May 15, 2012 8:30 AM
By updating RealClearSports I read hundreds of articles every week but sometimes there are particular passages that need highlighting. And to make these passages more palatable I'm doing them in award form! The awards are completely random and will change weekly.
The NFL is like a smoking-hot woman. A smoking-hot woman that knows she's smoking hot and knows she can treat people like crap and they'll still come back for more. Is there any group the NFL hasn't imposed its will on?
The league is the most dangerous sport and yet contracts aren't guaranteed.
The NFL makes money hand-over-fist and yet extorts cities into building new stadiums that are probably not financially beneficial to the city.
Despite taxpayers paying for these new stadiums they are still subjected to the blackout rules.
How could the NFL not have known that these vicious hits would cause permanent damage later on? And yet, until just recently, they did nothing to curb the problem.
And then there is the man behind it all right now - Roger Goodell. The Commissioner has put on quite a show by punishing the Saints organization and players for Bounty Gate. But let's take a look at the penalties. The Saints organization that fostered this whole mess was fined $500K and lost a couple second-round picks. Jonathan Vilma who just played into that culture is suspended for a season and thus will lose $1.6 million. Should I player be penalized over 3 times more than the organization that fostered this behavior? How big do you think half a million is to a billionaire owner?
The NFL has taken for granted fans' love for the game and it's giving nothing back. I hope the former players that are suing the league win and the NFL is taken down a few notches. I wouldn't even mind if the league was sued into bankruptcy. I just hope my Bills can win a Super Bowl before that happens...On to the awards!
Continue to Column Awards of the Week (5/8-5/14)
May 8, 2012 8:30 AM
By updating RealClearSports I read hundreds of articles every week but sometimes there are particular passages that need highlighting. And to make these passages more palatable I'm doing them in award form! The awards are completely random and will change weekly.
There are some things that when revealed can only do harm. There are some things that should remain private. Last Wednesday Junior Seau committed suicide. He was perhaps the most famous athlete in San Diego's history and as such it was big news. I understand why there was so much coverage from the event and it some of it could actually help fans deal with the loss of a legend they idolized.
As the battle rages on about the effects of football on the human brain, we might be able to learn a lot from Seau's death. It could have a profound effect on football's future and the implementation of stricter safety methods or might be able to shed light on better ways to test whether concussions will have long-term effects. I was glad to hear the Seau family agreed to donate his brain to science so that maybe future players can benefit from the research. What I don't think anyone can learn from is the 911 call placed by Megan Noderer.
Noderer, Seau's girlfriend was the first to find Seau after he shot himself. She called 911 in an absolute panic as the operator tried to decipher the situation. The operator then transfers her to someone in the fire department who walks her through CPR. The call lasts nearly 8 minutes. I got through 26 seconds before shutting it off.
What is gained from listening to someone in that situation? Why do people do it? What is the fascination? The call is sickening enough but knowing others are listening to it out of morbid curiosity is even worse. Why exactly are 911 calls available to the public? His death was quickly ruled a suicide and there's no criminal trial and even if there was then that call would only seem relevant to the family and those involved in the case. There are some things that should remain private and 911 calls should be at the top of that list because there's absolutely nothing to gain from posting them for the public. On to the awards!
Continue to Column Awards of the Week (5/1-5/7)
May 1, 2012 11:30 AM
By updating RealClearSports I read hundreds of articles every week but sometimes there are particular passages that need highlighting. And to make these passages more palatable I'm doing them in award form! The awards are completely random and will change weekly.
On Friday at Camden Yards in Baltimore, a fan ran onto the field. It was already the fourth incident this season but definitely the most entertaining. The fan ran around the outfield. Then he ran to the infield. Then he circled around 2nd base towards third before running home and diving head first into home plate. After he got up he was quickly put down by umpire Jeff Kellogg. Of course the crowd went wild. Not just at the tackle but the entire event. Who doesn't love watching some idiot run onto the field? Well, there are probably at least nine players on the field that don't.
