Hire this Woman. NOW.

This is Ivon Gaete. She has been a sideline reporter for the Little League World Series on ESPN, and done some work on ESPN Deportes. She is clearly underused by the network. We need to do something about that.

Whew!

Wow, what a game yesterday.

Greg Oden and the Buckeyes danced their way into the sweet 16 by winning a game they had absolutely no business winning. WE have no idea how you OSU won a game in which they

- trailed by 11 points with just under seven minutes to play

- trailed by nine points with three minutes to play

- trailed by two points with nine seconds left with Xavier shooting two free throws

- lost Greg Oden who fouled out at the end of regulation

On a different subject, a quick memo to Dick Vitale and others of his ilk who continue to live under the misguided assumption that the ACC is the "best conference in America" every year: seven ACC teams entered the NCAA tournament, and six of them have been eliminated by Sunday evening.

We Told you They Sucked.

Dumb Cheerleaders

here is a video of dumb cheerleaders to get you in the mood for the games. Enjoy the basketball games this weekend everyone.

Duke Loses!

Its already a great weekend, because Duke has lost in the first round.

Enjoy the weekend, and the tournament.

NCAA Tournament Memories Volume 2

Let the Madness begin... Gus Johnson completely loses it at about the 6 minute mark

NCAA Tournament Memories Volume 1

The day is finally here. Volume 2 coming later

Thanks for Playing Florida A&M!

This is the message that the NCAA has sent you.

Greg Oden: "I'm not NBA ready yet"

music to our ears.

The Play-in Game




What is the deal with the play-in game?

(By the way, the fact that the NCAA doesn't want the world calling it the "play-in game" means we will attempt to say “play-in game” as many times as we can.)

Why do they even have this game? The tournament was fine with 64 teams, why did they have to add this stupid extra game in the middle of the week in Dayton between the two worst teams in the field?

Also, why do automatic bid qualifiers play every year in the play-in game? These teams have “earned” their spot in the actual tournament by winning their conferences. If we are going to have this ridiculous game, why not have the two last at-large teams play for the 64th bid? Last week Niagara and Florida A&M were celebrating their wins in their respective conference tournaments, and were getting ready to be displayed on the national stage against one of the “big boys.” Now one of them isn’t going to get that chance because they are going to lose to another small program in a random play-in game before the official start of the tournament. One day you’re dancing at center court and getting ready for your 40 minutes in the sun as you are slaughtered by Kansas, but just happy to be able to one day tell your kids you shared the basketball court with Brandon Rush, and the next your headed home, with nothing to show for your efforts besides a free trip to Dayton.


And while the NCAA continues to pee on these teams shoes and tell them its raining, the coaches are less than pleased. Niagara coach Joe Mihalich said he was "shocked," and even "insulted" to be placed in the game. Florida A&M coach Mike Gillespie (whose team will be playing in its second play-in game by the way, they won the 2004 play-in game) said tonight's losing team will feel "cheated."

Why not let Stanford and Arkansas play in the play-in game? That way the loser goes home and says to themselves, “you know, we really didn’t deserve to be in the tournament anyway.” And slot the winner in as the lowest ranked 10 seed or something.

All that said, we’ll probably still watch tonight.

(quotes:Palm Beach Post)

WCT Baseball Preview of the Week

Baseball season is approaching fast, and we here at WCT can’t wait. In order to prepare for the upcoming season (and so that in October we can brag about how right we were in the spring) we will preview each division, and predict the order of finish of the teams.

Today: The surprisingly interesting National League East


New York Mets – We feel like this Mets team is going to be a lot like the Indians teams of the 90s that we watched as a kid. They have one of the best lineups in baseball, but very few sure-things in the way of starting pitching. Pedro Martinez is STILL rehabbing his shoulder after surgery LAST WINTER. Optimistically, he is expected to join the rotation in August.

