even someone as great as Tiger can't be expected to see something that isn't there, unless they have prior knowledge of what has already gone on. (Golfers test out the course in the early part of the week, but conditions and hole locations change. For instance, today at The Masters, the course is much harder than it was yesterday thanks to the cold weather. So whatever a caddie has written down in his yardage book is likely useless on greens that are rolling a lot differently than when said notes were taken.)
So (and this was my impetus for pulling out my computer and writing what was supposed to be a short, little entry), why don't players get 18 of their friends, family, etc. to sit at each hole on the golf course to watch how a green is breaking? They could take notes, make a little shot-chart and, by the time a player in one of the last groups of the weekend came around, they'd have some good information about the green. It sounds like a bit much, but I'm sure Tiger would have loved to have known that the putt he just hit was a little slower than he expected.

Agent Zero? More Like Agent... Zero. Dammit.

Tony Kornheiser's famed Curse of Les Boulez has struck again, as Gilbert Arenas is lost for the season after a torn meniscus. For those high-and-mighty types who don't believe in curses and jinxes, consider; in a six-day span, the Bullets have:

1) Gone to overtime (and subsequently lost) after their own player essentially fed the ball to an opponent for a game-tying, buzzer-beating three.

2) Saw their All-Star forward make a hustle play, only to break his hand:


3) Has their star player go down for the season after getting his knee knocked on a routine layup:

MLB Avoids Pulling an NHL

It appeared that Major League Baseball was actually going to go ahead with their exclusive deal with DirecTV; effectively spitting in the faces of over 250,000 fans who paid around $175 for the ability to watch every game. When games began yesterday and I switched to the 770s to skim through the Extra Innings free preview that's always available at the start of the season, I was harshly reminded of baseball's disregard for their most ardent fans. By putting the games only on the widely-criticized satellite provider, baseball risked losing fans who were willing to pay a good chunk of money in order to watch a product they can watch most nights for free.
Amazingly, logic (and a lot of chest-puffing) prevailed and baseball accepted terms from In-Demand late this evening. The Extra Innings package will be available on all major cable systems effective immediately.
That the situation even got this far is a tribute to Bud Selig's complete inability to relate with the common fan; not surprising when you read that the Commish made $14.5 million last year.
Regardless, every game is now available for every fan, as it should be. Now we just need to work on the NFL.

Pat Riley Is Already Hoping for a Florida Three-Peat

The April Fools post from the other day stemmed from an actual entry I had written about the insanity of the NCAA Women's Tournament staging early-round games at neutral sites. I went off on a lengthy rant about how ridiculous it was (and had the attendance numbers to prove it). But after leaving the tab open on Firefox for four days, fate became too tempted and the program froze this afternoon; my rant being lost to the ages.
After an afternoon spent playing tourist at The Mall down in D.C., my lower back now feels like a rim after Greg Oden dunks on it thanks to all the walking. The cherry blossoms were lovely, but next time I'm renting a Rascal. I've never been more jealous of a man who's been dead for 142 years as I was when I saw that Abe Lincoln had a nice, comfortable chair to sit in.
Now I'm watching the Nationals second game of the season and they're playing about as well as they did in the first. There is currently one out in the 2nd and they're already down 5-0. Dmitri Young committed a terrible error which led to most of the runs. His muff made Bill Buckner look downright heroic. Looking on the bright side; at least he didn't drink it.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention last night's game, so here goes: If it weren't Easter Week, I'd be eating crow about Florida. As it is, I'll munch on some pretzels and we'll call it even. I was wrong about the Gators all year. What I failed to recognize (until Saturday) is that Florida can beat you in so many ways - Horford, Green, Humphrey and Brewer were all capable of taking over a game by themself. And even though Joakim Noah is vastly overrated and will be a bust in the NBA, teams had to account for his presence on the court, which helped a guy like Humphrey get open looks. Corey Brewer has always been impressive, but he took his game into the stratosphere this weekend. Wilbon called him a "Scottie Pippen clone" today on PTI and the comparison seems pretty apt to me.
That being said, all this talk about the Gators being one of the best teams of all-time is nonsense. The fact that Bill Simmons called them "one of the best non-UCLA teams of the modern era" only furthers my point. Florida can't compare to any of the great teams of the '80s, simply because what makes the Gators so special (the fact that all their players stayed in school this year) was commonplace back then. The Georgetown powerhouses, Phi Slamma Jamma at Houston, UNLV in the early '90s and the Duke teams that beat them; they were all better than Florida, even if only the Dukies won back-to-back titles. Just because my logic was flawed, doesn't mean that what I've been saying all year isn't true: Florida took advantage of an easy draw to win the Tournament last year. That they dominated a difficult one this season doesn't make the previous statement any less true.
Off the top of my head, the following teams were all substantially better than the current Gators (since nobody is saying they were better than the Wooden-era UCLA teams, I'll leave them off). In chronological order:

