Benz and a Backpack

Well, it wasn’t much of a surprise, but Auburn’s QB Cam Newton was this year’s recipient of the prestigious Heisman trophy. It has been something of a story-book year for Newton as he receives this award in preparation for the BCS National championship game against the Oregon Ducks. However, the award ceremony was undeniably sullied by allegations that Newton’s father may have violated NCAA rules by trying to solicit his son to Mississippi State in exchange for some cash. I am sure we will all hear the falling out of such an investigation, but it naturally raises the question about the appropriateness of college players receiving monetary compensation. I am equally sure that there were dollar signs in the eyes of any coach recruiting this star way back when, and rightfully so. He is currently responsible for more points than any other player in the FBS (by a margin of 22), further proof that it is all about being on the right side of 0. He probably doesn’t have much use for a backpack, but expect to see him in a Benz.

Believe it or not, even the NFL has to bow to the whims of Mother Nature from time to time. The inflatable roof at the Metrodome collapsed under the barrage of snow, moving back the Vikings game against the Giants yet another day. Initially the game was postponed because the Giants were unable to fly out of Kansas City during the storm. The game will be played on Monday in Detroit, and, hell, the Vikings could use an extra day. Another interesting note in the NFL is that Michael Vick is the leading vote getter in Pro-Bowl voting. I know no one cares about the Pro-Bowl but it makes a man wonder whether Vick is in the running for MVP.

Now, players get tons of love, but this week in sports coaches everywhere have decided to make their presence known. Read the rest of this entry →

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The winter solstice is still a few weeks away, but the winter-break-cannot-come soon-enough attitude in the air tells no lies- winter is fast on our heels. This means a few things in the sports world. First, NFL games really start to matter for a spot in the playoffs. Every team has something on the line, be it a chance to win a division title or a chance to be spoiler after a lukewarm season. You couple that with outrageous weather conditions that have teams playing in the snow one week and bathing in the southern sun the next, and even casual fans without HDTV’s get drawn into the action. The Giants are playing the Redskins today, and a win could put them atop the NFC East to share the division lead with the Eagles. This week’s Monday Night Football features the Jets and the Patriots, two teams with the league best 9-2 record. And who knows, maybe the Panthers can work up some momentum to get another win before the season is out.

That awkward lull between the end of the World Series and the subsequent free agent scramble is now over. There is calm in the baseball world as Derek Jeter resigned with the Yankees. It looks like the Yankee captain was forced to drink a bit of that “reality potion” as he “settled” for a deal potentially worth 56 million over 4 years. Not too shabby. The Yankee organization allegedly let him test the market, and I am sure Jeter and his team figured out if he wants Babe Ruth treatment at the ripe age of 36, that he’d have to be Yankee to even see a fraction of that Babe Ruth payout. The Yankees also resigned Mariano Rivera.

Theo Epstein, not to be drowned out by all the Yankee buzz Read the rest of this entry →

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Tom Brady was listed as questionable for the Thanksgiving Day game against the Lions. Patriots were down 14-3, and with the help of Tom Brady’s four TD passes they pulled out a victory. I guess he wasn’t so questionable, and it is better to be a Patriot than a Lion with pride. In a similar vein, it was better to be a Saint than a Cowboy. (Especially with a 3-8 record, who knows what’s happening there? That huge HD screen in Cowboys stadium must be distracting its players.) The Jets won too, but who didn’t see that coming? Oregon and Auburn both won their Thanksgiving bids to continue their undefeated seasons. But that stuff…it’s all, well…bullshit.

Thanksgiving Day football is a tradition, and Broderick Brown and Sean Lewis of the Oklahoma State Cowboys made football worth watching. In the second quarter, down by 11, and Oklahoma QB Landry Jones throws a pass that looks to be going out of bounds. But appearances can be deceiving as Broderick Brown keeps two feet in bounds while slapping the ball back in bounds into the hands of teammate Sean Lewis. Check it out. The number 9 ranked Oklahoma State program lost to its in state rival Oklahoma (ranked 13) so the underdog had its day, but I guess it isn’t so bad to be a Cowboy after all. NCAA don’t you get any ideas about retroactively reversing that call, or anything foolish like that.
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Oh boy, Michael Vick. In an earlier post, I mused he was “back from the dead.” It almost seems too good to be true: his talents were so quickly forgotten during his time in jail, yet his dynamism is so easily recalled with one stellar performance. Last week Vick threw 4 passing touchdowns and tacked on another 2 rushing. He was throwing to his second and third passing options, and totaled 413 all-purpose yards. It might be a little soon to put him on Mount Olympus, come playoff time we’ll see what happens, but its safe to say he’s looking like a little unstoppable right now. That is bad news for the New York football Giants set to host Vick and the Eagles tonight.

