Week 3: Holy $%#& !!

Wow. This week was nuts.

Three overtime finishes in the early games. A whole lot of comebacks and near-comebacks. The insane debacle that was the Patriots-Ravens game looked like it was going to be the biggest bucket of crazy and absolutely ridiculous we would see.

via Fake ESPN

But then Monday Night Football came, and THIS happened.

Complete insanity.

This should be a fun week to talk about.

Before I get to the post though, I have a question for anyone who reads my blog. I believe that referees should be held as accountable to the media as players are, meaning referees should have to do postgame interviews if it is requested by journalists covering the game. I have felt that way ever since U.S. soccer was screwed during the World Cup. MLB umpire Jim Joyce owned up to his bad call a couple seasons ago when he cost a pitcher a perfect game.

My (hugely hypothetical) question: If the policy was in effect, should these replacement referees be held accountable to the media so they can explain their decisions, even though they are not the actual employed officials? Just wondering.

Anyway, my thoughts on each game after the jump.

Week 3 Picks and Everything that matters (to me) in the NFL

So after a crazy Week 2, due to both results and terrible calls, most of the talk now is about the scab replacement referees. Their inability to control the games and the fact that every player and coach can intimidate them, along with some highly questionable calls, has led to many a fan saying things like "they're going to make the real refs VERY wealthy."

A common opinion is that the performance of the replacement refs plays a big role in the negotiations between the NFL and the referees. After Week 1, the replacements did a sufficient job, leading some to believe the NFL had the advantage. After this past week, the belief is the referees have the upperhand because the league needs them back. If the lack of control in games continues, there will be more fights, more uncalled dirty plays and, potentially, more injuries.

Well my opinion may not be so common. My belief? The NFL does...not...care. The NFL cares about as much when it comes to the replacements' performance as Jay Cutler does about Bears fans. Fans can whine and moan; coaches can complain; players can keep starting fights and calling other players "dirty." As long as ratings stay good (which they have been over the past couple weeks), and the money keeps rolling in (which it will), the NFL will not give ground in their negotiations.

My advice? As long as your team is not affected by the bad calls and none of your fantasy players get hurt, enjoy the replacement refs. They do add some chaos and humor to the games that do not involve your team. Call it optimism, call it being a terrible fan, call it whatever. They're not going anywhere.

Anyway, Week 3 picks, extra points, and belated division/playoff picks after the jump.

Week 2 Reaction ("Where is Week 1?" - no one)

So out of the eight divisions, I managed to preview just one. I also had an idea to post my own "Overreaction Monday" segment after the Week 1 games, but that did not happen either. Hey, you know whose blog this is.

Amen

So basically I'm going to stop promising future posts. For now, let's talk about the quasi-weirdness that was Week 2 in the NFL.

Week 1 Pick 'Em (Probably won't even be close)

NFL Week 1:
Home team in bold

NY Giants over Dallas

Yeah I got that one wrong. Not a good start.

Chicago over Indianapolis

- It's going to be a rough start for the Andrew Luck era having to avoid Julius Peppers in his first regular season game.

Philadelphia over Cleveland
New England over Tennessee
Kansas City over Atlanta

- I think the Chiefs will surprise some people this year. That includes Matt Ryan and the Falcons in Week 1.

Minnesota over Jacksonville

- Wow. This game is going to be terrible. 

New Orleans over Washington

- Poor, poor Robert Griffin III. The Saints felt angry and targeted by Roger Goodell before this game. Now, the suspended players won a major battle with the appeals panel. The Superdome and the Saints are going to be in a frenzy, and RG3 is in the warpath. 

Buffalo over NY Jets

- This joke of a season for the Jets starts with a home-opening loss to the improved Bills. T-minus four weeks before Tebow takes over for Sanchez?

Detroit over St. Louis
Houston over Miami
Green Bay over San Francisco

- In my opinion, this is hands-down the game of the week. The two best teams in the NFC last year (record-wise) face off in the first week? Awesome.

