Fair and Unfair

Unfair first: Kenton Keith has had almost all charges against him dropped. He now faces one count of misdemeanor criminal trespassing for not leaving the premises when asked. He is pleading not guilty. Still, it was nice of IPD and the Marion County prosecutor to make sure that he got written up in the paper of being guilty of a litany of other small time nonsense. Just one more bit of evidence to show how awesome it is to be young and black in Naptown. If he gets off on this charge, I doubt they’ll be any big headlines proclaiming it.

Now onto the fair: the Reds fired GM Wayne Krivsky. Krivsky’s job was in jeopardy from the minute Walt Jocketty came to town. Let’s be 100% honest; Jocketty is a top flight GM, and the team is in better hands. If I had to guess, I’d say the match that lit the fuse was today’s roster move. David Ross comes off the DL, and the Reds have to cut someone with a guaranteed contract. The candidates are Corey Patterson and Scott Hatteberg. I’d say that Krivsky’s firing means that Hatteberg is out. He had a very strong year last year, and that earned him a new contract. The problem is that you can’t give a contract to a left-handed hitting firstbaseman when your #1 prospect (Joey Votto who is tearing up the league) is also a left-handed hitting firstbaseman. The team also screwed up giving Patterson $3 million this year when he was sitting at home on his butt at the start of spring training. With any luck he’ll be right back there.

Update: The Reds basically tabled the decision by dumping Norris Hopper onto the DL. That buys them two more weeks to deal Hatteberg.

Media reports will mention the ill-fated Nats trade of two summers ago. That is utter nonsense. That trade was great for the Reds as they dumped two useless, expensive players for some banged up bullpen arms. I’ve already written about that deal ad nausem, so I won’t rehash it now. Krivsky didn’t do everything right, but the team is WAAAAY better now than it was when he took over. The farm system actually has players in it. The roster has talent. The team has young pitching. I think the team will do better under Jocketty, but I’d give ol‘ Wayne a solid B for his tenure with the club, and I wish him the best of luck.

And finally in the “about freaking time” category comes this news. Great, so now we still have to wait another 2 weeks to find out what Walsh has on the Pats. I hope it’s good.

Demond Sanders: I think it is bizarre that you feel sorry for a guy that was out very late, drunk in public, and helping an underage girl get into a nightclub. Just a bad decision. Cloud 9 is the same nightclub that Jamal Tinsley was partying at when he was trailed home and fired upon some months ago. The cops are no doubt under pressure to keep the club secure and the parking lot empty after hours. Having charges dropped isn’t the same thing as being innocent. None of the charges are a huge deal and I wish Keith all the best. I don’t think it is fair to imply that IPD officers are a bunch of racists because from the looks of it they did their job correctly.

Those Stripes Soaked CleanThrough to the Brain

Apparently the Bengals have lost their minds. After the ‘Skins offered 1st and 3rd (which could become a first) for Chad Johnson, the Bengals said…

NO.

Listen, that’s a serious offer. Marshal Faulk only scored a second round pick. Right now at that price, I would potentially trade every player on the Colts roster for that with the following exceptions:
Manning, (duh)
Wayne,
Ugoh, (they basically paid a first and a second for him)
Sanders (duh)

You could argue that Chad Johnson is as good as Reggie Wayne (you’d be seriously mistaken, but you could say that), but when you throw in the fact that: 1. he doesn’t want to be in Cincy 2. he’s a head case and 3. you’d be trading him out of your conference, it seems like a obvious move. I think this team just got offered a motherload to take a headache off their hands and now they want to be too proud/macho to take it.

Baaad move, Bengals.

K2 in minor incident

I normally wouldn’t give any room to this kind of a story because there is really nothing to it, but with the draft coming up it might have an impact.

Kenton “hands of stone” Keith was picked up outside a nightclub last night apparently for ‘general assery‘. Given the fact that the report seems pretty minor and the whole issue of police/black man interaction isn’t exactly rosy, I think it’s hard to really kill the guy for this.

That being said, the Colts hate this kind of press, and there was already a lot of speculation about the Colts possibly taking a backup RB early. Let’s just say that Kenton didn’t do himself any favors in the job security department with this stunt.

By the way, if you want to read some good thoughts on the Colts draft possibilities, check out Shakenbake’s blog… We just don’t hit the draft hard because I’m not into it.

