In
This Issue:
Current
Standings
BA Rules!
Looks
can be deceiving. Sometimes you take an overall look at a weekend's
slate of games and point spreads and you think, hmm, this is a
tough week to pick games. I know I was not the only one with that
feeling when trying to pick last week's games. Five games
had spreads over 10 points. Any game with a spread of over 10 is
a scary proposition. Is
the favorite that good, or is the underdog that bad, or both? It's
only Week #2, how do we know who sucks and who's great? Four other
games gave points to the Home teams. That's a bit unusual too.
Tough week to make picks, right?
Wrong. No less than 31 of us scored
a 9-7 or better. While we don't keep records on something like this,
I'd have to say it was one of our better weeks as a group. Only 12
of us fared worse than .500 (8-8). That's impressive. I'd place money
that it doesn't happen again. But among those of us who can feel
really good about our Week 2 performances, one person rose to the
top, literally. Jennifer "My Uncle was a Green
Bay Packer" Pickert turned in a most impressive
14-2 record last week, launching her to the top of the FBH heep.
Jennifer claims to be employing a "pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey" technique
to making picks. Whatever she's doing, it's working for her. Joining
Jennifer at the very top of the standings is none other than Sonya
"Rocky Balboa" Morgan. Sonya almost won an FBH
championship a couple years ago and is threatening to do it again.
Rounding out the top 5 are more
Business Access employees. Kenny D. is tied for
3rd, while
Roy "Mr. 46th place" Bunting and Ralph
"Mr. 42nd place" Shupp are
involved in a 5-way tie for 5th place. Including the ladies mentioned
above, this means that no less than 5 BA employees are currently
in the Top 9. Which is yet another reason why we say, BA RULES!
The Comeback Player of
the Week has to be Lupita "Fighting Irish"
Arzola. Lupita followed
a terrible 2-14 week with a solid 12-4. As predicted on these pages
last week, Lupita is just giving us all a false sense of security
before she rises up and leaves us all in her wake. I'll go out on
a ledge here and predict that Lupita will finish higher in FBH than
Notre Dame does in the AP/Coaches Poll.
Alphabetically speaking, Yogi
"Y Oh Y?" Yeager is last in FBH. Statistically
speaking, Yogi is last in FBH. While he has traditionally done very
well in this league, he is currently floundering in the FBH basement.
In fact, he's the only person not to record at least 10 victories
yet (he has 9 wins). Pitiful. But since noone has ever produced a
shutout here, it's safe to say that Yogi will hit double digits in
wins by this time next week.
Good luck to Yogi, and everyone
else!
Prime Time Crime
Where
have you gone, “Jay Feely, touch me, kick-y, good-y”?
How
on Earth can it be that ESPN’s NFL PrimeTime is no longer
on the air? Are we living in a twisted, sadistic parallel universe?
From
Phyllis George to Jillian Barberie, NFL pre-game shows have always
been fluff. Even halftime reports are pretty lame. Where the rubber
meets the road is after the late games end.
Back in the day,
you had to wait a whole week until NFL Films got Pat Summerall, Tom
Brookshire, and John Facenda out of the barroom and into the studio
to compile “This Week in Pro Football”.
That show was awesome, even though much of that game-time adrenaline
had waned far before late Saturday afternoon rolled around.
(HBO has
done a pretty good job in keeping the NFL Films tradition alive with
its “Inside the NFL” series, not that I ever
would be caught dead watching a show featuring Dan “that prick” Marino.)
Howard
Cosell later shortened the wait for highlights to a single day by
offering a quick recap during Monday Night Football halftimes (reprised
by the Chris Berman’s superior “Fastest Three
Minutes in Football” in recent years). But those clips were
merely an appetizer – when we wanted to order a double bacon
cheeseburger with steak fries.
Life changed forever when ESPN launched “NFL
PrimeTime” in
1987. It represented a quantum leap for football fans in terms of
highlight quality, quantity, and freshness. And presenting those
replays made Chris Berman a Buddha to his generation. Terms like “Rumblin’ Bumblin’ Stumblin’” and “He
could…go…all…the…way!” were woven
into American culture. We looked forward to seeing our buddies next
week. We emotionally invested. We trusted the NFL to Chris’s
care because we could sense his respect for the relationship carried
on between the game and its fans.
This season, ESPN has moved “NFL
PrimeTime” away from
Sunday nights to a slot directly proceeding its coverage of Monday
Night Football. However, Chris Berman and Tom Jackson have been replaced
by Stuart Scott, Ron Jaworski, and Mike Ditka. They’ve effectively
renamed their “Monday Night Countdown” show. “Boo-ya” is
a pale substitute for “Whoooop!” Chris and Tom can still
be seen on Sunday mornings and as a featurette during Sunday night
SportsCenter, but that’s nowhere close to the status quo. How
can you keep them down on the farm once they’ve seen the lights
of Gay Paree?
