I Feel Very Machiavellian Right Now

Sometimes you have gaming experiences where it feels like everything is against you, no matter what you do. And sometimes you experience a series of events that you've set in motion that make you feel like an evil genius, all of whose plans are coming to fruition.

This is one of those latter tales.

It all starts as my time at Peru's Universidad San Martin in Football Manager 2011 was winding down to a close. I had just won the Peruvian First Division title, and I was looking for a new challenge.

So I quit my job there and while there were no positions immediately open, I did publicly express interest in a couple of jobs which had been occupied at the time, but which were ripe for the taking, as the people sitting in those chairs were not bringing the kind of success that management was looking for.

I went after jobs with Boca Juniors in Argentina and Penarol in Uruguay. Boca said they had to see how things were going with their current manager, but Penarol offered me that job almost immediately. I had wanted an 18 month contract, and they would only give me 6. So I finally relented.

And it turns out that in taking the job, I put Luis Fernandez Suarez out of a job. Now, when I was at San Martin, I had a rather poor professional relationship with Suarez, who had been the coach at Cristal before Penarol approached him to manage their club.

So getting that job at Penarol was screwing someone who I had a bad relationship with already, which was sort of cool.

Then I looked at the standings for the first half of the season.

Penarol finished 4th. The difference between where they were and first place was 2 points or to put it another way, the difference between a win and a tie.

I had booted someone I hated out of a job because in one game out of many, Penarol didn't score one more goal.

Again, I got a job because of a single goal or lack thereof.

So I was pretty much in a situation where I was going to succeed, and I did everything I could to see that the team met its goals. I won the second half of the season and qualified the team for Copa Libertadores (which is the highest level international club competition in South America).

And as my contract was nearing an end, Boca then approached me and asked me to take over as soon as contract was finished at Penarol.

At this point, I should mention who the coach of Boca Juniors was at the time.

Diego Freakin' Maradona.

A guy that gets mentioned in the same breath as Pele (and one who some say was the greatest soccer player of all time). A polarizing figure who is loved in Argentina.

Yeah, I pushed that dude, out of a job. If I had pushed him out of nearly any other job, it would have been a little funny. The fact that I pushed him out of Boca Juniors, is amazing. I mean, they love him at Boca. They even have a fight song about him.

I pushed the man who scored what has been called the Goal of the Century for Argentina out of one of the crown jewels of its premier league.

That is a lot of responsibility. But I kept my head.

Then I won. And won. And won.

I won both halves of the season. I won the Copa Sudamericana. I took out Santos, Pele's and the rising star Neymar's former team in the Recopa, and I won the biggest South American club prize, the aforementioned Copa Libertadores. All in my first year.

That wasn't merely victory... that was a curb-stomp battle.

Of course, now they love me.

And riding that wave, I requested to my board that Boca pick up a feeder club, and so they looked around at literally thousands of in the world clubs and came back with a single choice.

Penarol.

Which means that upon agreeing to that, they are sort of my bitch now.

And to think, if Penarol would have given me that 18 month contract to begin with, well, they wouldn't be under the thumb of Boca at this moment.

The sprinkles on top of that icing is now due to my success at Boca over the past year, the Argentinean FA has offered me the helm of the national team, a position I can do concurrently with Boca. At this time, Argentina is ranked #1 in the world.

So yeah, this is going to be fun. If I was really evil, I could use my power as the national coach to sabotage my club side foes by calling up their stars right before I have to face Boca. I'm not going to, but oh, I could be so corrupt. And that is why I am on the verge of crossing the line from every day villainy to cartoonish super-villainy. And that's a good thing.

Paterno and Penn State

I've been watching this Joe Paterno/Penn State case unfold over the past few days and the more I learned, the sicker I felt to my stomach.

Last night, Joe Paterno, along with a few other individuals were fired by Penn State and a portion of the Penn State student body was upset by this. In fact, they were so upset that they rioted.

*facepalm*

He protected a serial child rapist, a man who he knew was abusing children and he did nothing. Oh wait, he told the administration who basically told Sandusky just don't bring kids onto campus, and in the interim, 9 other children were abused. Paterno was still friends with this individual and he knew about this stuff for years.

Edmund Burke said that "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Paterno is very much guilty of that.