Seattle over Arizona
Carolina over Tampa Bay
Denver over Pittsburgh

- The Steelers are going to fall a bit this year. Like many football fans, I'm anxious to see what Peyton Manning can really do after his year-long hiatus from the field.

Monday Night Football
Baltimore over Cincinnati
Oakland over San Diego

NFC East: The Hype Division?

Color me impressed, Cowboys fans.

I went into Wednesday thinking the result of the Cowboys-Giants game would play no factor in my picks for the NFC East and the playoffs as a whole. The main reason was because I was convinced the Giants were going to win that game. After all, no Super Bowl champion had lost the opening regular season game since 1999 when Elway retired from the Broncos.

But I was also convinced the Giants were the better team. Last time the Giants won the Super Bowl, they went from wild card team to division winner. It seemed to me they were going to do that again. After all, the main pieces of the team are still there, and the Giants' defense is top-notch right?

Now I'm not saying the Giants defense isn't top-notch, but Dallas reminded me of something very important: just because you have incredible talent in your defensive line doesn't mean your defense as a whole will be good. But more on that further down.

I can say before I was going to pick the Giants to win the NFC East, or at least be a wild card team. Now ... I may have to change my mind. Division preview after the jump.

Why the NFL is King

Three cheers for laziness. Hip, hip ... I don't feel like saying the last one.

Yeah, it was July when I last posted, but I'm back with a new post. I'm hoping to get an NFL Preview posted over the next few days going division by division. To get things rolling, I want to talk about how great (American) football is.

Better late than never?

This is a good start to me blogging again. I'm three days late on this blog. My bad.

For starters, I want to say my thoughts and prayers are with those affected by the terrible shooting in Aurora, Colo. It reminds us that there are things far more important in this world than sports. Luckily, we still have sports to escape from terrible events like that.

After watching the video where media members try to ask questions to the shooter's dad, I remember one of the big reasons why I chose to be a sports journalists rather than another kind of journalist. Sports journalists (almost) never have to ask the tough questions in the terrible situations

Anyway, this week I'm taking it a little lighter due to my tardiness and Internet problems, so here are my thoughts on the Penn State sanctions.

Penn State Sanctions Levied 

So it appears the Freeh Report was not the last bit of news to come out of Penn State. The NCAA levied its penalties against Penn State today, and the university finally made a decision about Joe Paterno's statue ... before changing its mind a couple days later.

"About damn time"

It's been about 2 years since I posted here. In that time, all my sportswriting went to the Baylor Lariat, both as a reporter and the sports editor. Now I'm graduated and I feel like I need to get back to it. (And yes, I quoted LeBron James in the title. Don't judge me, I think it makes sense).

So here's what I hope to do from now on: I want to pick out five topics (insert catchy, clever name including "five" that I haven't though of yet) in the sports world each week and then make a post each Saturday, just putting down my thoughts on this page.

As I've said before on this page, I love getting feedback, either about which topics I should discuss, the presentation/layout of this blog, or my writing style.

Anyway, to get things rolling, this week I'm talking about everything Penn State, Queen Howard, the unnecessary and overblown Dream Team debate, Drew Breeeeeeess, and a former Baylor player jumping into the NFL.

Penn State Investigation

The Freeh Report was released Thursday, and while I don't have the complete details of the dozens and dozens of pages within the report, I think we all caught the gist of it. Penn State did far more than just ignore the crimes of former defensive coordinator turned convicted pedophile Jerry Sandusky; it appears they actually went to great lengths to cover it up. The late Joe Paterno, legendary head coach of Penn State, as well as the former president, vice president and athletic director were all involved in the coverup since 1998. They knew what Sandusky had done, and instead of doing the obvious and humane thing of turning the man in, they let him have access to the Penn State locker rooms and the youth charity where he found several of his victims.

Quick Semifinals Post

Well, this stinks. The U.S. team is out, as well as Argentina, my pick to win it all. Looks like I've got to start all over on my picks. The good news is I went 3-1 on my quarterfinals picks. Time for a quick pick 'em and go.

