Rex Ryan vs. Santa

The latest installment of KSK’s Rex Ryan hilarity. Once again, language is NSFW (not safe for work)

My Head Hurts

During two internships at investment banks, feeling uncomfortable having ESPN.com open on my company’s computer all day, I found myself in the Bloomberg sports section quite frequently. One of the main writers in this section was Scott Soshnick. Nearly every article I read of his was filled with nonsense. Making ludicrous claims, random anecdotes and idiotic conclusions were just a few of his specialties. But with no outlet to vent I was stuck frustrated in my cubicle. Now that I have my blog I get the chance to break down his articles FJM style. His latest disaster is below in bold with my hysterical responses in between.

Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) — The voice on the other end of the telephone belonged to Wayne Chrebet, who was sharing a few memories of the now-defunct football program at Hofstra University.

Quite a shame they shut down their program. Also ole Scotty boy seems like he’s trying to get on my good side by putting a picture of a Jets’ great above his article. Your so sneaky Mr. Soshnick.

Chrebet is one of the lucky ones. He still has recall. A good number of former National Football League players don’t.

That’s because he’s 36. Give him a couple years and I’m relatively certain there won’t be any recall. Trust me, I saw him get hit in the head way too many times.

The 36-year-old Chrebet

Told ya!

sustained six documented concussions during his time in the NFL. It’s impossible to say with any degree of certainty how many undocumented concussions there were from 1995-2005, when the 5-foot-10 Chrebet was catching passes, lots of them, for the New York Jets.

Hmm…actually he caught all of his passes for the New York Jets since it’s the only NFL team he played for. As for concussions, I’m surprised they documented any of them at all. Elliot Pelman, one of the Jet doctors, was always stifling appropriate concussion research.

By his own admission Chrebet could have avoided a number of those collisions by simply stepping out of bounds. He didn’t.

Instead he ran very quickly out of bounds to avoid the large black men trying to tackle him. Nah I’m just kidding. They tackled the shit out of him.

He also could’ve ducked under tackles instead of choosing to collide with bigger men.

Like I said…tackled the shit out of him.

The laws of physics don’t change. Force equals mass times acceleration, putting Chrebet at a disadvantage almost every time.

Because his brain damage inhibits him from learning physics? I’m confused.

The biggest storyline of this NFL season isn’t the unblemished records of the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts

[It is]

The most important one, however, centers on the league’s efforts to reduce the number of concussions in a violent sport.

Yea like 10 years later than they should have. I mean who would have ever suspected that a game like football could cause serious head injuries and lasting negative effects on the brain. The NFL should look into putting a psychic on the payroll to prevent against these impossible to predict problems.

There has been a lot of finger-pointing with regard to concussions, football and, ultimately, dementia in former players. NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith in October told Congress that the league ignored a decade of research showing a connection between on-field injury and post-career mental illness.

Sounds about right.

The NFL downplayed the studies, Smith said. Suppressed findings, he alleged. “The days of denigrating and ignoring the medical findings must come to an end,” he said.

Smith is right. And wrong.

Or…he’s just right. But let’s see where you’re going with this.

The biggest impediment to meaningful change regarding player safety isn’t the league. Nor is it the owners, general managers or coaches.

It’s the helmets! They’re on too tight!

It’s the players, too many of whom are stuck on the idea that playing hurt is a job requirement and that sitting out is tantamount to teammate treason.

/buzzer deeming incorrect answer sounds

Playing hurt is 100% a job requirement in the NFL. THEIR CONTRACTS AREN’T GUARANTEED. So many guys who aren’t making the big bucks that are struggling to make teams cannot afford to get hurt or it will cost them a contract. The only reason the NFL is recognizing the concussion issue is because big name players have been getting hurt this year. But lesser known NFL players have been getting concussed ever since the game was invented. How you can mention the playing hurt mentality without mentioning the nonguaranteed contracts is absolute lunacy.

Nowhere is that attitude more evident than in Pittsburgh, where prior to the Steelers Nov. 29th game against Baltimore wide receiver Hines Ward publicly questioned why starting quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, a two-time Super Bowl champion, wasn’t going to play. Ward had said the locker room was split over whether Roethlisberger, 27, should’ve played a week after sustaining his fourth concussion since 2006.