If the events that had transpired at Penn State were the plot of a fictionalized movie, he would have been one of the villains. Turning a blind eye to child sexual abuse when you had the responsibility to put a stop to it and see that it was punished to the fullest extent of the law, especially when your job itself had to do with training and leading a group of young men on the field and seeing to their educational needs.

By failing to live up to even the most modest of obligations as a good human being, Paterno did not deserve to end his career on his own terms.

I was reading an article on Bleacher Report perhaps giving Penn State football the Death Penalty (which means, for those of you who don't follow college sports, that the affected school cannot compete in a particular sport for a year or more).

And I would support that now. I would support that entire program being wiped clean and starting fresh. Will there be any sanctions against Penn State? Likely not from the NCAA because in their rules, I don't think their is a section for gross violations of human decency, only for things like scholarship and financial issues.

There need to be severe consequences for this breach of trust, and it has to be across the spectrum. Penn State shouldn't just be able to walk away from this unscathed. Firing Paterno and others isn't enough. The school and those individuals will likely be named in civil and criminal litigation, but the NCAA has to step up and punish the school as well and make it stick so that in the future, other institutions are more vigilant and active about stopping these kinds of abuses.

Shameful Realization

I woke up last week to a shameful realization:

"Aw crap... I'm into soccer again."

I Don't Want To Believe

My entire life, I knew that the Detroit Lions were bad, and they'd always be bad. Yes, there were some sparks of life during the Barry Sanders years, but they were never going to go to the Super Bowl, and I was naive to think they ever could during those years.

I don't want to believe that they could possibly be good this year because my worldview is predicated on them being bad. It was one of those universal truths, like winter following autumn, the sun rising and setting and that there will never be a frozen pizza as good as fresh.

Like all those Red Sox fans who wanted them to finally win the World Series, but deep down during those years, many were asking themselves, just how could they screw it up.

That is the question I am asking myself today... how are the Lions going to screw this up. I know they will, deep down in my heart, I know that they will fail, and if I start to believe they can actually have a chance of winning the whole ball of wax, and then they screw up in ways only they can imagine before they've happened

I think that is the strange masochism of sports fandom when you support a team which is bad 95% of the time.

Shaq Retires

Is it bad that my first thought upon hearing this news was, "Oh God, he is going to start making movies again." And then I look and he is set to appear in a movie this year.

The horror. I mean, the dude was in Freddy Got Fingered and Scary Movie 4... not to mention the movies he starred in. We are all doomed.

Or, I don't know, he could ride around in tiny cars all day long now.

But seriously, it has been a heck of a career on his part and a genuine sporting personality, and for that, I salute him.

Onion Sports Network: You So Awesome

For this picture alone, they deserve praise.

via the Onion Sports Network

Three Soccer/Football Book Reviews

I was recently made the moderator for a Football Manager-related forum called The FM Reporter, and as part of my duties, I've written a few reviews of some soccer-related books I've read recently, and I thought I would share them here as well.

Inverting the Pyramid: Jonathan Wilson, a writer for The Guardian, The Independent and Sports Illustrated, wrote a rather comprehensive history of the tactics of soccer. I am a man who doesn't have a lot of background with the game, aside from playing FIFA and other games like that, so for one book to give me the confidence and understanding of an entire game

Because the focus is as much the figures and teams that employed these tactics and the reasons why as it is on the tactics themselves, the book becomes a stunningly interesting and informative read once you get into the early 20th century, because it took a while for the game to go from its formative years, where even the forward pass was looked as something foreign to the Englishmen who originally played the game, to a period of increased creativity and tactical thinking. The usual suspects that you would expect to be in a book like this are featured prominently: Jimmy Hogan, Meisl, Hebert Chapman, Rinus Michels, Herrera, Arrigo Sacchi, Alf Ramsey, Bela Guttman, Gusztáv Sebes, Bilardo and the like. I know I've forgotten to mention quite a few, but I am doing this by memory, so I hope you forgive the lapses.

But the thing that I found very educational about the book wasn't just that it diagrammed the positions of various players for specific historic games or went into the specifics of how a particular formation worked. It was the fact that it discussed why a particular change happened. More often than not, a change in tactics happened when a team had been isolated from international competition and they met up with another international squad which embarrassed them (England vs Hungary 1953 and Argentina at the 1958 World Cup comes to mind). That's the reason you really don't see tactics like the WM or the 2-3-5 any more (though, you never know, it may be such an antiquated formation now that a modern team running a version of it may stun an opponent that had never played against it on the field).