(Quick aside here: Is it just us, or is Pedro Martinez the only pitcher in baseball history to take nearly a full calendar year to recover from shoulder surgery? How is this possible? We are not saying that he is a malingerer, but people like Kerry Wood get clowned for not being able to stay healthy, but a guy like Pedro gets off scot free when he has been as injury-prone as any player in baseball since like 2004. Did you know Pedro is only 35? Should a pitcher’s body be breaking down the way Pedro’s has over the last 3 seasons this early? When the Mets signed him as a free agent they pretty much knew that he probably would not see the end of the 4-year deal he signed, and he was 32 at the time. OK, back to the preview.)

The Mets will try to get by with Tom Glavine, who will turn 41 later this month, Orlando Hernandez, who has got to be damn near 50, and a bunch of young unproven kids. That being said, their lineup is stacked with three legitimate MVP candidates. Jose Reyes is quickly becoming one of the best all-around shortstops in baseball. David Wright is streaky, but when he is on, he is one of the best clutch hitters in the NL. And Carlos Beltran is coming off of a career year, and finally realizing the superstar potential that the Mets thought he had when they signed him. The Mets bullpen is also very deep. The Mets will have to try to win a lot of games 9-7 because the starting pitching will be so shaky. We see them winning the division solely based on their ability to out-bash people in high scoring games.


Philadelphia Phillies –Jimmy Rollins threw the gauntlet down a few weeks ago when he said that he thought that the Phillies were hands-down the best team in the NL East. We admire his optimism, but we don’t quite agree with him on that one. The Phillies are a solid team, and everyone is expecting Ryan Howard and Cole Hamels to emerge as superstars this season. They have a powerful lineup but we are not sure that it is strong enough to cover up some of their other weaknesses in the same way we think the Mets’ lineup will. They have the deepest starting staff in the division, but they can’t feel too comfortable with Tom Gordon closing and Antonio Alfonseca setting him up. We think that the starting pitching will keep this team in contention for the wild-card, but the shaky bullpen will end up being the difference between wild-card contention, and division contention.

Atlanta Braves – Did you know the Braves scored the second most runs in the National League last season? When we peruse their everyday lineup, we don’t see a whole lot of guys that make pitchers shake in their spikes, but somehow they actually outscored the Mets. We can’t see this repeating itself again this year. The Braves also lost the production Marcus Giles and Adam LaRoche in the off-season. The pitching took a step back last year without Leo Mazzone, and we don’t see it holding up this season. When is John Smoltz going to finally realize that he is not supposed to still be this good? Incidently, he turns 40 this May.

Florida Marlins – They fired the manager of the year. Simply amazing. This team is comprised mostly of kids, and will be very good very soon, but not yet.

Washington Nationals – what a joke. Looking over their roster, we will be shocked if they lose fewer than 105 games.

The Worst Jerry, the WORST!

We are not huge college basketball fans, but we love the NCAA tournament. The tournament is probably the best single sporting event of the year, in as much as 64 basketball games can be considered one single sporting event. But for some reason, it brings out the worst from sports media every year. Actually, we take that back. It doesn’t bring out the worst in the sports media as much as it exposes exactly how brainless most of these analysts are in a public forum. Just a few snippets:

-Why is it that as soon as the brackets are released the talking heads have to rush to the forefront and weigh in on this ridiculous notion of "which bracket is the toughest?" There are like 6 teams that seem to be legitimately above the rest of the field: Florida, Ohio State, Kansas, UCLA, Georgetown, and North Carolina. There are also a handful of teams that just pretty much happy to be there. The other 40 or 50 teams are bunched up somewhere in between and evenly distributed among the 4 brackets. That is why the ESPN.com’s analyst symposium on the brackets turned into a giant cluster-fuck with Jay Bilas calling the East the hardest and the South the easiest, Doug Gottlieb calling the South the hardest and the West the easiest, and (this is our favorite) Dicky V calling the West the hardest (incidentally, Duke is in that bracket) and the easiest as “none.” None. Thanks Dick.

- Speaking of Dicky, Shocking that he would pick an ACC team to win it all. Truly shocking.

