free ricky williams!!!

if you only watched nfl live (which seems to be on everytime i turn on espn during the day) you'd think marijuana is worse than heroine, maybe even worse than murder. in other words, nfl live's take on marijuana use is more hardlined than those goverment sponsored anti-drug commercials that try and link marijuana use to terrorism (which is so stupid; i mean the pot i buy is grown right here in utah).

ricky williams is this guy knows what i'm talking about's favorite football player. there's not even a close second. (mike vick may have constituted a distant second if it wasn't for him spreading sti's--you might be mike vick, but use a condom for god's sake.) so when ricky williams fails another drug test which results in a year long suspension we get sad, but for more reasons than you think. we get sad not only because he won't be playing all year (will football even be worth paying attention to?) but also because espn will have months of unfunny, unoriginal, and unfair jokes about ricky williams' personal life. sean salisbury is the worst. he seems to hate ricky williams with such a passion. probably because ricky williams is a good football player while sean was a career backup. really sean can't imagine someone loving something else more than football (except for maybe a great hand-job). this is funny because normal people (and normal football players) care about a lot of things more than football (and not just hand-jobs). sean usually prefaces his comments by saying that playing football is a privilege. privilege? it's not like you accidently end up in the nfl--you get drafted because of all the hard work you put in. this would be a privilege: giving sean salisbury a hand-job while he breaks down fantasy football.

aaron has already shown that ricky's recent failed drug test is due to his holistic training (in other words, it's bullshit that he got suspended), but i want to take this one step further and defend ricky's pot-smoking past.

who cares if ricky williams smokes pot? it seems like a safe and effective way to deal with his anxiety and his chronic pain (caused by football). why is smoking pot worthy of suspension, but domestic abuse is no big deal? in the nfl, you can get drunk and slap around your wife/girlfriend and still be a model player, but smoking pot exhibits a weak character. smoking pot is a victimless crime (unless you drive while you're stoned).

finally, this failed drug test is bullshit. it's obvious the nfl can't handle ricky williams beard.

related: jamal lewis was set up by the heat and chris anderson should be reinstated into the nba.

badminton got me an 'A'

Ever since I was badminton champion of my high school (fine, of my jr. year Fit For Life class), I've become a connossieur of the sport (when I say connossieur, I mean I just looked up a bunch of stuff about 10 minutes ago). Badminton is one of the greater sports because it's origins date back at least 2000 years. What other sport has ancestors with names like "Battledore" and my personal favorite "Shuttlecock"?

When first researching the sport, I came to the conclusion that Badminton must be a game at which women are more competent. From 1949 to 1967 the US won 23 World Individual Championships--12 of those being women's singles and 8 women's doubles. But with further reading, I became aware that it wasn't a women's sport at all--it's an Asian's sport. In 1992 when Badminton made it's full-medal debut at the Barcelona Olympics, all of the top honors went to Asian countries. This may explain how I became Badminton Champion of my Junior year Fit For Life class (my partner was Phillipino). Either way, I got an A. Here are a few other things I learned about Badminton:

1. Badminton became more popular in the 1930s when several Hollywood personalities including James Cagney, Bette Davis, Boris Karloff, Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, Joan Crawford, and Douglas Fairbanks became avid players (Boris Karloff somehow makes the sport totally legit for me).

Tangent--Reasons I like Boris Karloff:

1. He was Frankenstein
2. He's pretty much something creepy in everything he's done
3. He was in a movie called "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini"

2. The only place listed to play Badminton in Utah is at the University of Utah.
3. Raju Rai has been athlete of the year for three years running. Hopefully he/she can make it four.

what team(s) should i root for: episode ii

in the next few episodes of what team(s) should i root for, i intend to explore some of the lesser known (and lesser used) reasons for picking favorite sports teams. these episodes will be less focused and more exploratory than episode i. while episode i provided justification for liking teams for average sports fans, these next few episodes will focus on justifications for for the writers and readers of this guy knows what i'm talking about, in other words, (non)sports fans.