And it is the discussion of why a particular tactic fell out of favor that helped me really grasp soccer formations and tactics... because in thinking about the problem a manager in the past faced, it made me think about the sort of things I was seeing on the field in FM, and variations on the formations I used. It made me start really looking at formations in a critical way, and I think that was helpful for my development as a manager. I didn't try to emulate the formations I read about... I created my own based on the thinking this book inspired. I heartily recommend this book for anyone who is interested in tactics and formations. Even if you don't read it cover to cover, just reading a few chapters/sections might help you get a better grasp on the subject matter.

The Ball Is Round: I first read this book in late 2008, and it made a real impact on me, so when I started playing Football Manager, I decided to buy a copy instead of taking it out from the library again. If I was going to teach a university level course about the history of soccer, this would be the text book I would use as it gives a reader a very good survey of the totality of the game and its development around the world. Although David Goldblatt arguably wrote a popular history of the game, the depth and breadth of his study of the entirety of the subject is astonishing. Of course, given how massive the book is (it is nearly 1000 pages), that is to be expected.

Now, even though the book discusses soccer as a worldwide phenomenon, most of the emphasis is on England, Europe and Latin/South America, though Africa and to a much lesser extent Asia and North America have time devoted to them, but for those latter areas, it is a good start for someone who is interested in the history of soccer in those regions. And in many ways, The Ball is Round is as much a history of the societies that soccer was played in and the changing economics around the game as it is a history of the personalities within the game (but they certainly don't get short shrift either).

I was particularly taken by the sections detailing the dark days of the 1980's, where fan culture, corruption and crowd disasters almost destroyed the sport and the rebirth of soccer as a new entity in the 1990's. And any time someone talks about FIFA, I usually bring this book up as Goldblatt talks about the corruption that has plagued the organization, especially during the Havelange and Blatter years.

Tactics and formations get mentioned every so often, but they really aren't the focus of the book, so be aware of that (and if you are looking for a book that covers the history of tactics, Inverting the Pyramid is the way you want to go).

So if you are looking for a rather comprehensive history of the game, then this is the book for you, and a good jumping off point for more specialized study for a particular region.

Soccernomics: Written by Simon Kuper (Football Against The Enemy) and economist Stefan Szymanski has much in common with the book that may have given rise to it, Freakonomics.

The book discusses and largely debunks a number of the commonly assumed truths about soccer through statistical analysis of large reams of data.

It covers subjects like the seeming underperformance of the English National team, the oddities of the transfer market, the financial insolvency of the sport as a whole (because unless you are one of the big teams, you are likely losing money), penalty kicks, the movement of the major domestic and international silverware from provincial town clubs towards those in increasingly urban/capital areas.

The transfer market myth is that the more you spend on transfers, the more successful your team is going to be long-term when it seems that teams with higher salaries tend to be the winners again and again.

The book also examined soccer (and sport in general) and its correlation to suicide (turns out sports save more fans than it might lead to suicide), and in a related subject, the real reason cities and countries want to build big new stadiums and hold major competitions. It was a surprising revelation that has colored my thinking on the subject.

While it's revelations aren't as delightful as the ones from Freakonomics, it is still a fascinating book, and one worth reading by those interested in soccer.

--

I think after 15 years, football/soccer has finally taken root with me.

Sunday Video: Football Vs. Baseball

Super Bowl Sunday... have to go with something. So given my feelings about George Carlin and baseball, I thought his Football vs. Baseball joke would be great for today.

Thank you Mr. Carlin, thank you.

Sunday Video: We Are the Champions

Over the course of the past week, I've won the US Open Cup, The MLS Cup, The North American Superliga and the Pan-Pacific Championship as The Columbus Crew in Football Manager 2011.

Oh, I did all those things in a single 12-month period too (March 2011-February 2012). I think I've earned this song.

Football Manager 2011: My Cruel and Tempting Mistress

Back in 2001, I happened to pick up a remaindered British gaming magazine called Strategy Player because it had a disc with game demos on it. In that magazine, there was a review of a game called Championship Manager 00/01, which to me at the time looked absolutely enthralling. Unfortunately, that was the age when if you didn't live in the region where a game might be popular, you'd never be able to buy it, and as a North American, soccer management games were never going to be popular, so I'd never seen that series over here.