Calls at Midnight and other stuff I’m thinking about…

Waking each other up in the middle of the night has been something of a tradition with Demond and I since we were kids. He fell asleep as we waited for the Batman Movie (yes, the Adam West one) to start on the 11:30 late show. I woke him up for key at bats of the 1992 World Series. I called him to make sure he was up to see Robert Vaden drill a game winner in the tourney. Last night he called my house long after I was in bed to make sure I knew that Danica Patrick won her race.
We really love IRL.

As the Reds slide continues, I take solace in the continued strong pitching of Johnny Franchise and the bat of Joey Votto. Good times are coming, but they aren’t here yet. They traded their most reliable bat (Josh “Hambone” Hamilton) in the offseason, and the offense is suffering for it. As I say here often: this team can’t hit.

Kravitz’s entry today was really weak. It’s not just that it’s stupid; it’s also mean and wrong. He talks about ‘a public backlash’ if Crean reinstates Bassett and Ellis. Um, I’m not feeling that there, Bobby. I think everyone knows that Dakich is a hothead screw up, and mostly people couldn’t figure out why they were ever let go in the first place. He claims that Crean should have supported the decision to cut the players. WHY? Did they behave badly? Maybe, but then it’s hard to blame them for being a tad bitter at a school and an administration that ignored the players please to give the head job to a highly qualified black man, and instead gave it to an incompetent white guy with connections. Oh, yeah they disrespected the school. Please. If they want back in and can get their grades up, let them come back.

He also cuts loose on a really tasteless ‘guilt by association’ rant about Bennie Seltzer (one of Crean’s assistant coaches who was on Sampson’s coaching staff at Oklahoma that made more calls than a 14 year old girl). This story was talked about a couple of weeks ago. The guy is clean , as Kravitz admits. Let it go, Bobby. You’re grasping at straws.

God help me, but I love Manu Ginobili. He’s Argentastic!

Finally, congrats to the Little Brother. Let’s all raise a glass of good wishes to the man who made this offseason so strangely enjoyable. Enjoy the honeymoon there kid. Get to work on the next generation of NFL dominance.

Danica Patrick wins at Twin Ring Motegi

See I do a post about the IRL and look what happens later that day? Danica Patrick became the first woman to win an Indy Car race tonight by passing Helio Castronoves with two laps remaining in the Firestone Indy 300 in Motegi, Japan. This is a huge moment for the Indy Car series. 19 year-old phenom Graham Rahal gets his first career win last week in St. Petersburg and the newly unified series follows it up with perhaps its finest post-split moment. Will this attract more sponsors and media coverage for the IRL ? I don’t know, but Tony George seemed more than a little excited as he rushed to congratulate Patrick on her historic win.

Ten reasons to watch the unified IRL

The Indy Racing League has finally merged with ChampCar. It’s time to start rebuilding open wheel racing in America. Here are my current top ten reasons you should watch a race:

10. The races are shorter than most sporting events including NASCAR races, usually clocking in at under two hours.

9. The cars are (much) faster.

8. They named an entire sports league after the city of Indianapolis.

7. Unlike the IHSAA, the IRL appears to be dedicated to rebuilding its storied past.

6. They race at places with cool names like Twin Ring Montegi, Long Beach, and Surfer’s Paradise. Sounds like a Mario Kart circuit.

5. The sport gets precious little media coverage, but its few writers are snarky loners who hate NASCAR.

4. The league isn’t sponsored by a souless wireless carrier with unbelievably poor customer service (yet).

3. They have two and sometimes three generations of Foyts, Rahals and Andrettis involved in the sport.

2. They have teams co-owned by both Paul Newman (badass), David Letterman (badass) and Patrick Dempsey (non-badass).

1. Sometimes Mario still hops in a car and insane things happen.

Even I have my limits

My tolerance for sports commentary is not infinite. Sure, I’ll randomly leave on ESPN radio in the background for hours or even check out First Take at lunch, but there are just some guys that make me turn of the dial. I’m not talking about guys who are just stupid. Stupid commentary generally makes me mad and/or drives me to post something about how stupid they were here. No, I’m talking about guys who manage to be so utterly retarded/crass/useless that I can no longer stand to hear their voice, even if they are talking about the Colts. These are the five guys who can make me flip off faster than anyone else:

1. Skip Bayless (ESPN First Take, ESPN2) – He is far and away the most useless waste of space on TV. He adds nothing to the mix except being an ahole. He picks extreme opinions (I don’t know if Tiger Woods is really that great because there are no other great golfers today), presents them with little to no evidence (my sources tell me that Kelvin Sampson cheated to get Eric Gordon), acts condescending, and refuses to admit when he’s wrong (after the Super Bowl he STILL was killing Tom Coughlin for playing his starters the whole game against the Pats to end the season). He’s not just wrong. He’s not just an ahole. He’s not just shrill. He’s all them. All at once. All the time.
Time it takes before I turn him off: <1 minute

2. Jay Mariotti (Chicago Sun Times, Around the Horn) – Long considered one of the single laziest major columnists in America, Mariotti has made a career out of being shrill and unfair. Marriotti’s mugging for the camera and ridiculous opinions are the chief reason I can’t watch Around the Horn. I’ll turn it on for a minute watch the first three guys, and think, “eh, not awful.” Then Mariotti will have segment and I’ll cringe. Generally, by the second time through, I turn him off. He’s uninformed, self-promoting, and generally wrong; but it’s the twinge of cruelty that he has that really repulses me. Ozzie was right about him.
Time it takes before I turn him off: <4 minutes

3. Eddie White (Kravitz and Eddie, 1070 the Fan) – Who is this clown and how did he get a radio show? He may be the single biggest waste of airspace in the midwest. The only reason he is lower on this list than Mariotti is that he’s always talking about Indy sports, so that keeps me hanging on a fraction longer. He is ignorant and very crass (fat jokes about the IU president? really? That’s humor? You want to sleep with Erin Andrews? Why do I care to hear about that?). His only skill is that he is so irredeemably awful that he makes Kravitz bearable (thus keeping him off this list in miraculous fashion). I have nothing good to say about this guy at all. 1070 goes to sports and this is what they give us? Horrible.
Time it takes before I turn him off: <5 minutes

4. Jim Rome (Jim Rome Show, Rome is Burning) – Rome held the top spot down for a long time, but isn’t nearly as horrible as he used to be. Now mostly it’s his callers that make me turn him off. Rome is still hard for me to listen to, but I freely admit that he’s often funny and entertaining as well. At his worst, he’s like fingernails on the chalkboard. He’s hard to listen to, but is clearly way more talented than the rest of this list.
Time it takes before I turn him off: <15 minutes

5. Colin Cowherd (The Herd ESPN Radio) – I dug Colin at first; I think most people did. He wasn’t amazing like TK was, but he was ok. Then he ran out of stuff to talk about it. Cowherd’s biggest problem is that he doesn’t really like sports. He loves gambling and radio. Not sports. The one sport he really digs is college football, which I don’t like. He also gets off on ‘life commentary’ which is usually boring and ignorant. He’s over the top and generally clueless. He also spends waaaay too much time ripping on ‘sports nerds’ who ‘use statistics’ and can ‘prove things’ and have ‘coherent arguments’. He does have good guests, so I’ll usually turn him off for five minutes at a time, and then turn him back up when he’s done being a moron.
Time it takes before I turn him off: <20 minutes

Special Lifetime Achievement Award:
Mark Patrick (1260 drive time several years ago) I don’t know where he is now, and I don’t care. I’ve never heard a sports guy I hated worse. His show was so crude and pointless that I actually wrote the station to complain (it was all the ‘hanging out by White River’ jokes). He wasn’t funny, smart, or interesting. I literally would get spasms just passing his show on the dial. The all time, hands down, worst host ever.

Demond Sanders: Great list. You nailed 1, 2, and 3. Eddie White, you are not good at your job. The annoying thing is that Kravitz is clearly uncomfortable on the radio and uses White as a crutch, forcing him to carry the show at times. Hopefully over time Kravitz will realize that he’s far more talented and White needs to take a minimal role as the show’s MC. Wow, did I just type that sentence?

