From an episode of the esteemable The Johnny Cash Show, the qualities of which the founder of Epic Fades has long touted, comes the return of the Friday Jam after a one-week break:
(Via: Nashville Scene)
(HT: freeofthegoogle+)
We’ve been quiet here lately, though not for a lack of notable sports events, even if they are coming in the one sport that’s currently in it’s offseason. Two big NFL stories have been developing in fits and tumbles over the past week or two: 1) Peyton Manning leaving the Indianapolis Colts, and 2) Gregg Williams and Bountygate. There isn’t much to say about the first story yet, or maybe ever. He’ll go to a team. It won’t be the Titans. And we’ll get some variety of Joe Montana in Kansas City or Brett Favre in New York. He won’t have teammates like Marvin Harrison, Jeff Saturday, and Dallas Clark who are on his level, and we’ll probably see a lot of sad Manningfaces peering out of an unfamiliarly colored helmet.
As for the second story: first, a nod to Deadspin for the title tag to this post, and very quickly second, this:
That out of the way, how much can one really say about the bounties Williams and certainly other coaches paid to players for big hits on important players, and how much does one really want to say given the at least tiresome and likely nauseating cliche-laden moral hand-wringing on the part of the sports media?
Instead, we’ll offer a short, derivative series on the bounty story through the eyes of the evolving media reaction. As usual when I start a series of posts without fully mapping it out, the first post is the best (e.g., here and here), and this is likely to be no exception.
This first item is interesting because it was a profile of the New Orleans Saints’ defense under Williams published just before the bounty story broke. Untainted by the news of the bounties, the NFL’s investigation, or the media reaction to it, The Classical’s Charles Star offers up an innocent (from the writer’s perspective) take that’s telling upon retrospective re-read:
This month, Major League Baseball announced that it would be expanding its playoff field, starting with the upcoming season, by adding a second wild card team in each league. While Twitter-age baseball analysts roundly lamented the slow speed with which this announcement came, it looks like a lightning strike when compared to another still-waiting reform, instant replay, that has been “under advisement” for years.
I have written at length elsewhere about the importance of examining incentives to understand the real rationale behind a situation with apparently conflicting internal logic. Over at The Classical, Matthew Callan suggests that such an analysis will prove illuminating in the case of MLB reforms:
Bud Selig is arguably the most transformative figure in the history of Major League Baseball. Under his watch, we’ve seen more changes to the way the game is played and consumed than at any other time in the sport’s history.
…
Twenty years ago, adding a play-in game at the end of the regular season would have sent the game’s gatekeepers into fits of great weeping and gnashing of teeth. In the Bud Selig era, we hear nary a peep.
…
It’s telling that whenever he discusses the matter, Selig always makes sure to note how much the teams request it. “Clubs really want it,” he said back in January. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an issue that the clubs want more than to have the extra wild card this year.”When Selig says “clubs,” he means the owners thereof, all of whom stand to benefit from a play-in game and the additional revenue attended thereto. Selig has never shed his owner’s mentality, and every change under his watch as commissioner . . . has been allowed for the primary purpose of lining owners’ pocketbooks.
…
This isn’t to fault Selig, necessarily—if he didn’t grow the game’s revenues, he’d be a bad commissioner. However, it does explain the one change he remains reluctant to make: instant replay. The new wild card will become a reality mere months after the subject was first broached; in contrast, four years after being instituted on a trial basis, instant replay remains limited exclusively to home run reviews. Which are, as any baseball fan knows, sacred unto actual magic.That the man who has dramatically altered baseball in countless ways suddenly becomes a traditionalist whenever instant replay is mentioned is hard to explain through anything but his owner’s mentality. His other innovations have the immediate, tangible benefit of increased revenue, but instant replay has none. In fact, it would cost the league money to equip every stadium with extra cameras and review booths and training the umpires to use them.
The lesson? Don’t hold your breath if you’re waiting for instant replay review of MLB’s decision to move the Expos to Washington, D.C. instead of contracting the Milwaukee Brewers.
But you know this. What you may not know is that I have long called for an end to the moratorium on indoor umbrella usage. What I did not know was that MJ broke down that barrier (and did so much more) in the early 1980s. Witness:
(HT: Sleepz and Thinkz)
Originally scheduled to start on Sunday afternoon, the Daytona 500 eventually finished in the early morning hours Tuesday, when Matt Kenseth took the checkered flag. During that time, the Great American Race experienced a full rainout on Sunday, another rain delay on Monday, and a two-hour red flag on Monday night after Juan Pablo Montoya’s car locked up coming out of the pits on a caution necessitated by David Stremme’s engine blowup (his wasn’t the only one– Jeff Gordon’s blew up too) on about lap 157 and slid into one of the jet dryers that was cleaning the track during the caution. Montoya’s car tore a hole in the jet dryer’s fuel tank before bouncing to the infield and catching fire. As jet fuel poured out of the service vehicle, it too caught fire, and proved challenging to extinguish.