And every time I would look through that magazine, I'd wonder about that game series, but I'd soon forget about it.

Skip ahead to last month and my discovery over the course of a single Sunday afternoon that a) my integrated graphics card could play higher end games than I first suspected, b)I unintentionally became aware that there was a PC soccer game called Football Manager 2011 released about a month before that day with some really compelling reviews and c) the place I went to buy it was having a sale that day making it almost 50% off. So I bought it.

I was to later discover that the Football Manager series is the spiritual descendant of Championship Manager... Eidos kept the original name, and the developer, Sports Interactive, moved on and started doing their own games, with Sega distributing their work. So in essence, I was buying into the series that I had wanted to get into for almost a decade.

As a North American, I was also rather surprised to read that the week the game came out, it was the top selling game in Britain. And when I look at some of the other games it beat, well, that is truly impressive. I was to later learn that FM 2011 outsold World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, The Sims III and Starcraft II in Britain in 2010. That is a lot of sales. And yet, it doesn't really get anywhere near that amount of attention on this side of the Atlantic, despite the various legal ways of acquiring it like Steam and other direct download services. The fact that the official site doesn't even list North American in its buying options is an indication that really, I wasn't the target audience for this game.

To best express the general feeling that one of these games gives you, this trailer for the 2008 iteration of the series really nails it while also giving Rudyard Kipling his due.

I love the fact that every trailer I've seen for one of these games touts the experience without showing in-game footage, because frankly, seeing the game in action in a trailer wouldn't do it justice. It isn't really pretty to look at compared with the FIFA or even FIFA Manager series, but it just feels right. There is just so much depth in this game that I really don't need it rendered in 3D and pixel-shaded out the wazoo.

Of course, it can be run in 3D if you want it to, but I prefer watching the little circles move around. I guess that makes me weird these days. I should also mention that aside from the actual games themselves, there is no sound or music. I have to admit that took some getting used to.

But as someone who has had a long abiding interest in soccer games, one thing that has always managed to garner my interest in a particular title is how many leagues and teams it has. Football Manager 2011 has leagues from 51 countries, encompassing 117 different leagues. To put that in perspective, FIFA 11 only has 25 countries and 31 leagues. That is a lot of teams, and a lot of players.

But the thing that is amazing is it is so easy for the modding community to add new content to this game as well. For instance, the game starts off with you being able to choose the English leagues down to the sixth level. Well, someone then created a mod that opened up the league system down to the 8th level. Then someone created a database so you could play as teams 11 levels down in the English Football League System. That's a lot of teams and a rather wide pyramid. I mean, that ends up being almost 1500 teams. It is mind-boggling that a group of people are that dedicated to the sport that they put something like this together... and there is work being done to take it down to level 12. And people are making these kinds of efforts for a lot of regions in the game which either don't have their leagues in the game as of yet in a structured way (like Africa for instance) or extending the league structure in countries like Iceland down farther than I ever thought possible.

But having a lot of teams can't save a mediocre title, and I am glad to say that FM 2011 really does give you an emotionally-fulfilling and deep experience as well.

Let me tell you a tale. I started my first game unemployed and just applied for coaching jobs as they opened up. I eventually got a job with a second division club in Turkey called Diyarbakirspor, and at the beginning, I had some successes, even though I didn't exactly know what I was doing. But then, the team started losing, and I just couldn't get out of the skid. I was getting really emotionally involved in what was happening. And as the losses mounted, (oh, and what a winless streak it was), I could tell I was losing the team too and they had stopped playing for me. Then they started telling me to my face that they didn't trust me. There was a point where I could tell I was going to get fired but I didn't know exactly when.

Then the hammer finally fell after a tough loss, and the moment I read the press release, I almost felt relieved.

The longer I play the game, the more nuances I see. I experienced the heartbreak of losing a good player because I got caught between an arbitrarily set fee from my board and the machinations of an agent who was looking for just a little more from our organization than I could provide... and then that same agent then tried to screw me really bad on another one of their clients just because he didn't like the fact that he thought I wasted his time on the previous deal. Or watching a promising season and cup run collapse because a few of my players got a little overzealous during a game against a rival and got themselves suspended or injured. Or seeing a player thrive after moving them a little bit out of their normal position and discovering how a team can come together if you put it together in the right formation on the field.