Semifinals
Uruguay v. Netherlands: It's amazing how we went from four South American teams to one, versus three remaining European teams. It's tough to pick against the Netherlands as they have played great throughout the whole tournament. They edged out Brazil by scoring two straight goals after Brazil had scored first. On the other hand, Uruguay impressed me early on and I felt they could be a real darkhorse in this tournament. Some may argue that they should not have won their game against Ghana due to the late handball, but really, Ghana should have scored that PK. I've gone back and forth on this game multiple times, but now I've finally made up my mind. Uruguay pulls off the upset and moves on.

Germany v. Spain: This game is a little easier to pick. No offense to Spain. After all, they were the favorites coming into the World Cup and have recovered from their opening loss to Switzerland. But, Germany has dominated from the beginning, and then recently dismantled Argentina 4-0. This is a team on a mission. Germany moves on to the finals.

One quick note. Since Argentina is out, looks like I need a new pick to win it all. Who better but the team that eliminated Lionel Messi and the Argentinians? Germany is my current favorite.

Free Agency Frenzy and World Cup Quarterfinals

July 1st is here and the mayhem has begun. The most anticipated free agent period of recent history (maybe even all-time) is open. Joe Johnson, Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki, and other extremely talented players are all out on the market, and the teams have begun to jockey for position to land these big stars first. But of course, it all revolves around one man: LeBron James. Here's a quick summary of the teams most in the running to sign him.

Miami Heat
Reasons to sign: The allure of Miami beach is a great outside point for the Heat's presentation. There is a good chance that Dwyane Wade will return to Miami, and the team could also lure in top power forward Bosh. With those two and LeBron, there's almost a guarantee that Pat Riley would take over as head coach.
Reasons not to sign: Signing Wade, Bosh, and James would be impossible for the money all 3 are seeking, so LeBron would have to take less money to sign with the Heat (it would still be a ridiculous amount of money for us mere mortals, but a comparison is a comparison). While Miami has a great climate and nightlife, the fan support is, like most Florida sports teams, slim. The crowd number every night at American Airlines Arena is never near capacity. Finally, all the critics would question whether this was Wade's team or LeBron's team, and also if LeBron could win a championship as the star, as opposed to winning one as Wade's sidekick or equal.

Los Angeles Clippers
Reasons to sign: ...Umm...well, they do have some young talent with Blake Griffin coming back from injury. Aside from that, this is pretty much a joke.
Reasons not to sign: I could probably fill multiple blogs with this section, but I think I'll just slim it down. The Clippers have a history of being cursed, not only with bad seasons, but with star players that end up spending more time with the trainer than on the court. Also, there's no way LeBron wants to be in the same town as Kobe, where he and his team would play second fiddle.

New Jersey Nets
Reasons to sign: Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire and new majority owner of the Nets, has promised to spend the money necessary to turn the Nets into a championship team, and has already hired Avery Johnson as the new head coach. Rap mogul Jay-Z also is an icon to lure LeBron to the Nets, who will relocate to Brooklyn in a couple years. He would also be surrounded by young talent, including Brooke Lopez, Devin Harris, and newest draft pick Derrick Favors.
Reasons not to sign: The team is coming off a 12-win season (for those of you who aren't great at math, that's 70 losses). And while this is a talented young roster, there's no guarantee they can land another big free agent star to help LeBron out. Plus, like the Clippers, this team plays second fiddle to nearby rival New York Knicks.

Now we get to the 3 main candidates to land LeBron James on their squad.

Round of 16 begins

The Group Stage is now complete and we have seen some marvelous games as well as some boring games; we have heard some great stories, some bad stories, and even some weird stories. Here's what I will remember from the games so far.

The 2006 World Cup final game matched France against Italy. This year's Round of 16 features...neither. If you had told a soccer fan 4 years ago that either of those would be eliminated this early, they would have laughed at you. But honestly, it's not that surprising now. When you build a national team, you need to find a great mix of intelligent, experienced veterans and athletic, energetic young players. Italy's team was filled with only veterans and in the end they just got outplayed.