Now, I promised myself when I became a “blogger” never to be entrenched by the temptation to write about, well, you know, makeups and breakups. I’m going to break that promise, but to keep a bit of my dignity intact I’d like to express my condolences Read the rest of this entry →

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Some things just don’t make sense, but plenty of things make dollars. Randy Moss was the star of a viral video in which he was asked how he pays fines, to which he replied: “straight cash homie.” No he doesn’t write checks, he’s a fan of those greenbacks. That kind of honesty can get you all sorts of attention you may not have bargained for- like being on the Pats and saying you don’t feel wanted, then getting to the Vikings and effusing your unrequited love for the Patriots. But when you have a 50 inch vertical and you are over 30 years old someone will find a place for you. Today Moss will play his first game as a Titan.

In a surprising twist of fate, LeBron James can see where Randy Moss is coming from. Exact, veridical, and verifiable quotes are hard to come by unless they come from Twitter, but LeBron has been dealing with his fair share of questions about the lukewarm start for the Miami Heat. 6-4 isn’t a bad record, but the expectation coming into the season was that they would clean house. Playing time, plummeting individual stats, and Paul Pierce having his way with the Heat cannot all be LeBron James’ doing. Fans beware, it is easy to hate this team now, but they are not going to crash and burn entirely. Let us all wait until they play the Lakers (reigning champs and undeniably the best team in the NBA) to see exactly whom the basketball gods favor.

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I know this might be old news in the internet world, but the San Francisco Giants won the World Series this past Monday routing the Texas Rangers 4-1 in the series. There is already speculation about where Texas ace Cliff Lee will be pitching next year, but Edgar Renteria has silenced the speculation about his future whereabouts. Renteria will forego retirement to resign with the Giants, and if I were him I probably would have done the same thing. Renteria was on the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals that lost to the Boston Red Sox- and as a matter of fact, he made the last out in that game grounding out to Keith Foulke. That’s rough. But the next year Renteria was the starting shortstop for those same Boston Red Sox. No luck that year as the Sox went one and done in the first round against the Chicago White Sox. He then bounced around a bit to Atlanta and Detroit before ending up in San Francisco. This year he hit the game winning homerun in the deciding game of the World Series, so who could blame him for resigning?

Randy Moss, on the other hand, doesn’t have a stable home. He started the beginning of the season on the Patriots. Enter controversy, and Moss departs from Foxboro and lands in Minnesota. But for whatever reason, that didn’t workout either and Moss is now a Tennessee Titan. An elderly Moss and a youthful Vince Young could be an interesting combination.

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Let me just make this statement loud and clear…Jersey’s here. Who woulda thunk it? The Nets had the worst record in the NBA last season and they are off to a 2-0 start behind their stars Brook Lopez and Devin Harris. We might look to their matchup against the Miami Heat to see just how well they may fare this season- or at least if they could hold their own. But wait, there’s more. Since the Garden will be undergoing renovation during next year’s NBA draft, it has been moved a hop skip and a jump away to the Prudential Center in Newark (now home to the NJ Nets and Devils). It will likely be a temporary move, but I’m sure Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov is delighted that the Net’s home will also be a launching pad for future NBA Stars.
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This is the week of unbelievability. The Rangers and Giants drowned the hopes of a World Series rematch between the Yankees and Phillies, and seeing some new teams in the big dance is a welcome change. Lil Wayne has the number one album in the country and he is behind bars. Kanye West has swapped his bottom row of teeth out for some diamonds. ESPN unveiled a homepage with NBA stars depicted in their own Marvel comics, bringing superstars on the court into the world of superheroes. (Check out the Kobe cover, he has a purple and yellow Iron Man-like suit and if you are going to fight crime those are cool colors to be wearing.) Oh yeah, and the NFL is fining people for “spearing.”
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We have all heard the worn phrase “any press is good press.” The phrase is designed to communicate the idea that both damage to a reputation and honorable distinction alike can attract attention or “press.” But see, press in this sense is an outdated term. It is a word fossil of sorts, a remnant from an earlier age of print media whose evolutionary descendant is what is referred to today as “buzz.” The onomatopoeia (word formed by an associated sound) is appropriate for attracting attention in today’s world. If we are to see whether any “buzz” is good “buzz” we need to do some investigative work.