Football Manager is one of those games that to understand just how addictive it is, you actually have to play it. Because once you are in, it is like crack and one of those experiences that has you constantly saying to yourself, just one more game or one more season or even one more transfer, and knowing that if you get things just right, you too can be a champion, even with the lowliest of teams. In fact, Football Manager is part of the reason I haven't been blogging as much lately. And for a single game to do that to me, that speaks volumes about its addictiveness. But it was some of the best money I've ever spent given the hours I've put into it and will likely put into it in the future.

Ken Burns' Baseball: The Tenth Inning

Now I've mentioned my dislike for the game of baseball many times on this blog. I mean, I can't even get into baseball as a video game, and you can get me into almost any sport after I've played it in video game form. I just find it boring and there are way too many games in a season for any one game to have any meaning until near the end of the season, like the 130 games in the middle are almost garbage time.

I know saying that will likely make some fans of the game get angry, or tell me that I just don't understand, and they have that right. I am merely stating my opinion on the matter because I have to be clear, because it is relevant for the rest of this discussion.

Given those feelings, you would naturally assume that I would absolutely loathe The Tenth Inning, Ken Burns' continuation of 1994's epic documentary series Baseball, but somehow he manages to suck me in once again. I wasn't a fan of the sport in 1994, but I still watched the entire documentary back during the strike.

Granted, the update probably could have had another subtitle, like "Bonds, Boston, The Immigrant Experience and The Strike" because in those four items, I have encapsulated the entire 4 hour examination of the sport of baseball that Ken Burns presented. For those of you who watched it, did I miss something.

The thing that I found amazing about the whole thing is at least in the first half, Barry Bonds actually comes off sympathetically, and I never thought I would find myself feeling sympathy for him. And as always, it was very well put together, although it did showcase something which I hadn't thought of but should have been obvious from a historical perspective (and it was something the filmmaker didn't have control over).

I am talking about using the voiceovers from Fox for their World Series coverage, because now all those historic moments, like Boston finally winning it all are tainted by the silly sound effects that network uses when it is showing the score. It is a minor quibble, but it is something I hope other networks think about with their own broadcasts in the future... that someday someone might pay to use that narration and it would be nice if it wasn't filled with obnoxious flavor of the month sounds.

But overall, it was a wholly enjoyable experience, even for someone who hates the subject matter.

Ultimately, I hope that this whole thing ends up giving PBS some ideas... like maybe they will bring Rock & Roll back with a couple of new episodes to fill in the past decade and a half too.

Regarding Cleveland and Lebron James

To those of you who are so incensed that Lebron James has chosen to move on to greener pastures in Miami (and if you burned his jersey last night, you are clearly one of these people), I have a little bit of advice for you.

Get over it. Get over yourselves.

I am not going to tell you it is just a game, because I know that you know that deep down. But honestly, you are rooting for laundry.

If it was you and you had a chance to pursue opportunities to achieve some personal goals, you would take that chance. And do you think Lebron would be angry at you for doing that (if he actually knew you)? No.

He didn't betray you, even if that what some people are telling you. If anything, he is giving a lot of other people the opportunity to play in Cleveland, so you actually have a team rather than one superstar and a few talented players around him.

Yes, I have a feeling this season is going to be ugly. But it will get better. I mean, look at how bad things were for Boston that one season and then they put together 3 great players... um, nevermind.

The thing you all have to remember is that Lebron wasn't your savior. He is just a dude trying to win a championship.

If you feel like you've been dumped, just remember, other fans have felt this exact way, and they got better over time.

And really, if it is between hating Lebron and Art Modell, the choice is obvious. Art Modell screwed you in every way imaginable while Lebron just broke up with you. So keep hating the real enemy.