1974 N.C. State
They had to beat Maryland in the greatest college basketball game ever played just to get to the NCAA Tournament, then knocked off Walton and UCLA in the Final Four. David Thompson and Tom Burleson starred.

1976 Indiana
The last team to make it through a college basketball season undefeated. Only one team has come close to matching them since (UNLV in 1991).

1982 North Carolina
James Worthy. Sam Perkins. Michael Jordan. Dean Smith.

1983-84 Houston
The best team of the past 30 years never to win a title, Houston made two consecutive appearances in the Finals behind Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, but ran into Jim Valvano and N.C. State in '83 and the Hoyas the following year.

1984-85 Georgetown
Would have won back-to-back titles, if not for Villanova's near-perfect second half. (It's worth noting that 'Nova played Georgetown tough in their two previous meetings that season, a fact thats always seems to get glossed-over when people talk about their Championship Game upset.)

1990-91 UNLV
After drubbing Duke 103-73 in the 1990 NCAA Championship, UNLV figured they'd have an easy time dispatching the Blue Devils in the 1991 Final Four. For my money, Duke over UNLV is still the greatest upset in Final Four history (especially considering the 'Nova/G'Town anecdote from above).

1992 Duke
Christian Laettner was the best college basketball player of the past 20 years. And Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill weren't too shabby either.

1996 Kentucky
Somehow, Rick Pitino's title team gets forgotten, but they only lost two games on the season and started five guys who would go on to become first round picks in the NBA Draft.

2001 Duke
Sure, they should have lost to Maryland in the Final Four, but this Blue Devil team featured three top-10 picks and a second-round selection that's better in the pros than them all (Carlos Boozer).

2004 Connecticut
Give me Emeka Okafor and Ben Gordon over any two Florida players. Plus, UConn played, and beat, a team better than any of the 12 Florida faced during their run (Duke in the National Semifinal).
Note: I had forgotten about this team until a commenter suggested them.

2005 North Carolina
I wouldn't argue if somebody said they'd take the Gators over this UNC team, I'd just silently nod and take comfort in the fact that they were wrong.

Last thing: So many things are overhyped in the sports world today, it's amazing that anything could actually be under-hyped. Somehow, though, Florida's run of three straight TItles in basketball and football aren't being properly appreciated (nor was the UF/OSU "rematch"). It's sort of like when Venus and Serena used to play each other in a Grand Slam Final. Yes, it was discussed and admired, but if you think about how amazing it was that two sisters were playing each other in a Wimbledon Final you realize it didn't get the attention it deserved. I suppose it's because single games and events fall so quickly off the radar (Florida's win is barely mentioned on ESPN.com's front page just 20 hours after it happened) but events that drag on and on (like Barry Bonds' steroid/homerun saga and Barbaro) can get daily coverage.

NCAA Championship Prediction

In a perfect world, neither Florida nor Ohio State would win the NCAA Championship tonight. It'd pain me to see Joakim Noah doing the Carlton Dance at center court while giving an interview and, thusly, not making eye contact with Jim Nantz. As for Ohio State, I like Greg Oden just fine, but Thad Matta looks like he should be on the Island of Misfit Toys. If it weren't for the Xavier coach's inexplicable decision to let OSU shoot a game-tying three instead of fouling and putting them on the line, the Buckeyes would be as far out of our collective consciousness as Wisconsin.
So, just like with the Eagles/Patriots Super Bowl from a few years back, I'm rooting against both teams tonight. I'd rather not watch at all, but there's little shot of that happening, so instead I'll be pulling for a close game and a Joakim Noah severe ankle sprain. Come to think of it, it'd be kind of cool to see Greg Oden make Noah cry, so maybe I'll root for the Buckeyes. On second thought, I wouldn't mind seeing the Gators win and having Billy Donovan, Noah, Corey Brewer, Taurean Green and Al Horford all tell Billy Packer after the game that they won't be returning to Gainesville next season.
When it comes down to it my real rooting interest is in whichever winning team will give Jim Nantz a lamer post-game pun. Florida's could easily be, "The Gators can stand back-to-back... With history!" That would be alright. An Ohio State win could bring out, "Revenge is a dish best served with Buckeye!" That's the one. Go Ohio State.
Pick: Ohio State (But only because I've been picking against Florida all season and it would be pretty lame to stop now).