Michael Jordan recently chided he could score 100 points in today’s very differently played NBA. Our proverbial antennas go up hearing something like that, because it is, well, contentious. It is tantamount to reminding the world, in case they forgot, that he is the best basketball player to play the game. Maybe MJ picked up a copy of NBA 2K11, matched up his videogame counterpart against the likes of the entire Miami Heat squad and scored a hundred points. Maybe it had nothing to do with the videogame and all to do with one man’s ego, but whatever the case may be Air Jordan has got himself some buzz. (In his prime though, let’s be real, Jordan probably could score 100 points in today’s game…just saying.)

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Those “Wild-Card” Yankees did it again. They swept the Minnesota Twins (who were without 1B Justin Morneau) for a berth to the ALCS. Mariano Rivera looks to be in pristine postseason pitch precision mode (alliteration intended), and it always helps to have a reliable closer in the winding road to the World Series. What helps a team even more is to have your ace throw a no hitter in his first postseason outing, like Roy Halladay did for the Phillies against the Reds. It helped a Giants team that scrapped its way into the playoffs to see its ace throw a complete game, 14 K gem against the Wild-Card Braves. Plenty of hitters get their fifteen minutes of fame in a post season, but teams who win the whole shebang rely on a collection of great pitching performances. The matchups really matter. The Rangers are looking to edge out the Rays for their potential ALCS berth, the Giants and Braves are tied at one game a piece, and the Phillies will look to turn their 2-0 lead into a series victory over the Reds.

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So I have been having a bit of a moral dilemma about how exactly to speak about sports looking through a hip-hop lens. Clutch pointed out a while ago that the main intersection of sports and hip-hop is found in basketball. If you look at the attendants of a Laker game you might even be inclined to say it is in the intersection of the entertainment worlds. I know that Joe Dimaggio married Marylin Monroe, and that Joe Namath was Joe Cool for wearing fur on the sidelines of his games. Yes, Derek Jeter has dated all the hot movie stars I wish I could talk to, but even he cannot really explain the bridged gap between entertainment and sports.

Jordan can, though. He was a transcendent athlete in college, had an illustrious NBA career, a not so great baseball career, and currently has a pretty good golf game. He also was in one of the coolest movies of all time, a flick called “Space Jam.” If you haven’t seen it, you suck, but you have probably heard Lil Wayne talking about his “Space Jam Jordans.” That is the 21^st century example of Jordan’s ubiquity. In the not so long ago 20^th century, Jordan made the quantum leap from athlete to star look easy when he was marketing his own sneaker line “Air Jordan” with Spike Lee. Fast forward back to the present where Derek Jeter, a baseball player, wears Jordan brand everything and keep in mind MJ never made it to the big dance in baseball.
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So Melo might be headed to New Jersey- or at the very least he might make a pit stop there en route to the Nets alleged final destination of Brooklyn, New York. It can be frustrating to hear more about players’ movements within a league than about their interesting performances, but this potential move is different in that it is full of intrigue. We may have exited the “Summer of LeBron” and entered “The Autumn of Anthony.”

The proposed deal involves four teams, the Nets, Nuggets, Jazz and Bobcats. The Nets would end up with Melo and DJ Augustin while giving up Devin Harris, Jarvis Hayes, and prized draft pick Derrick Favors. But the implications of the deal reach farther than these teams. The Knicks come to mind, as they were the perceived front-runners in the contest for the next star to move. It’s a surprising twist in the hunt for a star basketball player to end up in New York; it may happen, just not in the Garden. Big L was “from New York, and never was a fan of the Knicks” and he might have a following pretty soon.

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