In addition to the A's on the field, Adam Jones, the Orioles center fielder spoke out on fans running onto the field and stood up for Jeff Kellogg. He told the Baltimore Sun, "I'm sick and tired of these guys running on the field, man. I said let's get a K-9, something. A K-9 [unit] would be fine... It's so annoying. You're stopping the game. I understand you're drunk. I mean, go do that on someone else's expense. I hope that's [Kellogg's tackle] a lesson." He even took it a step further and advocated tasing fans that trespass onto the field.
As much as I enjoy the occasional fan on the field, I have to side with Jones on this one. There needs to be much harsher punishments to dissuade this type of activity and if that is tasing and/or K-9s than I'm all for it. Currently, cops are taught to circle the perpetrator until they can safely take them down. It makes the cops look powerless and frankly lazy as they slowly get into position as the crowd cheers for the fan's escape.
As you can see I'm a little torn. It needs to stop but it's so entertaining. How about we dissuade these individuals with harsher tactics yet make those tactics entertaining? You know how in DC they have the Presidents race? And in Milwaukee it's different types of sausages? Let's have a K-9 unit with one dog wearing an Orioles jersey and the other wearing the jersey of the opposite team. Which dog will drag the guy down first? Or the officers have bean bag guns and the crowd tries to guess what color the bag is going to be. It's really a win-win situation. On to the awards!
Continue to Column Awards of the Week (4/24-4/30)
April 30, 2012 10:48 AM
Now with the draft over it's time for every major website to come up with their own draft grades. Since draft grades can vary wildly from one site to the next we took it upon ourselves to average grades from the major sites and come up with a comprehensive draft report card. Despite varied opinions there was a lot of consensus; one thing nearly everyone agreed upon is that we shouldn't really be grading drafts until at least a couple years down the road. But that didn't seem to stop anyone from giving out draft grades and it isn't going to stop us from averaging those draft grades.
The RCS Grade Averages were calculated like a standard GPA (4.0 for an A, 3.7 for an A-, 3.3 for a B+, 3.0 for a B, 2.7 for a B-, etc.).
Everyone agreed that the Bengals killed it as they received three A+ grades and their lowest grade was an A- from Mel Kiper. At the other end of the spectrum were the Saints, who had an average GPA of 1.09, barely above a D average. New Orleans didn't have much of a chance for a good grade coming in without a pick in the first two rounds due to a trade from last year and a punishment for their bounty scandal; both CBS and Yahoo! failed the Saints - the only two failing grades given by any source.
Of course take all these grades for what they are worth, which is not much, but for today Bengals fans can feel pretty proud of themselves at least.
April 27, 2012 10:45 AM
Over the last several months anyone and everyone was coming up with their own mock drafts. Now that the first round of the draft is over its time to look back at some of those mock drafts and see if anyone's predictions were actually worth a damn. The table below examines the accuracy of 12 mock drafts.
You can see that in terms of predicting the exact draft pick Dane Brugler of CBS and Don Banks of SI did the best, each correctly slotting seven of the 32 first round picks, solid but not exactly otherworldly. As far as nailing picks on the head, their coworkers Rob Rang and Peter King, along with Chad Reuter of NFL.com did the worst.
Of course, slotting a pick in the exact right spot is not the only measure of the success of a mock draft. Particularly with all the trades this year it would be very hard for these prognosticators to know who is going to go exactly where. As far as the worst mock, Russ Lande of Sporting News did not include nine of the players selected in the first round in his mock, over a quarter of the picks.
The biggest surprise of the draft was clearly WVU OLB Bruce Irvin going 15th to Seattle. Only one of the 12 mock drafts had Irvin in the first round at all, Rob Rang of CBS Sports. In addition no mocks had Illinois WR A.J Jenkins or Virginia Tech RB David Wilson (who went 30th and 32nd respectively) in their mock drafts.