Tags: cleveland, lebron james, miami, sports, jerry seinfeld, art modell, cleveland cavaliers, browns, drew carey

Express Checkout: Blow Out, Kevin Smith, Pattinson

- You know, for a second on the weekend, I felt bad for the women on the Slovakian Hockey Team at the Olympics after taking an 18-0 shellacking from the Canadians. And then I found out that the Slovakians piled 82 goals on the Bulgarians to qualify for the Olympics to begin with. Someone calculated that was a goal every 44 seconds. The thing that really makes that horrific from a karma standpoint was it was the closing game of a qualifying tournament, so there was a point where they could have stopped scoring and they still would have made it to the next stage. It makes me wonder what Bulgaria did to the coach of that team because that is just insane. I mean, I think that is worse than the infamous Georgia Tech-Cumberland State football game of 1916 (and 82 goals isn't even the biggest blowout in international hockey history).

- Kevin Smith was kicked off of a Southwest Airlines flight over the weekend because he was too big to fit in a single seat after trying to get a standby flight from the San Francisco area to Burbank. He had purchased two seats on the flight up there, and admitted that he is "way fat". Now, I'm a husky dude, I admit it, but I have to side with the airline here, as much as it pains me to do so. When I am not blogging and doing all the various other things I do in my life, I watch and read a lot of things about plane crashes. I mean, a lot, so I know a thing or two about them, and the operation of aircraft and regulations as well. From reading the stories from both Smith and Southwest Airlines perspectives, this is what I think happened. Kevin Smith boarded the plane as a standby passenger, he sits down and gets settled in. The pilots in the cockpit are doing their preflight check and knowing what was in the cargo area, they do their weight calculations (based on average weights per passenger), and they discover that they are over the carrying weight limit for that plane, and they then made the decision to kick Smith off because he was the sole standby passenger, and the airline then tried to get him off the plane delicately so the other people on the plane didn't know that there was a potential issue with the flight through another pretense (because they kept saying it was a safety issue). Smith has also heard speculation that someone near the flight had him pulled because they didn't like his movies or his attitude when he boarded the flight... which also seems possible. EDIT: I just got through listening to Smith's Smodcast, and he told a tale about the flight after the one he was kicked off of, and I have to say, I was wrong. He was very much slighted, and apparently he is not alone.

- I will just present this quote I found browsing Google News with one brief comment at the end. "In a new interview with Details, Robert Pattinson reveals that he loves his dog more than any living lady, and that he's not a big fan of vaginas." Yeah, is anyone really surprised by that last revelation... at all?

Tags: olympics, southwest airlines, kevin smith, details, canada, slovakia, bulgaria, women's hockey, preflight check, weight limits, google news, vendetta

The Wrestler at Wrestlemania

Back in August, I wrote a somewhat scathing entry about how as an adult, I longed for the kind of fun wrestling I watched when I was a kid. But I started watching wrestling again after I started playing Fire Pro Wrestling Returns, and I have to admit that I may have been off base.

It was also in the Fire Pro Club forums that I had first heard about The Wrestler, a movie which many of the jaded fans of wrestling were looking forward to seeing because it was a more realistic fictionalized depiction of this form of entertainment.

And then it was recently announced that Mickey Rourke was booked for a match at Wrestlemania 25, which I have mixed feelings about.

On one hand, I think this booking basically killed any chance Rourke had of winning the Best Actor Oscar, much in the same way Norbit destroyed Eddie Murphy's chances of winning an award for Dreamgirls. In fact, it might hurt the entire movie at the ceremonies.

And if it hurts Mickey Rourke at the Oscars, it might also hurt his career after this. In the interviews surrounding this movie, one theme has become evident... Mickey Rourke doesn't want to be a sellout. Well, having a match at Wrestlemania is sort of a selling out of those very ideals he seems to be chasing, and perhaps undercutting the message of the movie as well.

However, since this is going to happen whether I like it or not, I guess I have to look at the positives on this deal.

I don't question Rourke's ability in the ring and I have a feeling he will do admirably in it and will sell it well. And if someone is going to be the professional in this situation and take care of actor in the ring, well, I think Chris Jericho is the right man for the job. He is a performer who has been around the block more than a few times and wrestled under a wide variety of circumstances, so he will work well in this situation. He will make the match pop without unduly endangering Rourke.

So in short, I think this match is a really bad idea, but in execution, it should probably work out fine.

Tags: chris jericho, mickey rourke, fire pro wrestling returns, fire pro club, wrestlemania, oscars, wwe, the wrestler, selling out

Improv Everywhere presents The Best Game Ever

Improv Everywhere, that merry band of pranksters decided it would be fun to crash a Little League game the best way possible... by bringing the trappings of a major league game to a pair of unsuspecting teams.