This is a clear mistake on ESPN’s part
and, I dare say, on the NFL’s part. PrimeTime brought a lot
of fans into the game and helped it achieve its recent all-time high
in popularity. Moving Chris and Tom out of their anchor seats makes
no sense and we are all left poorer as a result.
Guest
Column
Coach Could Face Suspension for Blowout
This news item was brought to
our attention and we thought it'd be cool to share it with the masses.
Some of our own commentary follows.
Sharp on offense and unrelenting on defense, Bridgeport
Central High School's football team played a terrific game Friday
night to win its
season opener against its city rival Bassick, 56-0. Now, the
Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference will decide if
Bridgeport Central played too well.
Bridgeport Central's coach, Dave Cadelina,
is the first Connecticut
high school football coach to face a possible one-game suspension
for
violating a rule implemented in May that prohibits teams from
winning by
more than 50 points. Cadelina has appealed his impending suspension,
and
his case may be heard as early as today by a three-member panel
representing the C.I.A.C., which governs high school sports in
Connecticut.
"We have had some real blowouts, and in our
judgment, there was no
reason for it," said Tony Mosa, the assistant executive director
of
the C.I.A.C. "There were enough scores in that 50-, 60-point
range where we were concerned and thought we needed to do something
about it.
"We had one game last year that was 90-0.
We felt that kids should
not be humiliated, nor should they humiliate others. That's not
what the mission of high school sports should be. If a coach
attempts to blow
out another team, we regard that as an unsportsmanlike act, just
as we
would if a coach got in a fight in a game."
Last season, New London High School, coached
by Jack Cochran, defeated
Griswold, 90-0, and won four games by 50 or more points. During
halftime of what became a 60-0 New London victory over Tourtellotte/Ellis
Tech
last season, the losing team's coach, Tim Panteleakos, was suspected
of hitting a New London security officer and trying to punch
a New London assistant coach. Panteleakos, apparently outraged
that Cochran had called a timeout just before halftime, was arrested
on a charge of
breach of the peace. The charge was later dropped, The Norwich
Bulletin reported.
It is widely believed that the rule was
directed at Cochran, who built
a reputation for championship teams and lopsided victories in
previous head-coaching positions at Bloomfield and New Britain.
Cochran resigned as New London coach in August after he was charged
with breach of the
peace for being suspected of punching a rival coach while their
teams were taking part in an off-season weight-lifting event.
Against Bassick, a team that has not won
since 2001, Bridgeport Central
had a 35-0 lead at the end of the first quarter. By the second
quarter, Cadelina was already emptying his bench, but Bridgeport
Central took a
49-0 lead into halftime. With the starters long removed from
the game
and with the team no longer passing, Bridgeport scored again,
going ahead, 56-0, in the third quarter.
Cadelina could have avoided a suspension
had he told his team not to
tackle opposing players, allowing them to run into the end zone
unimpeded and making the final score closer. He said that never
crossed his mind.
"My third-string guys work just as hard as
everyone else to get the
opportunity to go out there," he said. "We're constantly telling
them in practice how to tackle, block, execute, and we tell them
to go
hard to the whistle. What kind of respect would they have for
me or the
game if we told them to go out there and lay down? On the opposite
side,
if I were losing by a large margin? Well, there's not a player
I have
ever coached that would want the other team to lay down. That
makes a
mockery of the game."
The Bassick coach, George Loughrey, said he
supported Cadelina.
"He did everything he could not to run up the score on us,"
Loughrey said. "I don't care for this rule. I'm in a league where
I have been on the bottom for a long time, and nobody has ever
run the
score up on my team. We didn't need this rule. I'm glad he didn't
lay down. That would have embarrassed my kids."
Cadelina said: "If the intent of this
rule is to protect kids from
unsportsmanlike conduct from an opposing coach, then I shouldn't
have
anything to worry about. I just worry that since I'm the first
one, they'll want to make an example out of me. But I have the
opposing
coach saying I didn't do anything wrong, and the referee also
said he
would try to help me out."
It will be up to the three-person panel
to decide whether Cadelina
should be suspended, but Mosa said that Cadelina's efforts to
keep the
score down would be considered.
"This certainly is not cut and dried," Mosa said. "We
will encourage both the offending coach and the opposing coach
to give us
their testimony. We will want to know what the coach did to manage
the
score. Yes, there is a gray area here."
- by BILL FINLEY
September 19, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/sports/19preps.html?th&emc=th
Dave Schwade: As nuts and unsporting as a 90 - 0 blowout is, codifying
and regulating the point margin is more nuts. This is a case whereby
the coaches should self-regulate; for example, no need for a timeout
to score more points at the end of a game when you are winning
by a huge margin.