a couple notes before i get started: (1) i will be looking at team identities (team names, team colors, team histories) as reasons for loving (and hating) specific teams; (2) i will limit my discussion to professional sports teams simply because there are too many college teams to consider, however, the same general ideas expressed in these episodes can be exported to picking favorite college teams; (3) i'm looking specifically at the professional sports teams of the nba, nfl and mlb because i don't care for hockey and soccer team names exist in such a different category (soccer clubs often don't have nicknames and the color of their jersey's aren't limited by arbitrary team colors--in short, soccer clubs are so much cooler that you can justify loving nearly any soccer club based on their team name and uniforms).

so, what makes a good team nickname? it seems that when teams choose nicknames, they often look for tough sounding nicknames like scary animals. while this is bad in and of itself, it's worse when teams use a tough sounding nickname that also is an aliteration of the team's city name (like the jacksonville jaguars or the tennessee titans). however, there are a couple of aliterated team names that i like: the philadelphia phillies and the buffalo bills. the phillies because what is a phillie (or is it a philly)? without doing any research (i have my research assistants working on future stories) i'd guess that you get the name phillie from philadelphia. while i think that's a pretty good name, the buffalo bills are even better because the name has nothing to do with the city of buffalo (or even with buffalos despite the fact that a buffalo is on their helmets); it's just a reference to buffalo bill. maybe that guy is from buffalo (if he even existed), but i doubt it. so the name is primarily a joke. a joke name totally undermines the tough name syndrome. a professional franchise with a joke name: what could be funnier?

both of those team names are good because they relied on nonsensical nicknames. other teams that probably fall into this category would include (again based on no research) the cleveland browns (who also go as far as to have no mascot or even identifying marker [unless orange is an identifying marker]), the brooklyn/los angeles dodgers and the texas rangers (who have the added bonus of being linked to chuck norris through walker, texas ranger).

this story is based on true events

i saw carlos boozer shopping at the smith's in the avenues. he shopped alone (no entourage?) covering most of his face with the hood of his sweatshirt. to hide his identity, but it's difficult if not impossible for an african-american who is nearly seven feet tall to blend in at the smith's in the avenues. (maybe if he wore a patagonia jacket--wait, that would only work at wild oats.) he gave me a brief head-nod followed by a "hey," probably because i was staring. realizing that i'd never have another chance at this, i talked to him.

"mr. boozer?"
"yeah?"
"is it true that you know prince?"
"yeah."
"do you think you could get him to sign this for me?" i pulled my copy of Prince's self-titled record out of my shopping cart.
"no."

the true events the story is based on:
(1) my friend andy did see a jazz player at the same smith's. the jazz player was memo okur, but he did have his hood pulled over his head. and okur did say hey to him.
(2) carlos boozer really does know prince. prince recently stayed at one of boozer's homes.
(3) gavin really does have the self-titled prince lp.

what team(s) should i root for: episode i

this is the first post, in a series of posts, that will explore the methods used by a sports fan for establishing what team(s) she roots for and which team(s) she roots against. in doing so, i am hoping that the this guy knows what i'm talking about family (which includes, but is not limited to the writers and readers of this blog) will be self-aware and self-critical of the reasons they choose to root for the teams that they do. in this first installment, i will be looking at the most obvious reasons a sports fan would use for picking her favorite team(s).

geography
most sports fans root for teams near them. this makes sense for a number of reasons: pride in one's city, developing a common language among neighbors and co-workers, access to infomation about the teams (both in temrs of media coverage as well as having the option of physically attending games) and family tradition, to name a few. this seems an appropriate reason for rooting for a specific team. there are, however, a couple of possible problems with rooting for the home team. when tied up in the minute issues of the home team, you may miss exciting players and/or trends in other cities. also, with most of your neighbors and co-workers rooting for the same team, it's easy to slip into a group think mentality that may impact your ability to view the home team, as well as other teams, objectively.

players
aaron's piece gives some guidelines for choosing favorite players. once you've chosen your favorite players, it's only natural to cheer for the teams those players play for. this way of choosing your favorite teams seems pretty solid. actually, it's only as solid as your reasons for liking the players that you like.