And I have to say, they did seem to all get a kick out of the whole experience.

Tags: improv everywhere, major league, little league, nbc, prank, lugnuts, mudcats, jumbotron

Wrestling: Those were the good old days

I recently had an opportunity to do something that I sort have avoided the past decade and a half: I watched professional wrestling.

And wow, things certainly have changed since I was a kid. I don't mean the fact that those behind it admit that it is entertainment and not purely a sport. No, I am referring to the shift towards more adult-oriented themes and language. If you've read this blog in the past, you know I have no objection to things being for adults in the slightest.

However, I remember wrestling when I was a kid, back when the World Wrestling Federation was fighting to go national (no pun intended), and in retrospect, the whole spectacle seems so innocent now, and when you look at the accompanying media, well, it does seem like it was indeed marketed as family entertainment. It was all very archetypal, and well, just hokey fun.

I mean, there was a Saturday Morning Cartoon back in 1985 (which featured voice work by a young Brad Garrett), and an album as well, and I was familiar with them both, not to mention the whole Cyndi Lauper/Captain Lou Albano Rock N' Wrestling angle.

I still remember most of the major players from that time as well. Aside from the luminaries like Hulk Hogan (before we all found out what a colossal douchebag he really is), Andre the Giant, Rowdy Roddy Piper and The Hart Foundation, I remember Junkyard Dog, Hillbilly Jim, George "The Animal" Steele, Kamala and so many others. But in doing a little more research I discovered that many of the wrestlers who make up those memories are now no longer with us, mostly due to a lot of heart attacks, drug overdoses and road accidents.

But from my brief exposure to what professional wrestling has become over the past few days, well, I can see that a lot of the fun has been sucked out and replaced with a slick glossy veneer, and I sort of feel bad for the kids that are growing up watching it. I sort of feel like an old man saying that in my day wrestling was better than it is today, because it doesn't feel like it has the same heart to it.

Now I consider Mexican wrestling to be an entirely different matter, because I like the idea of it, and in my semi-hipster way, luchadors are cool. Hell, Luchadors are cool in every way. But this WWE wrestling these days... I just don't see how I could get into it. Though given the quality of the WWE movies, I should have known that the wrestling wasn't going to be that satisfying either.

Tags: wwe, wwf, wrestling, hulk hogan, junkyard dog, hillbilly jim, lucha libre, el santo, blue demon, cyndi lauper, brad garrett, luchadors, rowdy roddy piper, hart foundation, kamala, george steele, the animal, captain lou albano, rock n wrestling, world wrestling entertainment

7 Pop Cultural Fact you May Not have Known

Yeah, 10 would have been better, but 7 is all I could think of at the moment.

• The dog that played Jerry Lee in the original K-9 with Jim Belushi was a real police dog with the Kansas City, Missouri, named Koton. He was tragically shot and killed in the line of duty trying to apprehend a suspect who was wanted for the attempted murder of a police officer.


• The first bare breast on television occurred in 1950, when talk show host Faye Emerson had a wardrobe malfunction and accidentally fell out of her dress. I guess we are lucky there wasn't a Parents Television Council back then.


• The first recognized Gold Record was Glenn Miller's Chattanooga Choo Choo in February 1942. It was literally a copy of the album plated gold and framed. However, it was not the first million selling record... that distinction belongs to Gene Austin's "My Blue Heaven".


• Cartoonist/Artist Robert Crumb traded six of his sketchbooks for a townhouse in the south of France. I am sure Picasso would be proud.


• To think, if Texas cattlemen didn't sue Oprah Winfrey for false defamation of perishable food in 1998, Dr. Phil would likely have not come to prominence. Phil McGraw co-founded a trial consulting firm called CSI (Courtroom Sciences, Inc), and they helped prepare Oprah for the trial, after which, Oprah invited Dr. Phil on her show, and the rest is regretfully history.


• The Nike Swoosh was designed for 35 dollars by a Portland State University graphic design student. 35 dollars in 1971 is roughly equivalent to about 185 dollars today, which is around the same amount as the price of some of Nike's premier shoes.