Cowherd is an interesting host. He insists that ESPN hired him because he is able to entertain and pander to the non-sports fan. Gee, thanks ESPN. His argument is that hard-core sports fans will listen either way, so it is his responsibility to the advertisers to bring in listeners who would rather listen to a rant about how Whole Foods is amazing or how everyone should leave the midwest and move to the southwest. He bashes on sports talk shows that “breakdown the games” and “crunch numbers.” In other words everything he says is based on anecdotal evidence that he quickly threw together in the pre-show meeting.

Jim Rome is not as nearly as obnoxious as Cowherd. I would argue against his inclusion on this list. He seems to understand and actually like sports. His interviews are solid. His listeners, the clones, are huge tools, but he mocks them liberally so their impact is for the most part neutralized. I think we all still kind of hate him for his famous run-in with Jim “Chris” Everett, but the truth is Everett was forewarned that Rome would be calling him Chris to his face and agreed to do the spot.

I’m not sure if color commentators qualify for this list, but I’ll throw out Dick Vitale and Ron Santo for starters.

For Demond

[myheavy=embedID=3bff5d177ff85524f625ddc7cd3324d5&videoID=&autoPlay=]

More videos from the “ryanparkersongs’s channel” channel at Heavy.com

It’s like Ryan Parker knows him or something.

I’m practically giddy

over this announcement coming out of Los Angeles. There are only two teams that could possibly move. One is the Saints. The other?

Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m proud to introduce….

YOUR

LOS

ANGELES

JAAAAAAAGUUUUUUUARRRRRS!

It’ll be great! Instead of a bunch of transplants in Florida who don’t care about the Jags, they’ll have a bunch of transplants in California who don’t care about the Jags.

Better start house hunting, Vic.

Links:
Check out this interesting piece on mock drafts. It’s awesome to find out just how clutch the Freeney pick was.

Demond Sanders: It is amazing that in a league of 32 teams only 2 or possibly 3 teams (Buffalo is rumored to be considering a move to Toronto) could realistically move. Shows you how strong the NFL is as a league. I would be shocked if the Saints moved at this point. So yeah. . . it’s gonna happen.

Deshawn Returns to Action by Discussing a Day-old Story

In case you all thought I was just wallowing in the misery of the Reds ‘ace’ giving up 5 runs and losing a ‘stopper’ game to a hack like Ryan Dempster, the truth is that I’ve been sick for a couple of days. Because of that, I was utterly incapable of commenting on the release of the 2008 schedule. As a couple of astute readers already pointed out, the ebbs and flows of the league from year to year ensure that few stats are as meaningless as ‘preseason’ strength of schedule. This link from ESPN shows just how irrelevant the hand wringing is. The Horse has a brutal run on paper again this year, but some of those teams they play will regress. There are a couple of rules that serve to help us understand just about every Colts’ season:

1. They will win at least 12 games
2. They will win the AFC South
3. They will go at least 7-1 at home (unless they have have another give up game)
4. They will win their first 6-8 games in a row.
5. All predictions are based on Freeney and Harrison being healthy.

Keeping these rules in mind is critical for spotting the potential pitfalls on the way.

Here’s a game by game look at what 2008 will likely bring:

Week 1: Bears – Win (by a lot)
The first of several prime time games will invariably feature John Madden commenting that Rex Grossman fumbled because of “freakishly small hands”.

Week 2: @Vikings – Win
Run D isn’t the problem for the Colts that it used to be, and I trust Tavaris Jackson about as far as he can throw himself. That’s an unnecessarily awkward way of saying, “He sucks, we win by 2 TDs.“

Week 3: Jholes – Win
No team did less to help itself fix what was really broken than the Jags. Their defense was not good last year, and they did nothing but lose players. Their wide receiver additions are hilarious. They are heading back to 8-8, 9-7 territory

Week 4: @Texans – Win
This might be a tougher game than in years past (though they usually put up a fight at home), but I like the Colts coming off the bye week.

Week 5: Baltimore – Win
Remember when this was a scary game?

Week 6: @Packers – Win
This is one of those classic ‘looks tough on paper until you remember that Brett Favre just retired’ games. It seems there’s one every year.

Week 7: @Titans – Win
As we’ve repeatedly shown, the Titans win in spite of VY. Unless he gets hurt before this game, they are going down at home on Monday night.

Week 8: Patriots – Win
I must admit that I hate playing them on a short week, but I think that a healthy Colts team is better than a healthy Pats team, so I’m picking them here.