Paging Dr. Ward, please come to the ICU. I love how this was big news when it was reported. Who cares what the players think, they have absolutely no idea how Big Ben feels or what the doctors are saying. This is just Ward’s comment being taken out of context to fill the headlines on an otherwise slow news day.

It’s a popular refrain around NFL locker rooms that there’s a difference between playing with pain and playing hurt. The problem with concussions is that there are no visible scars, no X-rays of busted bones to hang inside the locker.

How do you prove a headache or blurred vision?

Maybe they could put that machine from Ah! Real Monsters on their heads and project their thoughts onto a screen? [Gotta love old school Nickelodeon]

I’m afraid that won’t happen on a large scale until players stop second-guessing their teammates for wanting to remember their careers.

Or until the league stops playing dumb and realizes that head injuries are extremely serious. But Hines Ward making a general comment about his quarterback is probably why there’s widespread neglect in the NFL. Yea, let’s go with that.

Vote for Wildflower Camp Foundation on Facebook

Chase Bank is running this event [called Chase Community Giving] on Facebook where they are giving away money to charities. The charities that get the most votes receive a certain amount of money. My family is involved in a charity called the Wildflower Camp Foundation. I would really appreciate if you could take a second, click the link below and vote for the foundation on Facebook. Thanks a lot.

Bring this to the US

Surprisingly enough, for the amount of television that I watch I really haven’t spoken a lot about it on this blog. However, this clip of an upcoming show called The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret starring Will Arnett and David Cross was so funny that it needed to be posted. I can’t wait to watch this show [and it makes me miss Arrested Development more and more everyday].

Below is the clip for the show. The language is NSFW just so you know. Enjoy.

Tim Tebow Loses [everyone rejoice]

So I guess my last post was pretty pointless [some would argue that all of my posts are pretty pointless]. But who cares, Tim Tebow got his butt kicked!

Going for 2

Just for the simple sake that I enjoy being right and recognizing stupid things like this, I wanted to make a note that Nick Saban shouldn’t have gone for 2 after the TD that made the score 32-13. Hopefully it doesn’t affect the outcome of the game [there are currently 14 min left in the 4th quarter] but going up 20 is more important than risking a 2 pt conversion to go up 21. Going up 20 forces them to score 3 TDs. Oh well, screw Tim Tebow.

What is Wrong with Michigan Basketball? [Guest Post]

So, for the last week I’ve actually been swamped with work for the first time all semester. Unfortunately it has taken a toll on my blogging, as I haven’t been able to dedicate time to a legitimate long post about sports. Luckily one of my roommates was able to attend last night’s Michigan basketball game against Boston College and after a bad loss, he needed to vent. After some light encouragement [I berated him with insults until he agreed to write something], he agreed to a guest post. Below is his take after attending the game [with a few of my edits]. My next post will likely be my response with some of my own thoughts on the team.  But for now, enjoy the first official guest post on SwB:

After a 3-3 start, the University of Michigan basketball team is quickly sliding and many fans are starting to fear the reality that this team may be playing itself out of contention for the NCAA Tournament.  After three demoralizing losses to teams that were not expected to compete with the upper echelons of their respective conferences, Michigan finds itself desperately searching for a key out-of-conference victory.  Unfortunately, they only have 3 more opportunities left with road games at Utah and Kansas and a home affair against UConn in January.  We have no trouble forgetting the bubble talks that transpired last February and March. Every time that Michigan’s name was brought up, their upset victories over UCLA and Duke came right afterwards.  Many fans are having visions of the future bubble talks of 2010 where Michigan, Marquette, and Boston College are all fighting for tournament berths and Michigan is at a significant disadvantage due to their head-to-head losses.

However, these issues can be dealt with 25 games down the line after Michigan suffers a disappointing loss in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament to a mediocre Minnesota team [don’t you love my optimism?].  Tonight’s post is to deal with the current situation at hand, and that is: What the fuck is our beloved Michigan squad doing out there!?  Now, I do not consider myself a Michigan basketball know-it-all who can sit here and list for you Zack Novak’s plus-minus at Crisler Arena or tell you Manny Harris’ shooting percentage after he dribbles to his left, but I have been at this school for four years and am a very dedicated fan.  There are two main issues that the general population has decided are the cause of Michigan’s early season struggles: 3 point shooting and defense.  While others may point out that rebounding is a big problem for Michigan, John Beilein will simply point out that his teams at his previous college stops usually do not outrebound the opposition, yet have still managed to excel.  He also utilizes his 1-3-1 defense to ensure that his defense will get more steals than the other team, which in essence could be counted as rebounds because they represent an end to the other team’s possession.