- Speaking of the ACC, how the hell did the committee make Duke a 6 seed?? Did you know that they haven’t beaten a tournament team (we don’t count BC) since December 21st?? In case you were wondering, the other 6 seeds are Louisville (3rd in the Big East and 8-2 in their last 10 games), Notre Dame (4th in the Big East and 7-3 in their last 10, including a trip to the conference semis) and Vanderbilt (10-6 in conference and the first SEC team to beat Florida this year). Duke, as you should know by now, was 8-8 in a weaker than normal ACC, tied for 6th place, and lost in the opening round of the conference tournament to a 5-11 NC State team. Anyone else would have been “on the bubble” but Duke is a 6 seed.

- Joakim Noah acting like an ass makes it easy to cheer against Florida, and we aren't the only ones who think so.

HUH??

Ohio State is the number 1 team in the nation in both polls coming into this weekend, they roll through the Big 10 tournament winning every game by at least 11 points, and win in the title game by 17 over the #4 ranked Wisconsin Badgers, they have not lost since January 9th and have only lost once by double-digits, (back in December mind you) and they are not the #1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament?

The #1 overall team is Florida, who lost games by 13, 10, and 10 points late in the season. Amazing.

Who Dat is? Dats Just our Baby Daddy!


are we the only ones that remember that horrible song?


Much to our surprise, The Big Lead and Deadspin both reported Thursday that Tom Brady was apparently not quite done impregnating starlets.




The blogs cite a Brazilian report and a Boston Globe report that state that Gisele Bundchen, current squeeze of the Patriots quarterback, is now pregnant with his child.

As TBL astutely points out, this would mean that Tommy Tuck Rule would have two children born by two different celebrity women within a few weeks of each other, sometime late this summer.

Is he trying to go after some kind of record? Is he going to become the new NFL Shawn Kemp? Or is he just trying to one-up Matt Leinart? And what about the two half-brothers/sisters that will be born? What kind of fucked-up relationship are they going to have?

Anyways, in honor of our Friday T&A feature, we know present you with some pictures of Gisele.

Savor the flavor

because she is not going to be looking like this for much longer.

We still are not convinced that we aren't all being had with this whole story, so if this all turns out to be false, we would like to say "we told you so" ahead of time.

In any event, happy conference tournament weekend everyone.

And as you venture out into the nightlife, please, please, for the love of God, bring a rubber (or two) with you.

America Held Hostage:24 Days


24 days 'till baseball season and still no word on the MLB Extra Innings Package...

This Just In...

LeBron James is re-goddam-diculous. I would love to hear what all of those Bron-haters on TV have to say about tonights performance in Detroit.

Jamal Lewis!!!

If you can't beat 'em (or if they piss on your defense for 600 yards in two games) Join 'em (or in this case sign 'em as free agents)

Welcome to Cleveland Jamal! We hope you enjoy running the ball without blockers.

5 we like, 5 we don't like: SportsCenter Anchors




We do a lot of thinking on the treadmill, and we watch a lot of SportsCenter on the treadmill too. Therefore, we do a lot of thinking about SportsCenter. Today, we got to thinking about SportsCenter anchors.

5 anchors we want to see less.

Stuart Scott

Easiest one on the board by far. In like 1994 he was new, original, really a breath of fresh air on a somewhat stagnate SC anchor lineup (plus we were only 13 at the time so maybe we thought his act was cool). It is now 13 years later, and he is doing the exact same act. He mugs for attention during other anchor’s highlights, and his writing is tired and painfully unfunny and uninteresting. But enough bloggers have taken their shots at Stu, so we will move on.

Kenny Mayne

We actually forgot how much we hated Kenny until he mysteriously re-appeared to do the Sunday night SC with Stu-yah last weekend. What a combo that was. They were practically elbowing each other out of the way to steal camera time. They kept trying to outdo each other with inane blather through every highlight. He just doesn’t understand that he is there to narrate the highlights and provide little stats and tidbits to enhance the viewer’s enjoyment. He is not there to try to be funny and come up with the next stupid catchphrase. He even tries to use a dry, monotone delivery to try to be even funnier. Truly annoying.

Neil Everett

Every time SC starts up and we hear “howZIIIIIT??” we roll our eyes and check to see what else is on. What are “PF Flyers?” And why does he mention them every time a runner gets thrown out at home?