On paper, France looked pretty good. If you had run a simulation with FIFA 10, France would have beat all their opponents nine times out of ten. But that's one of the great things about sports: intangibles. Fan support can become a confidence boost for teams sometimes and spark a great upset; on the other end of the spectrum, controversy and scandal off the field can negate any skill advantage a team may have had. This team's self-destruction has to be one of the worst any sports team has ever displayed (definitely the worst I've ever seen).

One annoying story about the games was the number of 0-0 or 1-1 ties we saw. I was glad to see this run broken by Germany beating Australia 4-0. Not to be outdone, Portugal beat North Korea 7-0. Now those are not good games, but it is nice to see some action. There were so many games that teased the casual fans into thinking, "Ok, something has to happen soon, right?" and then nothing would.
Finally there was U.S. soccer. The team has some high expectations from fans and analysts. The U.S. was served a bit of luck when the English keeper muffed an easy save to give us the draw. Then, after giving up 2 goals against a country most people cannot even find on a map, the team came back to earn the draw. Unfortunately, we should have completed the comeback with a win, but a bad call sparked the huge controversy and left fans thinking "how much of a difference will that disallowed goal make?" And then final game, where we ALMOST got screwed again, and this time would have kept us out of the knockout round. But then there was the image that will forever live on in U.S. soccer history: Landon Donovan netting the goal in stoppage time and sending the Americans to the next round.
Here are the teams moving on along with the picks I made in a previous blog.

U.S. Soccer gets screwed, almost gets screwed again, but then we found a hero

U.S. soccer was falling into its usual pitfalls. The defense had allowed two goals to Slovenia in the first half, and the offense had limited opportunities to score. Our hopes of advancing to the next round began to look less and less likely.

Then 3 minutes into the second half, Landon Donovan single-handedly brings the U.S. back into the game by netting a goal right over the keeper. Then at the 82-minute mark, Michael Bradley, the coach's son, hit the ball in off the bounce, and the game was tied. The United States had completed a great comeback from 2 goals down and looked alive again in the standings.

But they were not done. Four minutes later, Maurice Edu nets a ball off the Donovan free kick and the U.S. takes the lead! That is, until referee Koman Coulibaly of Mali blows his whistle and the goal is waved off. Why? We still do not know, and we may never know. I've watched the replay a dozen times at least and I still don't see a call against the U.S. No one was offsides, and if there was any foul to be called, it should have been against Slovenia. So, the United States team got screwed, and only earns one point instead of three.

Final Group Stage Picks, NBA Finals and a new thing

The ultimate NBA rivalry has come down to a Game 7, of course. Did anybody really expect anything different? It's the NBA playoffs, therefore, it has to last as long as possible. Seriously, this is ridiculous. The first playoff games were played in mid-April, and we are STILL not done in mid-June. That is 2 whole months! Why?

For one thing, every series is best-of-7, and that itself is bad enough. I would love to see 3-5-7-7 format, or at the very least make the first round 5 games again. But then, teams will get multiple days off between games, maybe even a week between series. And Mark Cuban tries to complain that the NFL is arrogant because they schedule the Draft to primetime, bumping a playoff game. Why not? There's gonna be another hundred playoff games before we're done. Every other sport (with the exception of college football, but that is a whole different level of stupidity and discussion for another time) ends its playoffs in a month. Even the World Cup will only last one month. It's just plain ridiculous.

But enough of that rant. We're down to one game left. Boston at Los Angeles. Every analyst you listen to has been talking about how great this series is for basketball because all the history and bad blood between these teams will stall free agency talk. First of all, no it will not. This is one of, if not THE, most exciting free agent classes in the history of sports. LeBron, D-Wade, Bosh, Johnson, Nowitzki, Stoudemire, and a number of others good players. There is no avoiding this talk. If that bothers you, get over it, because it's not going anywhere until the dust has settled and everyone has a contract.

Group C and Thank you, Robert Green

Yes, I'll admit it. I thought we were dead in the water. 4 minutes into the game and England scores through terrible American defense. And then even when we got the ball moving, nobody was taking any decent shots, except for Altidore's missed header. But then the soccer gods smile upon America (well put Lalas) and Clint Dempsey, the Nacogdoches, Texas boy, fires a shot right into the English keeper's hands...and it rolls past into the goal. Robert Green is the American MVP!!