In Defense of the NCAA Women's Tournament

Last night's boring, poorly-played National Semifinals were exhibits one and two about how men's college basketball has devolved into a fundamental-free orgy of selfishness. Ugly turnovers, missed layups, untimely fouls; it was enough to make a basketball traditionalist cringe. And cringe I did. Multiple times. That's why I'm looking forward to the true Final Four, which begins tonight in Cleveland. You might know it as the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament. I know it as Purity In Game Form.
Critics of women's basketball (ie, blatant sexists) say that the game isn't fast-paced enough. They claim that women aren't good shooters and their athleticism can't compare to men's. And they also complained when we closed the Japanese internment camps and abolished slavery. Bigots.
How such unenlightened people can continue to coexist with the chosen few who recognize the subtle nuances that make the women's game so great is one of life's grand mysteries.
Women's basketball is a hotbed of shooters. Legend has it, Larry Bird learned his sure-handed stroke from watching a D-III women's game in French Lick. Sure, the ball is smaller and women don't have as high of a cumulative field-goal percentage, but that's just semantics. I'm sure I could prove that Don Swayze killed JFK if I played with the numbers long enough.
A former friend of mine (we stopped talking after a particularly-heated discussion about who was better: Tyler Hansbrough or Ivory Latta) once claimed that a good percentage of women's college players had atrocious form on their jumpshots. "[Jumpshots] in the men's game are a thing of beauty," he said.
After punching him in the kidney, I explained that just because most women's jumpshots look like a spastic, dry heave towards the hoop, it doesn't mean they are inferior to the silky, smooth strokes of the men.
When Monet and Van Gogh helped popularize impressionism, the art world wondered aloud where the beauty was, as both were unappreciated in their own time. (As anybody who turned on ESPN during the Women's Tournament knows, so are these young, trailblazing girls.) Now Van Goghs go for a cool $10 mil while nobody outside The Met has heard of Filippo Brunelleschi.
In 20 years when the WNBA is the most popular sports league in the country and the NBA is televising their Finals on C-Span3, you'll pick up what I'm putting down. Ratings for women's games aren't very good now, but neither are the numbers for Masterpiece Theater on PBS.
So you can have your Greg Odens floating high above the rim. I'll take Quianna Chaney and her barely-touching-the-net-from-a-running-start, thank you very much. After all, James Naismith put his first peach basket ten feet off the ground for a reason. The game he invented was to be played under the rim. All these strapping young gentleman jumping twleve feet in the air and treating the hoop as if it was a chin-up bar? That's not basketball, my friends... It's controlled insanity. You know what would have happened if somebody would have dunked on those peach baskets in the early years of the game? Every hoop would have been irreparably damaged and the game would have become extinct during the Great Peach Drought of aught-six. And puppies would have died by the dozen.
To be honest, I really don't care if America ever realizes the inherent perfection that is women's college basketball. I sort of like that me and the hundreds of other die-hard fans of the sport have something to call our own. I enjoy stretching out among the countless empty seats whenever I catch a game. There's never a line for the bathroom either. Traffic? It's a breeze. And when I ride home from every game (I catch about 70 per year), a contented smile plastered on my face, I know that the $35 I just spent was well worth it. For I have seen the best that the basketball world has to offer.

OSU Gets Bailed Out More Than The Cincinnati Bengals' Roster

Yes, Georgetown needed to take advantage of Greg Oden playing only three minutes in the first half. And, yes, Jeff Green was miserable. But neither of these points change the fact that this was a charge and should have been Oden's fourth foul. Instead, Oden shot free throws and any momentum Georgetown had was lost. The Hoyas played one of their worst games of the season tonight. Yet if this call had gone their way, they might have had a shot at playing for the National Championship.