In addition to Irvin the biggest misses of the draft were National Football Post's Wes Bunting projecting Bills' 10th pick South Carolina Stephon Gilmore to go 32nd and Russ Lande projecting Buccaneers' 7th pick Mark Barron to go 30th overall.
It's impossible to say who had the 'best' mock draft with so many variables, but in my opinion Don Banks was the most impressive. In addition to his seven correctly slotted players, of the six players selected in the first round but not included in his mock, five of those were the last five picks of the round.
April 25, 2012 3:39 PM
The NFL Draft begins on Thursday night, so before it starts we will take one last look at a handful of the mock drafts floating around the web. We have taken 12 mock drafts, placed them side-by-side and tabulated that average projected draft order, listed as the RCS Average Selection below. RCS Average Selection does not take into account who a specific team is likely to pick, it is just a list of the players in order of their average draft position across the mock drafts used. The Common Pick column looks at the mode selection at each spot across all 12 mock drafts. If no player was selected by more than two mock drafts at a certain pick then no player is listed for that spot.
The top two picks are locked in, and everyone with the exception of the ESPN draft gurus have the Vikings taking Kalil with the third pick. It's not until the Rams and the sixth pick that we start to see real discrepancies between all the mocks.
Remember RCS Average Selection does not take into account team need, it is the mean selection value of a player, the common pick is the mode.
The talk of someone trading up to select Ryan Tannehill with the 4th pick seems to have completely stopped as looks to be headed to the Dolphins now.
Moving up the draft board: South Carolina CB Stephon Gilmore moved up from 19th to 12th since last week and Syracuse DE Chander Jones rose from 30th to 23rd. Last week Boise State OLB Shea McCellin and Oklahoma State QB Brandon Weeded were not on the projected first round draft board, the day before the draft they have landed at 25th and 28th respectively.
Falling down the draft board: UNC DE Quinton Coples dropped from 10th to 18th, Iowa OT Riley Reiff fell from 12th to 17th, Alabama OLB Courtney Upshaw slipped from 17th to 22nd, Stanford OG Jonathan Martin fell from 23rd to 29th, and Ohio State OT Mike Adams dropped from 26th to off the board.
Mock Drafts used and date last updated:
April 24, 2012 9:30 AM
By updating RealClearSports I read hundreds of articles every week but sometimes there are particular passages that need highlighting. And to make these passages more palatable I'm doing them in award form! The awards are completely random and will change weekly.
I'll keep this rant short mainly because I spent the majority of my time devising a ridiculous plan to stop tanking in the NBA. Despite some lackluster moments in the NBA this season I've been fairly happy with the level of play despite the shortened training camps and schedules. It's been an entertaining and intriguing season (even though I'd argue it would've been even better had they played about 60 games and allocated a little more rest time). But now I find myself a little disappointed.
I thought a shortened season would result in more parity and would make for an insanely exciting final few days of the season. Instead, all 8 playoff spots in the East have been clinched and the Suns and Jazz are fighting for the chance to be swept by the Spurs. The East's 6-8 seeds are still up for grabs between the Magic, Knicks and 76ers (they can't get the 6th seed but have a chance at the 7-seed) but do any of those three teams have a chance in the opening round? The West has at least a little bit of intrigue with the Lakers and Clippers still battling it out for the Pacific division title and the Nuggets and Mavericks looking to avoid a match-up with the Thunder.
The drama might be gone from the regular season but hopefully the playoffs will make up for that. I don't expect many upsets from the first round but that will make for some great second round series. If the level of play is raised as it normally is than most of the angst from the lockout will vanish and what seemed like a huge PR nightmare will become just a bump in the road. On to the awards!
Continue to Column Awards of the Week (4/17-4/23)
April 24, 2012 8:30 AM
There's only a few more days left in the NBA season and you know what that means - tanking! To be fair, tanking has been happening for weeks (and in the Bobcats' case it would appear all season long). The Warriors shut down David Lee and Stephen Curry. Is there any doubt those players would be in there if they were in the midst of a playoff chase? The Blazers traded away Marcus Camby and Gerald Wallace for next to nothing in return and have the likes of Jonny Flynn and Nolan Smith running the point.