John Buccigross

What Mick Jaggar is to the Rolling Stones, John Buccigross is to annoying sportscasters. Imagine hearing analogies like that 5 or 6 times during a SC broadcast, except with much more obscure bands. THAT is his catchphrase. GUH!

Brian Kenny

We hate sabermetrics. And he has to make some allusion to sabermetrics every time he does a baseball highlight.

5 that ESPN should use to replace those flunkies

Chris McKendry

Very understated, doesn’t get in the way of the highlights, or her co-anchors, and even clever at times. She also seemed perfect for The Big Picture's “who would you do” competition. Right on the fence so there would have been good two-way debate. I think the fact that she constantly makes bedroom eyes at the camera would have put her over the top. But anyway, she is also a very good anchor.

Scott Van Pelt

Funny, but without getting in the way. It is a very delicate balance between an anchor being funny and an anchor trying to be funny and calling too much attention to himself/herself. Van Pelt he never seems like he is trying to be funny. Also, good writing during his lead-ins, and most of all, he gives you good info during a highlight.

Dave Revsine

ESPN has buried this guy because he doesn’t arouse that much passion one way or the other. Ideally, SC anchors should like sports officials, if you hardly know they are there, then they are doing a good job. Revsine does a good job of fading into the background and letting the highlights do the job, while still throwing a quip in every once and a while to keep the viewer entertained.

Linda Cohn

What the hell happened to her? Why has ESPN buried her? She is like the female Revsine.

Josh Elliot

He is new to the anchor’s desk, but pretty good so far.

YouTube Clip of the (last) Week!

Sorry for the re-post, but here is the YouTube clip from last week that we accidently deleted.

WCT Baseball Preview of the Week

Baseball season is approaching fast, and we here at WCT can’t wait. In order to prepare for the upcoming season (and so that in October we can brag about how right we were in the spring) we will preview each division, and predict the order of finish of the teams.

Today: The Utterly Maddening American League West

The Los Angeles Angels – This team drives us crazy. When you consider hitting, starting pitching, bullpen, defense, managing, this might be, top to bottom, the best team in all of the American League. On paper, they really don’t have many weaknesses. But they go through long stretches when they struggle, and it really must be frustrating for their fans.(Luckily for us, we are Indians fans…nothing frustrating about cheering for that team… but that’s neither here nor there) The Angels have the best pitching rotation in the division, and one of the top three in all of baseball. Colon, is either the worst ace in baseball, or the best bad pitcher in all of baseball, but either way you look at him, he is solid. Figuratively speaking of course. John Lackey is a good #2, and Jared Weaver is only going to get better. Ervin Santana and Kelvim Escobar are very underrated. The bullpen is also solid, and guys like Orlando Cabrera and Chone Figgens are guys who always seem to come up big in big spots. There is no reason this team shouldn’t run away with this division as long as everyone stays healthy. But inevitably they won’t. They will likely underachieve, again, and let lesser teams like Oakland hang around.

Oakland A’s – we hate sabermetrics (sabremetrics?). We hate Billy Beane. We hate to go all Hater Nation on you, but screw the A’s.

Texas Rangers – The Rangers seem to refuse to try to put together any semblance of a pitching rotation. They have a very good lineup, with Michael Young getting on base and Mark Teixeira and Hank Blaylock driving in runs, but their pitching staff will be, as it always is, awful. Kevin Millwood is decent, but Vicente Padilla, Brandon McCarthy, John Koronka, and Kameron Loe aren’t going to get it done in the AL. The only interesting thing about watching this team all year will be seeing if Sammy Sosa and Eric Gagne can stay healthy enough to provide any production. Look for them to finish in third.

Seattle Mariners – The Mariners are not good enough to compete, but not bad enough to be comically bad. They have a few players that make them somewhat interesting, like Ichiro, Felix Hernandex, and Richie Sexson, but in many ways they are like a forgotten team. We can’t see them finishing anywhere other than last place again.

