One of my all time favorite pictures...
Because of the Cavs, OSU, and Indians "success" this past year, there are a lot of photos related to our teams in Fox's year in review photos.
http://msn.foxsports.com/other/pgStory?contentId=7590046&MSNHPHCP>1=10734
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Dark Day
Sunday, December 23, 2008 - a dark day for Cleveland sports. By approximately 4:15 P.M. the Browns pissed away a golden (sorry for the pun) opportunity to get into the playoffs via the front door... instead we have to hope and pray for the proverbial back door entry. Derrek Anderson chose the worst possible time to revert back to the second string QB we thought we had during the preseason. Sorry dude... that game is ALL on you. Anderson's had a nice season so I'm not going to pile on. But he has absolutely no touch whatsoever. Anderson may get one of our receivers killed with his high throws and is incredibly bad at timing patterns like quick slants and crossing routes. 13 points from turnovers in 1:30... ouch! I would've taken down 6 at half with the way we played to that point thank you very much. And we dominated the second half to rub salt in our wounds.
Then by 6:45, which was like 5 minutes after tip off, the Cavs were down double digits to the West Coast Golden Sate Warriors. At the 19 point deficit mark, I turned it off. Blown out by the Knicks, beat the Lakers, lose to the Warriors... playing just like the Eastern Conference Champions we all thought they would this year. Honestly right now, you never know what you're going to get from our Cavs. They could lose to ANYBODY.. .including the Knicks, T-Wolves, Grizzlies, Duke, or the U-Conn & Tennessee Women's teams.
Welcome to Cleveland... Welcome to Cleveland Sports Torture.
'Unacceptable'
SamVox sent a few of his fellow bloggers this titular one-word text message about 30 seconds after Derek Anderson’s final wayward throw (he had a few of those today) into the end zone against the Bengals. Another sluggish start against another inferior team cost the Browns a playoff spot for another week and maybe for good and all. (The Titans just beat the terrible New York Jets, 10-6.) Bad Derek plus 130 yards on the ground from Cinci’s backup RB equals a painful loss.
Now it doesn't matter what the Browns do against SF next Sunday. But will the Titans lose to a Colts team that will likely be resting its starters? The Browns did not take care of business with their destiny firmly in their grasp, so now we’re left with another week of questions.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Ranking the Quarterbacks....wait a second....
So while contemplating the Browns actually having a chance to clinch a playoff spot Sunday after I would have bet real serious dollars on them winning three or less games after Week One (heretoafter known as "remember the Frye Guys" week), I stumbled upon Bill Simmons, who took it upon himself to lump each of the NFL Quarterbacks (60 of them have started this season) into groupings:
THE FRANCHISE GUYS (Manning and Brady)
THE LEGEND (Favre)
THE PLAYMAKERS (including Derek Anderson)
THE GAME SUPERVISORS
THE FANTASY GUYS
THE MILD UPSIDERS
FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS
THE ENIGMAS
THE GREAT UNKNOWNS (including Brady Quinn)
JUST COMPETENT ENOUGH TO KILL YOU
POTENTIALLY COMPETENT
TALENTED BY OSMOSIS
FLASHES OF UPSIDE, FLOODS OF DOWNSIDE
THE FORK-IN-THE-BACKERS
THE ONE-WEEK WONDERS
THE NO-WEEK WONDERS (Including Charlie Frye)
THE PROVERBIAL F-MINUS (The one and only David Carr. If only Tim Couch could have made a roster....)
Who would have thought that Derek Anderson, yes, the quarterback who couldn't beat out Charlie Frye in the preseason, would be lumped in with Tony Romo. Wow.
Plus I like that commercial for Subway where Brady Quinn is passing out Subway and the announcer voiceovers "will deliver (Subway) on Sundays" and Brady says "Wait, I'm busy on Sundays." Does everyone just say..."well, not so much, Brady"?
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Shame, shame!
I always knew one of the oversized Cleveland Indians would be implicated in this steroid scandal.
Shame, Tim Laker, Shame!
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Mitchell Report
With the Mitchel Report for steroids coming out tomorrow afternoon which is said to expose former MVP's and All-Stars that were involved, I thought it would be a good idea to get some discussion about it. My question for everyone is how many of the former 1990's Indians will we see on the list. I would guess that Albert Belle will probably be on there and I wouldn't be shocked to see a couple of other players from our team to make the list (Juan gone) Will this impact on how you look back at possibly the best teams of our lifetime so far? Kind of like all of our opinions have/haven't changed looking back at the summer of Sosa and McGuire. It should be an interesting day to see how good the PR people for baseball are because I'm sure they turned a blind eye.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Sorry Hadman and Pucky...
...but AT THE END OF THE DAY, today's game was a MUST-WIN for the Browns. They had to find a way to win after last week's poor showing against Arizona...not only for the playoff race but for the psychology of this young team. They have not lost two in a row all year...losing against another inferior team would have set them back in the standings and in their minds.