Really? Of course not. It was Tim Howard, hands down. The American keeper lived up to expectations and played amazingly tough and amazingly quick. He made some clutch saves that kept it a 1 goal game for America, and then some more clutch saves to hold the tie. Altidore also showed bursts of his speed and agility, burning England's defense to nearly net a goal. As an American soccer/football/futbol fan, you have to believe that what just happened was a victory. 1 point is better than none. And with that, here is Group C.

World Cup Preview and the American View of Soccer

Soccer and baseball are actually very similar sports in terms of how people watch them. True fans of each sport love every moment. Purist soccer fans get excited for every pass, every corner kick, free kick, and every shot in the general direction of the goal. Similarly, the same level of baseball fan loves the strategy of each pitch and every manager decision; the bunts, steals, and specifically placed pitches.

On the other side of the spectrum is the casual fan who isn't as interested in the little things. People who say baseball is boring only like seeing huge home runs, curveballs that buckle the batter's knees, fastballs in the triple digits, and amazing diving catches. This is how I imagine most Americans view soccer. And the 0-0 game that Uruguay and France played earlier will just add to argument that soccer is a boring, international sport. The casual fan wants amazing goals, clutch diving saves from the goalies, and most of all, an actual ending to the game, not a draw (more on that game in a bit).

If the U.S. loses early in the tournament, these kind of fans may lose interest. Which brings up another interesting point. Besides the U.S., how do American soccer fans choose which country to root for? I personally know people rooting for Mexico because that's where their parents came from, but what about others?

I have 3 theories for other teams to root for: 1) American soccer fans watch European soccer, then root for players from their favorite team (such as Ronaldo from Real Madrid) rather than the country itself, 2) they root for high ranking teams like Brazil, knowing they'll be in the tournament longer, or 3) they choose to root for or against teams because they like or dislike the country being represented (example, many Americans dislike France, therefore they root against them.)

But enough about that, on to the World Cup itself.

Introduction

Welcome to the Random Guy's Sports Blog. My name is Tyler. I'm posting this first blog to introduce readers to myself and what I will be talking about.

First off, myself. I'm a junior at Baylor University, currently majoring in journalism. Despite this, the last time I wrote about sports continuously was high school, so this blog is long overdue. I'm from Houston, so my favorite teams are the Rockets, Astros, and Texans, and I also root for the Texas schools in college basketball and football. This bias may come out every now and then in my blogs.

If you walked in my apartment at any given time of day, the TV would probably be set to ESPN. I watch SportsCenter every day and watch a lot of sports commentary shows (Around the Horn, PTI, Sportsnation) and draw a lot of my information from these shows, as well as ESPN.com.

Besides sports, I'm also a big video game nut. Right now I'm big on Call on Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which I play probably every day with friends back home. I'm doing this quite often lately because I'm in Waco for summer school, while all my friends are back in Houston, so really watching sports and playing video games is all I can do. I miss my friends back home and hope to hang out with them after summer school and before the fall semester starts.


ContentMy blogs will always be about sports and sometimes the outside issues surrounding them. Having said that, I'm just not interested in some sports or leagues. My favorite sport is football, NFL and NCAA, and typically this is the sport I'm most passionate about. I also love the MLB, NBA, and college basketball.

I do not talk about college baseball, hockey, tennis, or NASCAR, because these just do not interest me whatsoever. I do enjoy soccer. I would probably rank it as my 4th favorite sport, behind football, baseball, basketball, but the problem is there's so many leagues that I just don't have the ability to follow it completely. I am very interested in the World Cup though, and many of my upcoming blogs will probably be about it.

Well this is the end of my introduction blog. For those who read this, I love to hear other people's opinions on sports, even if they do not agree with mine. If anyone would like to talk sports or suggest topics I can talk about, let me know, and be sure to follow me on Twitter. twitter.com/TXler