nostalgia
many sports fans choose teams to like when they're young and then just stick with it. for instance, the first football game i ever remember watching was the super bowl where chicago beat new england. after that, my favorite football team was the bears. today, i still find myself rooting for the bears for no other reason than because i liked them as a kid. well, that and because their color scheme is pretty cool. but since i've been able to identify my nostalgia as the source of my like, i've been able to reevaluate the bears. now i like them because of their color scheme.

bandwagoning
many sports fans use their sports teams as supplements to their fragile egos. in these cases, they tend to choose teams who do reasonably well year after year so they can identify with their teams winning ways. i used to live with a kid like this. his favorite team was the 49ers back when the 49ers were good. each week he'd talk about how awesome he was because the team he rooted for, the 49ers, continued to win, while the bears, my favorite team at the time, contiued to lose. this was proof that he was a better human being than i was. and while he was probably correct about being a better human being, it wasn't because he liked the 49ers.

tattoos...advertising, or just lame pictures in ink?

We've heard (on here) the discussion about the endless merging of sports and advertising--how the super bowl is no longer about football, but about commercials, and how the NBA views success as marketability rather than how good the athletics actually are. Well, now it's being taken a step further. A few years ago, I read (or heard) something online (or somewhere) an interview with Dakkan Abbe, president of Fifty Rubies Marketing in New York. He/she had come up with the idea of using basketball players as human billboards, by placing temporary tattoos on their arms. Is it possible that this has already started? I submit that it has. I think a large number of NBA players have already started tattooing themselves as another way to earn the almighty sponsor's dollar. I have included 5 examples as concrete evidence that should substantiate my argument.


A lot of people assume this is the Kenyon Martin's kid. Well, it's not. It's the Gerber baby. Not the food baby. It's for another Gerber line--Gerber Childrenswear, Inc. Notice the hat.


This tattoo on Rasheed Wallace is an ad for the King Tut Exhibit. This is a good sponsor to be aligned with. The exhibit has been around for years (centuries), and travels all over the world. Currently it's showing in Florida, but will be in LA next month.


This skull tattoo of Allen Iverson's is the new logo for the U.S. Army. In an effort not to look like total pussies next to the Marines, they've come up with this new skull logo to look a little more baddass.


You may have seen Mike Bibby's tattoos and thought he'd joined the Church, but you'd be wrong. He's actually just the new spokesperson for Deseret Book, who is trying to branch out to a broader market.


This last tat is an advertisement for the muchly anticipated movie Snakes On A Plane starring Samuel L. Jackson, to be released this fall. Initially destined to become a B-movie flop, the film has gained unprecedented internet buzz, which this player (who i don't know) obviously bought into. Hopefully the buzz will carry the sales of movie paraphernalia before the movie actually comes out (and totally sucks), so this guy's advertising doesn't go to waste.

I thought it was bad that I couldn't look at any inch of an NBA arena without seeing ads, but now I can't even look at the players without being told what to watch/do/eat/buy/listen to/etc. I blame ESPN.

Baseball Cards Are Worth More Than You Think

I decided to do some investigative reporting on baseball cards. Why do I get the feeling baseball cards are the only reason baseball became a National treasure. EBay, April 6, 2006. I searched ‘baseball card’ I changed the price to list the highest amount first and on top with 31 bids “1914 Cracker Jack CHRISTY MATHEWSON #88” at Thirty-One Thousand Dollars. I, as a young lad, was a brainwashed child with high hopes of hitting the big money with a rare find baseball card. I wasted hundreds of my hard earned paper route money to buy one pack after another for what? I was born in 1979 and started collecting cards when I was 9, making it 1988, the highest bid on EBay ‘baseball card 1988’ is $51, with One bid. So you can see my disappointment since all my cards can’t be worth $51 a piece. Baseball ripped me off. I strongly believe that baseball cards sold that sport. Think about it, back before they televised games people were buying/trading/selling cards. You could even go as far to say that George Lucas is not a genius, he just stole his merchandising ideas for Star Wars from baseball. Baseball is only popular because of merchandising. Baseball is stupid. Baseball is dumb. Baseball is not fun.