The End of the Dead Zone

March is FINALLY here. With the end of February comes the end of the worst month on the sports calendar. It also brings the beginning of March, by our count, the third best sports month on the calendar (behind October and September in that order. We are willing to argue this point).

In honor of the beginning of meaningful college basketball games at long last, we bring you pictures of hot college basketball cheerleaders!

Whoops!! Sorry... Don't know how that got in there. Lets try this again, Hot college basketball cheerleaders!!

She is a University of Florida "Dazzler." We have trouble containing our contempt for the Florida basketball team, but we do love us some Dazzlers.

UCLA is a team that people seem to have forgotton, we hope they hang around the tournament long enough for their cheerleaders to make an appearance

And we leave you with two Texas cheerleaders. We have no idea what the hell they are doing, but we love it.

Happy March Basketball Fans!

Duke Should Not be Ranked

Last night, as we settled down on the couch with a cold one (and by “one” we mean 12-pack) for a night of college basketball, we were taken aback by something that had apparently completely slipped by most of the hoops-viewing world. Duke is ranked #14 in both polls.

First, let us say that we were surprised to learn this before the game, as we pretty much assumed that they would be handled by unranked Maryland (UM won 85-77). So this is not a case of 20-20 hindsight. Also, we should preface our comments by letting any new readers know that we previously took great joy in Duke’s struggles in early February.

We were not surprised to see Duke ranked when we tuned into ESPN last night, we were just puzzled as to how they could possibly go from unranked one week, to ranked #14 two weeks later, without any quality wins (BC was laughably overrated as they are just about every year. We aren’t counting that as a quality win).

Lets examine the ACC standings. Coming into last night’s game, Duke was 8-6 in conference, tied with Maryland, and two games behind the leaders. The ACC leaders were, again as of last night, North Carolina, 10-4, and ranked #8, who beat Duke in their only meeting so far (they play again in Chapel Hill on Sunday). Virginia Tech, 10-4, and -here’s where it gets screwy- ranked #21 who beat Duke in their only meeting of the season in Durham. And UVA (we know, UVA??), 10-4, and ranked #25 and also beat Duke in their only meeting of the year. So to recap: that’s two teams ahead of Duke in the standings who hold a head-to-head edge over Duke ranked seven and eleven spots BEHIND them in the polls respectively.

Right, we forgot to mention something. That UVA #25 ranking is in the Coaches Poll. The Cavs are unranked in the AP poll. Right now they are second among the “others receiving votes.”

So back to Duke. After being left out of the polls two weeks ago, wins over BC and Georgia Tech vaulted them to the rankings of #18 and #17 in the AP and Coaches Polls, leapfrogging teams like West Virginia, who was coming off of a win over then #2 UCLA, Vanderbilt, who was coming off of a win over then #1 Florida, and Texas, who we firmly believe is one of the more underrated teams in the nation and would smoke Duke on a neutral court. So in other words, beating BC and GT was more impressive to voters than WVU going to L.A. and beating UCLA, or Vandy giving Florida their first conference loss.

All of this brings us back to last night. If we found someone who didn’t know any better, and told them that one of the two teams we were watching was unranked, and the other was in the top 15, needless to say we could have won a lot of money from them. We know there is a bias in the media towards Duke, but this is really getting out of hand. So if the rankings come out next week and Duke is still ranked, we will just simply have to laugh and shake our head. If they come out and Maryland, who has now swept Duke, and beat UNC on Sunday and is really picking up steam, is ranked behind them, we will blow a collective gasket.

Has the Whole World Gone CRAZY??


Let us be the first (and it would seem like the only) ones to say that we thoroughly enjoyed Pat Summitt’s appearance at the Florida-Tennessee game last night. Even though Deadspin, Awful Announcing, and The Big Lead, three blogs that we read religiously by the way, have all called it a letdown, we thought it was great for several reasons:

It showed school spirit

Not many schools have coaches that are as close-knit as the University of Tennessee. Bruce Pearl knows that it is in his best interests to align himself and his team with the much more famous, and much more successful, Lady Vols squad. That’s why he dressed up like an idiot and cheered at the women’s game last month. And this was her returning the favor. Hell, even Fat Phil was in attendance last night, picking his nose and sitting with Peyton Manning. How many schools have coaches that are that close and that supportive of their colleagues? The Buckeyes could learn a lot from the Vols. It wouldn’t hurt to see Coach Tressell-Vest at some basketball games cheering on Thad and his guys.