What will happen when some high school team
is up by 42 at the start of the 4th, and they are reluctant to
score more - or it is illegal to score more? Then, the other team
(we'll call them the NJ Jets in a Monday night game) come back
and tie the game.
It seems to me that the real issue is a bunch
of Paterno wannabes who run up the score for ego or gambling favors.
But, this isn't a situation that needs to be codified: It needs
to be calmified.
Roy: Quite agree. This
is not 5 and 6-year-old youth soccer we’re talking about.
Maybe the offended coach should get an orange wedge and a juice
box and go to time out. Or maybe learn how to coach.
Ralph: Little League Baseball
has a "mercy" rule. When one team is ahead by 10 runs
or more after the completion of an inning, the game is ended. If
running up of the score in a High School football game is such
a tragedy, why not invoke a "mercy rule" instead of putting
the fear of punishment into a coach with a team that is just plain
better than the opposing team? And if we really want to save bad
teams from such embarrassment, why not just tell them to recruit
better athletes from neighboring towns? That's the true American
way to build a High School team.
P
on the PP
Real American Heroes
Back
by popular demand, or so it seems, the amusing Bud Light Ads will
continue to appear on the Picks Page. I have a couple dozen of them
so they will be changing weekly. While there are a few detractors,
including the commisioner of this very league, the vast majority
of those who responded to last weeks poll are in favor of their return.
Here's the numbers...
23 people said they were happy the ads
were back.
3 people said they were sad about their return.
8 people said they were indifferent about the re-emergence of the ads,
while 12 chose not to respond at all. So in reality, 20 people actually
showed their indifference.
So here's to you, Mr. Make Your
Opinion Known By Answering A Simple Question On The Football Happenings
Picks Page. Without you, those of us who create this weekly newsletter
would have no idea how you feel about silly, meaningless topics.
By taking a few seconds out of your busy schedule, you help dictate
some of the content on these pages. But even if you don't approve
of some of what this site has to offer, we don't care. We'll do what
we want, laugh while we do it, and hope you laugh along with us.
Or at least, at us.
Extra Points
The Fastest 3 Minutes in Football Happenings
How
about that Giants/Eagles game last week! Good to see those divisional
rivalries heating back up only two weeks into the season. A healthy
McNabb is going to be great again this year and Eli Manning is better
than I expected him to be. The Giants are loaded and have the look
of a Super Bowl contender. With Dallas in the mix, the NFC East has
the potential to produce some excellent football for us this year.
[ The AFC East? Not so much. When paper lion Buffalo
is making the most noise early on, Daunte Culpepper is looking more
like a question mark than an exclamation point in Miami, the Patriots
are seriously lacking spark, and The Jets appear to be holding an “open call” to
cast a replacement for Curtis Martin and simultaneously cultivating
a young offensive line, we might have close games in the home division,
too, but for a different reason.
[ On Saturday, I flipped onto NBC’s Notre Dame broadcast minutes
after Michigan had finished delivering a 47-21 body slam to the Irish
in South Bend. Hearing the announcers nearly crying during the recap,
lamenting that “there would be no national championship this
season” was one thing…but NBC refused to display a graphic
with the final score on it despite several prime chances to do so.
What a bunch of sore losers. Then again, to pay all that cash for
the broadcast rights only to have the gold domers crap out by mid-September...I’d
be sore, too.
[ Luckily, the national championship dreams of The
Rutgers Scarlet Knights are still very much alive. After comfortably
beating Ohio (not Ohio State) in our homecoming game, RU is 3-0 for
the first time in 25 years. Next up is Howard University.
[ If
you don’t believe that Scarlet Magic is spurring a renaissance,
check this out: http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/news?slug=rivals-56188&prov=rivals&type=lgns
[ Safety Roy Williams recently signed a lucrative
contract extension with the Cowboys. After intercepting a pass versus
Washington on SNF, he flipped the ball to his church pastor. More
proof that God does, in fact, want you to be rich.
[ I checked it out – to determine Madden Football’s FBH
picks, the game results are merely computer simulated; our esteemed
AssCommish does not play all the games himself. It would cut into
his Photoshop time far too much.
[ Fantasy baseball update – After six months of action, the
Yahoo baseball league is winding down. Jeff “Boo-urns” Burns seized control of the standings about two months ago and is the prohibitive
favorite to unseat the three-year champs Kenny
D and me. But as the
man says, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”
[ Speaking of manly men, this Thursday is Jame “my man in Plano” Howell’s
birthday. If you can’t catch up with him to buy him a cold
beer, text him on his new pocket PC.
[ Last
but certainly not least, congratulations to Los Mets de Nuevo York
who clinched the NL East and are looking forward to the post season!
Vamanos Mets!
At the Locker Room Celebration,
Roy got a bit amorous