In my opinion, the more important issue is team defense over 3-point shooting.  As Beilein loves to point out, we have to expect that over a 30+ game season, a player will shoot somewhere near the percentage that he has averaged over his career.  Guys like Stu Douglass and Manny Harris will not continue to shoot below 20% from behind the arc for the entire season, and we can all agree that a made 3 pointer here or there could definitely have given us another win or two in the standings.  Unfortunately, the team defense has been atrocious and there isn’t a giant green highway sign directing us towards better days where we will routinely defend a size-advantaged opponent.  Boston College began both halves of the game feeding the ball inside against whatever defense Michigan ran. Whether it was the 1-3-1 or man-to-man they got lay-up after lay-up against Michigan’s intimidating frontline of a 6’5 Zack Novak and a 6’8 DeShawn Sims [who managed to look like he was more stoned and confused on defense than, yes, a guy who actually was stoned and confused].  I mean honestly DeShawn, is it possible for you to look more disinterested out there on the court?  Boston College was running a simple flex offense in which a man-to-man defense merely needs to keep switching through screens to prevent the backdoor cuts and open elbow jump shot.  But from my bird’s eye view in the 5^th to last row of Section 5 [I thought student tickets were supposed to give us good seats] it appeared that many of our defensive breakdowns stemmed from our failure to switch, which was usually in the area of Sims.  Nobody is challenging your talent DeShawn, but it would definitely be nice to see you put together a complete game on both the offensive and defensive end.

While we are on the topic of outstanding effort, why don’t we talk about the 1-3-1 trap defense.  As an esteemed middle school recreational basketball coach who loves to implore this defense, I have a few bones to pick with the way that Michigan utilizes it.  When you put out such an undersized, and quite frankly, less athletic line up, it is imperative that you are trapping up top. This takes away the cross-court pass to the weak-side block big man who is posting up a helpless Laval Lucas Perry.  Alabama must have run this play 146 times with Michigan refusing to put pressure on top [like I said, I had bad seats, so this is only a rough estimate].  What’s funny to me is that at the end of the BC game when Michigan was attempting to make a late run, behind a surprisingly loud Ann Arbor crowd, the defense became much more swarming to and around the ball and managed to force turnovers and rushed shots.  This effort and energy needs to be there consistently if Michigan wants to stop anybody on defense.  Michigan did seem to employ their man-to-man defense more than usual, but this was probably because they just weren’t scoring and could not set up the zone.

If it was because of our inability to score, then I suppose this post has come full circle.  Our defense sucks, but we can’t set up our effective defense unless we score on offense.  Unfortunately, our offense also sucks, and could use a boost from some easy layups created by turnovers off of the zone traps.  For all of our struggling shooters, an easy layup will help them get into the flow of the game and make outside shots seem more makeable.  Despite our losses of senior “extraordinaires” David Merritt, CJ Lee, and Jevohn Shepherd, we have essentially the same core of last year and know what this team is made of.  We are a year ahead of schedule in our rebuilding process and perhaps had unrealistic expectations heading into this season.  On the other hand, we have a battle-tested roster that has played in a ton of close games and nothing they see this year should be a surprise.  The reality is that this is still a relatively young team, and if we have any faith in Coach Beilein we will trust that he knows what is going on and will make the proper adjustments to ensure that Michigan continues its upward path towards success.

100 Greatest Hits of YouTube In 4 Minutes

I’m on a non-sports posting binge, but I can’t help it! [I keep coming across these awesome videos, what am I supposed to do?]. This one is exceptionally sweet as it combines 100 of some of the best youtube videos into one. Check it out:

Tiger Woods

I knew those Communists were good for something

Queen vs. Super Mario Bros.

For the first time this semester I’m actually swamped with work. Also not much has really bothered me in the sports world to warrant a long rant [although expect another Scott Soshnick piece later this week]. I just caught this video that combines one of my favorite Queen songs [Don't Stop Me Now] and Super Mario Bros. Enjoy.