It showed a different side of Summitt

We don’t claim to know much about Women’s Basketball, but we know that Pat Summitt has an image of a bit of a curmudgeon. She is sort of like John Thompson in a dress. This display last night showed a completely different Pat Summitt. She showed that she doesn’t take herself too seriously to show up in a damn cheerleading outfit in her mid 50s.

What exactly did you expect?

Did you guys think that she was going to come out topless with her chest painted like Pearl was at the women’s game? I think coming out in a cheerleading outfit singing “Rocky Top” is about as much as I thought she was going to do.

And most importantly, it led, however indirectly, to a Florida loss, and probably the loss of their #1 seed.

WCT Baseball Preview of the Week

Baseball season is approaching fast, and we here at WCT can’t wait. In order to prepare for the upcoming season (and so that in October we can brag about how right we were in the spring) we will preview each division, and predict the order of finish of the teams.

Today: the spectacularly mediocre National League West

Los Angeles Dodgers – The Dodgers are the one-eyed man in the land of the blind that is, the National League West Division. Jason Schmidt, if he can stay healthy, will be the #1 starter and add some depth to the rotation when Brad Penny has his inevitable arm injury. The lineup enjoyed the addition of Luis Gonzalez, and the subtraction of J.D. Drew. Gonzalez has to feel rejuvenated now that he is out of Arizona. We see the Dodgers winning the division and losing in the first round again.

San Francisco Giants – The most underrated off-season signing was the Giants acquisition of catcher Bengie Molina. Molina, even though he looks he swallowed his brother Yadier, is solid both offensively and behind the plate. The most overrated off season signing was the Giants overpaying Barry Zito. Zito will benefit from a move to the NL, but he has been pretty average since winning the Cy Young in 2002. Look for the Giants to compete for the wild-card. (By the way, that was an entire team preview of the Giants without even one mention of their cross-dressing left-fielder. Take that ESPN!)

San Diego Padres – The Padres acquired Greg Maddux this past off-season, but we are not sure how much he has left. This team has one of the deepest pitching staffs in the NL, but they will struggle to score runs. They simply have no discernable run-producers in their everyday lineup, even by National League standards. Did you know that Brian Giles, the Padres #3 hitter most of last year, drove in 83 runs in 158 games last year? 83? He had a slugging percentage of .397 for crying out loud!

Arizona Diamondbacks – This team could actually be decent this year. The top of the starting rotation, with new/old D-Back Randy Johnson joining Brandon Webb, and Livan Hernandez, should be pretty solid. Johnson will likely have a better year after returning to the weak NL, and we expect Webb to have another pretty good year. The problem that will keep this team from competing will be their inability to score runs. Eric Byrnes annoys us. Why does everyone love that douche?

Colorado Rockies – This team flat-out stinks. Their roster is comprised almost exclusively of players who were complete failures on their previous teams (Kaz Matsui, LaTroy Hawkins, Javy Lopez to name a few). And many teams take failed starters and make them into closers, but seriously, who takes a failed closer, in this case Byung-Hyun Kim, and makes him a starter? The most interesting thing to involve this team this winter was the trade rumors involving Todd Helton. The Rockies openly shopped Helton to the Red Sox, but couldn’t get a deal done. Then after the rumors passed, Helton said he was “glad to be back.” What? This team tried to ship you out of town, loses 90 games each year, and has pretty much served as baseball purgatory since the franchise’s inception, and you’re glad to be back? Whatever man. Have a great year Rockies fans!

CLEVELAND BROWNS WIN the coin toss for the 3rd pick

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Hilarious Picture of the DayFrom left to right thats Ludacris, Prince, and Dave Chappelle sitting together at the NBA All-Star game.

Why is it that rules don’t apply to Roger Clemens?