Week 9: @Steelers – Loss
I don’t think the Steelers are that good, but this game has bad weather/bad field written all over it. The ’72 Dolphins rest easy.

Week 10: Texans – Win
No way the Texans win at Indy. Never happened, never will as long as #18 is upright.

Week 11: @Chargers – Win
Listen, I don’t get the ‘Phil Rivers has arrived’ talk. He played a courageous game against NE in the playoffs…but he also sucked. He left the game at RCA with his team trailing. It was Billy Volek who won that game. So what has Phil Rivers done? He beat a mediocre Titans club and sucked at NE. . . oooh scary. I also scoff at the whole ‘Chargers have the Colts number thing’. They won a game so long ago, that SD doesn’t even have the same coach/QB anymore and two of the weirdest games ever last year. This team doesn’t scare me at all.

Week 12- @Browns – Win
Perhaps no team will be as hilariously disappointing as Cleveland next year. All you had to do was watch them last year to see that they were frauds. Romeo Crenell got one of the least deserved and most franchise crushing contract extensions in history. This club will be in the crapper for about 3 more years.

Week 13- Bengals – Win
This team has fallen hard and fast.

Week 14- Lions – Win
Hee Hee.

Week 15- @Jholeville – Loss
I don’t like the set up here. The Jags will be needing this to stay alive in the wild card hunt, and are playing at home on a short week. The Colts should have most everything sown up by this point, so this one smells.

Week 16 – Titans-???
So here’s the magic question again: to rest or not to rest? The Colts and Bucs (two teams that rested starters last year) lost their first playoff games, thus renewing the moronic call to play every game all the way through. Everyone forgets that both teams came out blazingly fast in those games. I’m a believer that it doesn’t much matter. In the new NFL, home playoff games are increasingly unimportant in terms of knowing who will win. If I had to guess, I’d say the Colts sit everyone down again, as the Titans eek out a narrow win that eliminates the Jags from playoff contention.

Final record 13-3.

I know. They went 13-3 last year too, so it seems like chalk. That’s the thing about the Colts under Dungy. They are going to win between 12 and 14 games, so 13 seems like as good a number as any. Worst case, they go 11-5. Best case, they run the table (although ask a Pats player if they really think that is a ‘best case’ scenario anymore!)

Here’s a list of (mostly) schedule related reading:
John Clayton talks about how tough the AFC North has it. I’m telling you, it’s going to be a looong season in Cleveland.

DJ Gallo picks the top 40 games of the year. Number XI is priceless. He seems to think that Pats game is a big deal. Wonder why?

Don Banks (like everyone else) likes the Colts Pats the best, and also tries to drum up a non-existent controversy about the Colts-Browns.

FO looks back at the ’02 draft. We did pretty well in that one.

Does this story scare anyone else? Other than maybe Mark Cuban when has the phrase “hands on owner” ever been a good thing?

Here’s an old article that just came to me. Check out the photos too. It makes me feel sick to see the old park that way. I’ll never forget seeing Billy Moore get the championship winning hit in ’86 or Razor Shines play his last game. My favorite Bush memory is watching an exhibition game with the Reds. Deion Sanders led off with a walk, stole second and third and scored on a wild pitch. He was the fastest man I’ve ever seen. His acceleration was freakish. He was also much larger than I would have guessed. Thanks Chad, for the links (and for going to a lot of those games with me!).

Demond Sanders: I mostly agree with your picks and reasoning. Obviously it is a little dangerous making picks when we don’t yet know whether two of Indy’s highly compensated super stars will even take the field at 100% in 2008. However, I agree that we have to approach the season as if Harrison and Freeney will be back to normal. If that pair plays the entire season I think the Colts will finish 15-1 or 14-2. They’ll fire bomb the Patriots at home if they have everyone at their disposal. I’d figure them to lose to the Steelers and maybe the Jags. I think they’ll win XLIII next February.

Remember logic would dictate that this team should be much improved from 2007. They won’t have as many injuries. Key players at OT, WR, CB, LB, and DT will have much more experience. If Polian can solve some minor issues at RB and DE depth this will be a team that we talk about for a long, long time. It’s been tossed around many times before, but don’t be surprised if we finally see the the return of Raheem Brock to Defensive End. Also, I’m starting to favor using an early-ish pick on a pass-catching back.