Blog Posts For: December 2008

So I am simply obsessed with ESPN and the NBA, and that adoration is tied into one blinding vision that ties the two into one. I am like a giddy little girl who just found out daddy sprung for Jonas Brothers tickets. Really, I think “Mayne Street” is genius. The offbeat humor is enough to make me want to buy his book, even if the show is shameless self-promotion for his book An Incomplete and Inaccurate History of Sport.

So I am writing the 2009 MLB Season Previews. I know it might be a little early, but apart from the always entertaining Manny Ramirez sweepstakes that apparently nobody is buying into, many of the major pieces are already in place. Yes a few worthy pitchers are left and a few good bats are there, so maybe we can call this an early, early season preview.

The NFL postseason is set after an improbable Week 17. The Dallas Cowboys came into the week as the last wild card team for the NFC. Dallas’s hope for the playoffs was thwarted by the Philadelphia Eagles. It was clear before the game began that the Cowboys that their fate would be determined in a game that was without question the primetime game of the second afternoon game.

The glorious world of the NBA has fans who adorn their walls with pictures of tremendous athletes who can work magic with an orange leather ball. How many guys have LeBron James posterizing some poor second string guy trying to earn a multi-year contract and not be remembered as a cringing face on a highlight reel? How many have people have Dwayne Wade on the wall twisting and contorting his way through the lane for level of basketball awe and impossibility.

This is the final week of the NFL regular season and there are still several games that are actually worth watching if you are not from that city or have become an indentured fan thanks to your family lineage.

I firmly believe that the world of Major League Baseball revolves around Scott Boras. The agent has plundered the salaries of every team. In fact I do not consider you to be a professional baseball team until Mr. Boras of the Scott Boras Corporation has reamed you in the offseason.

There are only two games that need to be talked about after this last week. They are not the useless contests between the Bengals and the Browns or the 49ers and the Rams. No, they are the match ups between the league leaders.

This story is so incredible I cannot even believe it. The Duggar family added to their brood of 17 children with a new baby girl this week. This new baby joins 10 brothers and 7 sisters. The mom, Michelle, is just 42 years old and literally has given birth every 18 months, which also equals 135 months of being pregnant during her 24 year marriage. All of the children have names that begin with the letter J and the new baby is no different, her name is Jordyn Grace. The family actually has their own show on TLC and it is pretty interesting to watch this family function. Amazingly the kids are very well behaved and well mannered and all do their share to help the household run smoothly. The family lives in Arkansas and for religious reasons decided to forgo birth control. Can you say fertile Myrtle??? It seems like all Mrs. Duggar need to do is think about getting pregnant and voila la another baby on the way. And get this, they may not be done. If it was to happen again, and I suspect that it might….the family would be thrilled to welcome more children into their home. Currently the ages of the children are 20, 18, 18, 17,16, 14,13, 12,11,9,9,8,7,6,4,3,1, and a few days old. All I can say is WOW!!! That is pretty amazing, no matter what your personal feeling are about this family

Without the question, the biggest game this week has to be the New York Giants-Carolina Panthers game on Sunday night. It has the two top tiered teams, it has something worth playing for (the number one spot in the NFC side of the postseason), and it has a big market team playing (the Giants).

The real question is not who is better, the 23-2 Boston Celtics or the 20-3 Los Angeles Lakers. The real question is can any team in either conference actually stop these teams in a seven game series?

This week in the NFL is almost over all that remains is a game between the Cleveland Browns and the Philadelphia Eagles, who really have no shot at making the playoffs at this point. After 15 games I am more confused than ever and completely perplexed by the last remaining division races and the teams clawing at each other for the final wild card spots.

The NFL Season is 14 weeks old and the experts are talking about who is the most value player. I hear names like Kurt Warner, Eli Manning, and Drew Brees. I hear about a couple of running backs named Adrian Peterson and Michael Turner and a safety called Troy Polamalu. I do not hear talk of who is the least valuable player, though.

Now I thought the Yankees got the memo about the recession. The memo read that everybody is supposed to be trying to save a little money and hold back on the spending spree.

So I actually thought that New York baseball was dead. Ok, maybe not dead, but definitely in decline. The New York Yankees were letting go of most of their high priced free agents walk. They were loading up on younger talent like Xavier Nady and veterans like Nick Swisher. These players were going to help with a few wins, but the big spending days with star-studded lineups were over.

Most of the time the biggest acts get all the attention but the holiday season is known as a chance to go home and I think the biggest venues have been neglected. The holiday season brings big shows to these big stages, so for the past five weeks the Radio City Music Hall has been the top spot with the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, but event he holidays cannot withstand the draw of a championship game.

Yesterday, after being named the city of the year by GQ Chicago was dealt several blows that might demand the national magazine rescind its proclamation. The editors chose the city because it had been the political home to the president elect and has experienced a comeback as the backdrop for major movies, but Monday a trifecta of blows quickly kicked out the pedestal and let the city wallow in the muddy waters at the bottom of the giant hole where the Chicago Spire, an architectural abomination that brought the city’s skyline back to the national conscious, was supposed to stand.

Early on in the season the winners and losers of the weekly slate of NFL games are pretty clear. As the season wears on that simple definition becomes more and more complicated. Each game holds meaning and value with regards to the immediate postseason, the upcoming off season, and the team’s future seasons.

This week feels like its time to keep the dream going or give the fans a little End of the Season Affective Disorder. While this week has a couple of great marquee games, the Pittsburgh Steelers versus the Dallas Cowboys and the Tampa Bay Bucs versus the Carolina Panthers, there is that wonderful sense of urgency for a number of teams.

First it was the Eagles and now it is Fleetwood Mac. The most combustible soft rock band of the 1970s have decided the new century needs a redux version of the bands that have become as iconic for their dysfunction and instability as their perfectly ironic soothing songs.

A recent CNN poll found that 61 percent of people opposed the bailout for the Big Three. Those 61 percent better not be fans of NASCAR because the sport that has been on the verge of cementing itself in the Big Four of sports is warning that a failure to help the automotive industry could set back the sport 30 years.

I was just reading a review of the recent extremely orchestrated introspective documentary “Britney: For the Record” after catching it on Sunday and was happy to know I was not the only one who came away with the same impression. There were many typically pivotal moments, including the juxtaposition of the I-do-not-know-why-people-complain-about-being-a-celebrity bit that told the audience that she is not spoiled with the I-am-going-to-complain-errr-explain-why-it-is-so-hard-to-be-a-celebrity bit that confirmed she is.

Between the days of cocaine suspensions in the 1980s and the steroid allegations of the late 1990s, there was a period where our superstar athletes were known purely for their on-the-field exploits and not their off-the-field antics. This was the early 1990s and at its pinnacle was ProStars, a Saturday morning cartoon on NBC that featured Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson, and Wayne Gretzky fighting crime.

It is no secret that geek chic has taken over. Shows like Chuck and sassy smart girls in glasses are all the rage. It is also no mystery that the ‘80s are back. Excess is king, Madonna is back on tour, and the Celtics have played the Lakers in the finals.

This week played out like the typical Thanksgiving weekend. It started Thursday with a trio of blowouts. The Tennessee Titans, Dallas Cowboys, and Philadelphia Eagles put their opponents to shame like the Grandma’s mashed potatoes did to the new wife’s attempt to cook and contribute to the family.