• The Kennedy brothers were interested in buying the Philadelphia Eagles franchise in October 1962. But history conspired against them as another matter distracted them from such a purchase: the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Tags: k-9, jim belushi, koton, faye emerson, parents' television council, glenn miller, chattanooga choo choo, my blue heaven, gold record, dr. phil, oprah winfrey, csi, nike swoosh, robert crumb, portland state university, john f. kennedy, robert kennedy, ted kennedy, philadelphia eagles, cuban missile crisis

The Patriots lose, and I get a hearty laugh

With the prospect of the Patriots going undefeated, well, of course a book written by the Boston Globe was pretty much ready for publication, and was just waiting for the last chapter to be written on the field. It was already available for preorder from Amazon and would have likely shipped as soon as the heavily favored Patriots won their final game of the post-season.



But by now we all know that the final chapter didn't turn out that way however, as the Giants beat the Patriots and denied them their seemingly assured place in football history (for which I am happy).

And then I looked at the list of items that people buy after viewing that page, and I got a huge laugh. This is not Photoshopped... this is the first three items on the list I encountered.



Yeah, sometimes customers have a really good sense of humor. Now I wonder if the Boston Globe is going to really start ripping into Lost now.

Tags: new england patriots, amazon, new york giants, boston globe, lost, veronica mars, photoshop, 19-0, tom brady, eli manning, football, undefeated, customers, joke, burn

A win for both a team and a school

Last night, I was pleased to see that LSU took out Ohio State in the BCS Championship game, but something else I saw during that telecast warmed my heart even more.

You see, during the halftime show, there was also the presentation of the grand prize for the Pontiac Game Changing Performance, a prize that usually went to one of four major Division 1A programs week in and week out. So I was more than pleasantly surprised to see that amongst the 4 finalists for the larger seasonal prize of 100 thousand dollars, there were two programs from the lower divisions... and considering that there were only 3 such teams out of 52 during the entire season, that is a really stunning turn of events.

So not only did Division 1AA Appalachian State get a nod for their upstart victory over then #5 Michigan, but a little Division III school in San Antonio, Trinity University, who pulled off one of the most improbable plays I've ever seen was also a finalist.

And then the winner was announced... and it was the underdog, the little school that could, Trinity University, and now they have 100 thousand more dollars for their general scholarship fund. It doesn't affect me personally, but the idea that a small school that offers a first rate education can now help a few more people who would otherwise not be able to attend get in warms my heart. A great play and a wonderful outcome... how can you go wrong?

Tags: game changing performance, trinity university, san antonio, division III, millsap, michigan, ohio state, lsu, appalachian state, football, national championship

My Sermon About the College Football Bowl System

Ever March, I don't catch the madness of the playoffs of College Basketball, I don't get World Series fever in September and October, and quite frankly, the less said about the NBA Finals, the better.

But I am a vocal believer in the College Football Bowl system. One might even say I qualify as an evangelical devotee of this form of postseason. Logically, I know that those pushing for a 16-32 team playoff system to cap the college football season have some valid points, but I just can't let go of the traditions and pageantry that the bowl system provides me and for the rest of the college faithful.

I know there are problems with the bowl system and with the selection process, that there are certain inconsistencies which call my belief in a higher authority, mainly the BCS selection committee into question, but then I look at some of the wonderful matchups bowl games provide and my doubts wash away and I have faith that in the end, this is indeed the best system, and those that don't see it that way, well, they are misguided. They don't understand the traditions, they don't love college football in the same way that us bowlers do. All this talk about having a playoff system is blasphemy to all those teams that fought and bled for us for almost a century of football at holy sites all around the country, each with its storied legends, its parables of snatching victory from the darkened heart of defeat and tales of grit and determination, of playing through the pain. And those abowlitionists and abowliests want to destroy these traditions, and wage a war on Christmas and New Year's Bowls. For shame, for shame.

I believe in the principle that the regular season IS the playoffs in college football, and that it is a reward for those teams that have lead a decent life in the regular season. It is the postseason after all, and those who are faithful to a team are rewarded as well, and those that don't get that, well, I guess they can't be convinced otherwise, and that is a shame.

Tags: bcs, college bowl, signs of the cross, playoff system, world series, march madness, ncaa football, nba, religious overtones, satire, evangelical, rose bowl, sugar bowl, fiesta bowl, orange bowl