sports-typed things happen nearly everyday

early on when aaron and i were brainstorming our ideas for our sports-zine, we realized that there was no way our zine could stay current. thanks to espn (specifically espnews) the sports-news-cycle only lasts about 12 hours. it would have taken me 12 hours just to locate a photo-copier. upon further review, the 12 hour cycle seems a bit long. in fact, i don't even know how to calculate an average sports story cycle since espn usually only likes to build towards events rather than cover events. so the only way our zine could have stayed somewhat current would have been to either write about timeless sports subjects (in other words, we would make lists of our favorite sports-typed things--team names, team color schemes and haircuts) or write about sports-typed things that will have lasting power (like steriods [i hope somebody got that joke]). with this blog, we can now post stories sports-typed things that actually seem current. this way we can actually take on espn and dan patrick and jim rome and all the shitty local sports talk-shows. (to be fair, the local shows are no more shittier than their national counter-parts; they are, however, derivative of them.)

but now we at this guy knows what i'm talking about have to ask ourselves, do we really want to?

of course the nba dress code is racist

it's hard to talk with people about sports when you think espn is bullshit.

i went to this new year's eve party where i knew less than 20% of the people present. since i get anxiety in social situations like these, i usually try too hard to impress people by being funny. unfortunately, i'm not that funny. since it was new year's eve, my brother and i repeatedly made jokes about calling the new year 2k6--in conversations, when dating checks, and so on. this spurred an argument about whether to use 2k6 or, as the espn videogamers do, 2k06. i argued that 2k6 should be the standard: if k means 1000, adding 06 rather than 6 seems redundant. plus, i added, you shouldn't cite espn as an authority on anything since espn is ruining sports. to my surprise, nearly everyone involved in the conversation thought espn was not only the best sports-themed television network (emphasis on themed), but possibly the best thing on television. please. c-span is the best thing on television followed distantly by mythbusters and iron chef (japan). espn is worse that mtv; it's worse than foxnews (however, their politics are eerily similar).

i thought espn's problems--further merging sports and advertising, consistently undermining player's unions, promoting superstar mentality and idiolization at the expense of the concept of team and a bias towards large sports markets--were obvious. the people at the party wanted proof.

me: here's how you know espn is bullshit: not a single commentator acknowledged that the nba dress code is racist.

everyone else at the party: it's not racist or you're/that's stupid.

i'm used to people critizing my intelligence, and usually with good cause; however, in this instance, i didn't feel that my inability to process rational thought hindered my point. so i proceeded to make my case.

the nba is becoming less and less a basketball game and more and more an extended commercial. what the nba deems successful isn't athletics and competition but marketability. athletics and competition are being narrowly redefined in terms of marketability. the nba succeeds not if it provides the best basketball on the planet, but if it continues to gain investors and advertisers. if the nba is primarily a product, image is everything.

with the continued popularity decline of the nba (which means, more importantly, a decrease in marketability) david stern realizes something must be done. stern looks over the nba product and places the blame squarely on the hip-hopification of the league. many people, especially those people responsible for investing in the nba, associate hip-hop styled dress with thugs and crime even though no such link exists. stern realizes that if he wants to increase the marketability of the nba he needs to tone down the hip-hop image. (it's much simpler and more profitable than changing cultural attitudes about race.)

so now there's an nba dress code.

looking closely (or at all) at the dress code reveals that it targets a specific look. i mean, if you just had people wearing t-shirts and jeans (like greg ostertag), you wouldn't have a dress code. the hip-hop look many nba players employed, generally characterized, consisted of a doo-rag with a crooked baseball cap, a large chain, a throwback jersey, baggy jeans and timberlands; the dress code bans headgear (doo-rags/baseball caps), necklaces (chains), non-collared shirts (throwback jerseys), jeans (baggy jeans) and workboots (timberlands). how is this not racially motivated?

i guess if you're going to have young black men making millions of dollars, they better look like they're making millions of dollars. (in other words, they better dress like white millionaires.)