We should be used to this by now, but this was another game that was harder than it should have been. The defense seems to really wear down toward the end of games...it happened again today as QB Clemens started finding holes in the Browns' soft coverage in the 4th quarter. And another running back went for 100 yards. (Can anyone tell me what "Man-genius" was thinking on kicking that field goal on 4th and 10: Your team's 3-9, you already converted one onside kick, what are the odds you're going to convert the next one? Gotta go for it there, dude.)
OK, so we know the defense is bad. You can't shore up all of your deficiencies in one year. Savage has effectively rebuilt the offense--I suppose we have to trust him to rebuild on the other side of the ball as well. Unfortunately, that does not help matters now. I'm just happy the Browns got the win on the road--although was that the most sedate crowd you've ever heard at an NFL game? Granted there were perhaps 5,000 people in the crowd by the 4th quarter. I think our New Jersey correspondent MTP was at the game; maybe he could tell us how it was.
I don't know about you, but I was yelling "Fall down!" at Jamal Lewis on that last touchdown run. The way he got spun around I was fearing a fumble there. Lewis has been very solid for us--just another dimension (along with a real QB and an O-line) the Browns really have not had since they came back.
I'm happy with this win. It wa'nt pretty, but I'll take it. Beat Buffalo and I think you can effectively punch the Browns' ticket into the playoffs.
Bonus football talk:
I made two idiotic picks in our NFL Pick 'Em league this week. I took Pitt. and Balt. to cover, with Pitt. on the road at NE and Baltimore coming off a devastating loss after which they cried like little bitches. NE won by 3 TD and Indy is beating Balt. as of this writing by a count of 44-7. And I still picked 10 correct against the spread this week. Damn!
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
BCS Monkey Poo!
What a numbskull of a system. On ESPN's bowl selection show Sunday, host Rece Davis debriefed a guy named Brad Edwards, whose bio on ESPN.com describes him as a "college football researcher." Davis called him "our BCS guru."
BCS guru? That poor man! What a pathetic thing to be an expert on. It's like being the world's foremost authority on "Charles in Charge."
I used to know every ZIP Code in Oakland, Calif. It was the byproduct of a job I'd had. Tell me an address in Oakland, I could tell you the ZIP Code. I never got it wrong. It was a not-very-impressive parlor trick, occasionally good for 30 seconds of moderate amusement for someone who had moved around a bit in Oaktown, but otherwise useless.
It dwarfed encyclopedic knowledge of the BCS for usefulness and significance.
Well, let's let the guy speak. He has evidently devoted way too much of his life -- anything north of 10 minutes -- to the study of something so asinine it's scarcely worth learning what order the three letters go in. Why let that go to waste?
Davis asked him for his gut feeling on what would happen with the BCS after this absurd year. "Is the formula where they want it or do you expect more changes?"
This is kind of like asking if you expect daylight in future days. Of course the BCS formula is going to change. It changes every three weeks or so, every time someone notices how ridiculously stupid some aspect of it is.
"In reality, this is what the BCS was set up to do," Edwards said. "There's a season when you have a bunch of teams that all have similar records and similar résumés, and the formula was put together in order to take two teams out of that bunch and say, 'These are the best two.' Now, you can debate all day whether it got the right two, but the point of the BCS is to take two out of that group and say, 'These are the two that are going to play.' And they did that."What's funny about that is that you can replace "the BCS" and "the formula" in that paragraph with something like "the system of having monkeys fling their poo at pictures of NCAA logos" without changing the meaning. That system would also be able to identify two teams to play in the Championship Game. And we would be able to debate whether the system got the right two, as if that were some kind of side consideration, beside the real point of the thing.
Shall we try?
In reality, this is what the system of having monkeys fling their poo at pictures of NCAA logos was set up to do. There's a season when you have a bunch of teams that all have similar records and similar résumés, and the monkey-poo-fling system was put together in order to take two teams out of that bunch and say, "These are the best two." Now, you can debate all day whether it got the right two, but the point of the monkeys flinging their poo is to take two out of that group and say, "These are the two that are going to play." And they did that.
Good going, monkeys!
Listen here BOY!
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Monday, December 3, 2007
Three for the Money
All I know about the odds makers is that they're either pretty frickin' unbelievable or the games are fixed.
Yesterday I decided to roll with my hot streak from Pick'em and do some real wagering on Sportsbook.com with S.E.'s premier handicapper VoxLox.
3 team parlay:
San Diego to beat KC straight-up
San Diego/KC and the Over
Browns/'Zona and the Over
$50 bet (from my fantasy winnings Pucky!!! Hint, hint!) wins $199.
San Diego won straight, but with 10 minutes left in the game, EITHER team needed just a FG for the Over... 3 PTS. IN 10 MINUTES! Parlay down the drain barely into the Browns game.
Then, not that it mattered, but if they count Winslow's kid's catch at the end, the Browns/'Zona game covers the Over.
The Overs were PERFECT on both games. AMAZING!
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Winslow's game winning touchdown catch!
Who wants the national title?
...because whomever wants it needs to come through Ohio State now, as two more top two teams fall on the same night, with both Missouri and West Virginia choking.
Ohio State will play for a national title. What are the chances you saw that coming after that Illinois loss? What a season. And what a playoff it would have been.