There's a lot of talk about a bunch of teams strategically tanking due to this year's strong draft class. For some teams it makes more sense than others. The Warriors get to keep their top pick if it's in the top 7. If it falls outside of that it goes to the Jazz. Currently the Warriors have the 8th worst record but are jumbled up with a lot of teams with a similar record.
It's difficult to tell who is tanking and who is not but clearly something must be done about it. The NBA would like all games to be as competitive as possible and fans obviously want to see that as well. Why should teams be rewarded for not putting the best product out there and the teams that barely make the playoffs get punished with a quick playoff exit and a middle of the road first round pick?
Continue to A Solution to Stop Tanking in the NBA
April 18, 2012 3:51 PM
The NFL Draft is right around the corner and pre-draft over-coverage is in full swing, which of course means more mock drafts. For those of you who don't wish to go from site to site to contrast and compare all the mock drafts out there, we here at RCS have brought 11 different mock drafts to you all in one handy table.
We placed 11 mock drafts side-by-side and tabulated the average draft order, listed as the RCS Average Selection below. This method does not take into account team needs, so you'll see Ryan Tannehill going sixth to the Rams - it doesn't mean that's where we think Tannehill will be selected, it just means on average he was taken the 6th highest in all mock drafts (this is a byproduct of three mocks slotting the QB 4th and seven slotting him 8th). The Common Pick column on the other hand looks at the mean selection across the mock drafts at each spot in the draft. If no player was selected by more than two mock drafts at a certain pick, then no player is listed at that spot.
The top three are all pretty much secured, after that the further you get down the draft board the more uncertainty that arises.
*Remember, RCS Average Selection does not take into account team needs or who a specific team is likely to pick. Common Pick is the mean selection across the 11 mock drafts listed.
Since our
last mock compilation there have been some changes. No one player has climbed up or fallen down all mock draft boards, but there has been some movement. Memphis DT Dontari Poe has dropped from 8th to 14th, and Georgia OT Cordy Glenn slipped from 16th to 21st. New to the board in this edition is Michigan State DT Jerel Worthy who pops up at 27th by way of average selection.
Mock Drafts used and date last updated:
April 17, 2012 8:30 AM
By updating RealClearSports I read hundreds of articles every week but sometimes there are particular passages that need highlighting. And to make these passages more palatable I'm doing them in award form! The awards are completely random and will change weekly.
If a game is played and SportsCenter doesn't cover it, did it really happen at all? That's the philosophical question it seems the NHL is dealing with. ESPN hasn't had a deal with the NHL in nearly a decade and there's no question that hurts its potential growth. The NHL is one of the big four sports in the United States but it's about as close to the top 3 as Keanu Reeves' acting is to Robert Redford's.
The easiest way to show just how far behind the NHL is is to look at the payroll disparities. The NHL's highest paid player this year was Brad Richards who made $12 million. The Yankees have 7 players on their roster making at least that amount. Maybe that's not the easiest way to show how far behind the NHL is. Maybe it's the fact that the league has been relegated to a channel called Versus for so many years now. How many people even know where to find Versus on their cable package? It's usually tucked away in a sports tier along with the Tennis Channel and ESPNU.
But there was some good news this year for the NHL. Versus was rebranded as NBC Sports Network and for the first time ever, every single playoff game was available through NBCs network of cable channels. NBC Sports Network has struggled to increase ratings and has actually seen declines since the rebrand but perhaps the NHL can help right that ship. Hopefully the two can form a mutually beneficial relationship. Hopefully the NHL can close the gap with the 3 other major sports because it's truly a fantastic game that is especially gripping during the playoffs. As far as NBC Sports Network, hopefully it can continue to grow to provide some type of competition for the monolith that is ESPN because as it currently stands, ESPN has far too much power in determining what sporting events the general public should and shouldn't care about. On to the awards!
Continue to Column Awards of the Week (4/10-4/16)