He doesn’t have to go to spring training

We don’t know yet if he is going to play this year or not (and if so, for whom), but one thing we do know is that he will not be participating in spring training for the second year in a row. Why is he able to get away with this? Why is it that he can sit on his couch through March and April and field calls from teams ready and willing to throw money at him for two-thirds of a season of work?

Imagine if Brett Favre, instead of announcing his intention to return in ’07-08 on the Friday before the super bowl, went the entire off-season wavering about his intentions. Then in like mid-September, he announced that he was coming back, and ready to listen to offers from teams. Then lets say the Packers stepped up and signed him. He would then take a month or so to get into shape and ride into town on his white horse around week 6. Would we let this take happen? As it is, Favre was ripped for dragging out his decision last year. How would he have been treated if he missed all of training camp and a significant number of games?

He doesn’t have to go to road games if he isn’t pitching

People kill Barry Bonds for being a bad teammate, and rightfully so because this seems to be true. But at least he sits in the dugout on roadtrips when he isn’t playing. Why is it that Clemens doesn’t have to do this? He isn’t the only player in the majors with a family. Wouldn’t just about every player with kids like to just show up at games in which they are scheduled to start in, and spend the other days at home with the family? Not only that, but a lot of guys have pregnant wives and/or newborn or infant kids, and they go on roadtrips. Clemens kids are in high school and college! He has got a kid in the minors for crying out loud!

We realize that Clemens is a legend and has earned a lot of leeway. But enough has got to be enough at some point, right?

Its all I can Stands and I Can't Stands No More!

Mike Lupica is getting off scot free.

For those of you who do not live in New York or are not familliar with his brand of "journalism," let us fill you in. He is just as self-absorbed, cynical, and douchebag-ish as Jay Mariotti, but he only appears on the WWL once a week to Mariotti's five, so most people haven't caught on yet. Therefore he continues to be allowed to publish his weekly Sunday column in the New York Daily News and make outrageously off-base and meaningless statements. This has been going on for far too long and we can't take it anymore. His ramblings from this morning's column put us over the edge.

Exhibit A - Moronic arguments and baseless statements
"Michael Jordan, at the end, got paid as much by the Bulls for the past as he did for the present. And so should Mo Rivera, an even greater money performer than even Jordan ever was."

First off, the last time Jordan took a paycheck from the Bulls, it was the 1998 season and he was leading them to thier sixth NBA championship in eight years. So they weren't paying him for the past, they were in the midst of a championship run, and were paying him for the present. The Yankees on the other hand, haven't won a championship in six full years.

Second, between 1991 and 1998, the only years the Bulls didn't win the championship were the two years that Jordan didn't play the full season. Rivera however, while an all-time great performer in the postseason for the Yankees, has been at the center of two spectacular collapses in crunch time. The ninth inning of game seven of the 2001 World Series, and the ninth inning of game four of the 2004 ALCS. So to call Rivera a better money performer than Jordan is ridiculous.

And third, how can the closer, who pitches 2 innings max at the end of games after the rest of the team has already garnered a lead, be more important to his team than Jordan, who was one of five players on the court for his team, and played almost every minute and took every big shot?

Exhibit B - Meaningless statements

"The Knicks had four days off before they played the first game of their West Coast trip, against the Jazz. Then they didn't play the Lakers until the following Tuesday night.But when they got blown out the next night by Golden State - playing without either Baron Davis or Jason Richardson - we heard how tired the Knicks were."

We have no idea what he is even talking about here.

Exhibit C - Axes to grind

"The Knicks are covered as if the No. 23 - last year's win total, now matched - is more magical now than when Jordan wore it."

Again, for those of you who don't live here, Lupica hates Isaiah Thomas, and the fact that the Knicks are significantly better this year under Thomas than they were last year under Larry Brown really pisses him off. As a result, he makes bizarre comments like the above in the hopes that he can convince himself that there has been no improvement.

We really have no idea why we continue to read the garbage that he writes, its really not good for our blood pressure. But we also get genuine entertainment from his ignorance and the fact that a major newspaper in the largest market in this country is paying him for this.