They eventually did, though, and Kenseth won the race when it restarted with forty laps to go, fending off Greg Biffle and a charging Dale Earnhardt Jr., who finished second. If this race was any indication of what the 2012 season will be like, we’re in for a long and exciting one.
For the first time ever, rain delayed the Daytona 500 such that no laps were run yesterday. NASCAR announced that the race would resume at noon today, although early indications today are that it’s unlikely to start until tonight. (UPDATE: The race will start at 7:02 pm.) A thank you to those readers who joined the thrilling live blog of the rain delay yesterday.
In college basketball, Vanderbilt fell again to Kentucky, this time at Rupp Arena, which is the only place in the SEC where Vandy’s seniors have not won. Not too many visiting teams win at Rupp, though, and the game was a close one. On Saturday night, Michigan State got all over Nebraska, beating them 62-34 in a game in which Draymond Green became just the fourth Spartan ever to record 1,000 career rebounds. Elsewhere in the Big Ten, Wisconsin beat a free-falling Ohio State in Columbus, and Michigan’s Jon Horford is out for the season with injuries.
This past weekend was the NBA’s All-Star Weekend, something I find largely unwatchable. I saw a headline that said that Kobe Bryant broke his nose in the live-action slam dunk contestAll-Star game last night, and apparently LeBron James passed up a shot at the end, which surprised no one.
The NFL draft combine was this weekend as well, and Robert Griffin III ran the forty-yard dash very quickly.
Click to enter ALDLAND’s live blog of the Daytona 500
Dale Jr. doing his best Spencer Hall
Click to enter ALDLAND’s live blog of the Daytona 500
Related
Daytona 500 preview
Trevor Bayne: defending Daytona 500 winner.
Tomorrow, the first and biggest race of the NASCAR season rolls off for 500 miles in Daytona, Florida. Trevor Bayne, just 20 years old, introduced himself to the wider world with his surprising win a year ago, and although he ran a majority of his season on the second-tier Nationwide Series, he’ll be there tomorrow to defend his win. It will be an uphill battle for him to repeat, though: he starts in the 40th position.
Bovada (formerly Bodog) has a Bayne win at 16/1 and likes Kyle Busch (5/1), Dale Earnhardt Jr. (5/1), and Tony Stewart (7/2). Stewart is the defending Cup champion, and after reeling off five wins in the ten-race Chase (the playoffs) to win it all last year, it’s easy to see why he’s favored in the season-opener this year. Kyle Busch has been strong in the first half of the season the last few years, so it makes sense that he would be a favorite too. Cynics might see Earnhardt Jr. as a sucker bet up there, slotted because his popularity, which outpaces his performance, will net the house some easy money, but he never can be counted out, especially at a track like Daytona, which best suits his driving style and where he has won before, and especially because he drives for Hendrick Motorsports, the best team in the sport. Roush is the next best team, and two of their drivers– Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle– are starting first and second on Sunday and have to be considered strong contenders as well.
Finally, Danica Patrick may be the biggest story going into Daytona this year, as she makes the jump from open-wheeled racing to stock cars on NASCAR’s biggest stage. She’s in good hands working with Stewart, but other successful IndyCar drivers have struggled to make the transition, and one has to expect that it will take her time to adjust as well. Still, she’s finding early success. Everyone’s focusing on a very bad wreck that was not her fault during the final lap of one of the pre-race races (I know), but she starts a respectable 29th on Sunday and has the pole position for today’s Nationwide race, remarkable for any rookie driver.
The full starting grid is here, and the top ten looks like this:
| 1 | 99 | Carl Edwards | Ford | Fastenal | |||
| 2 | 16 | Greg Biffle | Ford | 3M | |||
| 3 | 14 | Tony Stewart | Chevrolet | Office Depot / Mobil 1 | |||
| 4 | 17 | Matt Kenseth | Ford | Best Buy | |||
| 5 | 88 | Dale Earnhardt Jr. | Chevrolet | Diet Mountain Dew / National Guard | |||
| 6 | 78 | Regan Smith | Chevrolet | Furniture Row / CSX “Play it Safe” | |||
| 7 | 9 | Marcos Ambrose | Ford | Stanley | |||
| 8 | 48 | Jimmie Johnson | Chevrolet | Lowe’s | |||
| 9 | 31 | Jeff Burton | Chevrolet | Caterpillar | |||
| 10 | 33 | Elliott Sadler | Chevrolet | General Mills / Kroger |
Other stories to read before tomorrow’s race:
ALDLAND 