Sequestering and such.

Apparently, the great “Sequester of 2013” hit a week ago Friday at the witching hour. President Obama foretold famine and pestilence that would reign down if the sequester were to occur. Janet Napolitano echoed her Commander and Chief’s pronouncement with TSA ending overtime and airports waits ballooning to hours from minutes. The locust are not far behind as they always are during these biblical moments. I am not sure about everyone else but having stared down a frigging “Fiscal Cliff” a “Sequester” sounded a bit more innocuous. We share the common fear that a cliff announces whatever adjective emphasizes the importance. Sequester? We got your stinking sequester, Willis. Wall Street and Main Street seem less concerned than the President. That could all change tomorrow. If we had the answers we would charge for this blog! Fortunately, neither the Dodgers nor the Lakers have any sequester plans or fiscal cliff challenges. Time Warner has bank rolled both of their marquis products for the next 25 years. TW paid a fortune for the rights for the Lakers. Once TW signed the Lakers, they had to have the Dodgers to have a broadcast channel package. They will be passing the cost+ right along to the video service providers like Charter and DIRECTV and they will pass it along to us. Sports programming is one of the last bastions of real time television viewership. People watch the game and the ads live and with passion. Sports programming is less likely to be DVR’ed for later viewing or on demand. With the plump Jack Nicholson looking on while Jeremy Piven is high fiving Kobe, most of us would rather stay home with a better seat, beverage and remote control rather than attend a Laker game. Dodger games are still an event to be attended. Even with the bulbous payroll the Dodgers have not raised ticket prices in three years. Imagine also a time when we do not hear about Frank and Jamie in the news. It is not that hard if you try. The Lakers might not make the playoffs but they are playing better. They have cobbled together a roller coaster season while lowering the bar with each dip. The double helix of this season can be traced to the hiring of former coach Mike Brown under the cover of darkness by Jim Buss in 2011. It was the mullet based son of the owner’s first water shed moment as heir apparent. The Lakers struggled last season and then opened this season 0-4. Mike was fired, was paid well and smiling at Burger King later the same day. Sports fans were surprised but the Lakers did not win a single preseason game prior to the winless start. The team had not won in a month. He needed to go with that Hall of Fame lineup failing badly. With Phil earnest and willing, Jim Buss hired Mike D'antoni. The rationale being that Kobe loved him from his days in Italy and D’Antoni coaching Bryant and Howard in the Olympics as an assistant coach. His fast paced offense would be the elixir for this star studded team. Jimmy was never going to hire Phil and have him save the season. D’Antoni has gone 29-26 since taking over as coach. That is better than 0-53 if that where the Lake show was heading if the thought process is they may never win again unless a change is made.” This Laker march to the 2013 Championship was then interrupted by firing the coach in the first two weeks of the season because dammit, someone has to pay for getting boat raced by OKC in the playoffs and then losing the first four games of the following season. A change was made and now the Lakers are not a .000 team, they are .500 team. They should have kept interim coach Bernie Bickerstaff who was 4-1 while Jimmy John Buss found Mikey D and almost saved the season! If the team makes this playoffs, it will be a one and done. Jim Buss knew his father was not going to make the NBA Finals even if the Laker’s did this year. Jerry was very sick and it was not common knowledge. Jerry wanted to still be the face of the organization and protect Jim while he matured into that face. With Jerry gone, Jim may never fully evolve into that epidermis. He is trying too hard to do something his father did effortlessly. Jim is threatened by Jeannie Buss’s fiancé, Phil Jackson. It gave him no greater feeling of power than to lure Phil out of retirement to talk about replacing Mike Brown and not hire him.. Phil never thought he was the only coach in the mix but he was candid about the poor way the process was handled by his brother in law. Jeannie Bush should and will be running the Lakers in the future. She is of sound mind and fine body. She has been the pragmatic and fan facing voice of the Lakers for years. Jerry Buss tried to keep his bad self out of the news either by design rather than DUI. Heir apparent Jim is a relative unknown. Hedrives better while his mullet and cap are usually stylishly creepy. Jeannie is on local LA sports talk all of the time. She promotes the team with articulate candor and humor. She is affable, approachable all while banging our legendary coach Phil with love and affection. She would hire the right people to run this legendary organization without getting her ego or mullet in the way. If there is a better representative of our ownership may they step forward or forever hold their peace. Play in Game: March Madness is within our headlights. This year will be one of the most competitive in recent history. The Pac-12 is back and should have at least four teams in the dance after last year’s embarrassment. The Mountain West is one of the well- kept secrets in DI hoops. The SEC not so much except for Florida. The Big 10-12 is the best basketball conference in the Union. Indiana will be the overall #1 seed but the conference will have seven teams sharing single digit seeds. Final Thoughts: USC Fan, please support the continued employment of Lane Kiffin by your University. He seems to be a fine lad even if he had to fire his father to save his own job. He seems as a myopic as the rest of you. The Trojan franchise just needs a re-tooling and all will be good once you get past this obtrusive probation loss of scholarships nonsense. Fight on your bad selves! Jim Mora will never stay at UCLA so there is time.

They are who we thought they were.

It has been a difficult season at the Yard. Our Spartan coverage of sports and other stuff has dwindled into the melancholic backwater created by average sports teams of our destiny. The fallow fields of Yard ramblings have been shunted by the championship fever brewing in the 415 soon to the 408. LA struggling and SF crooning is never a relaxing season in Yard lives. We can only hope that Deer Antler Velvet elixir is all SI says it is cracked up to be. We are not sure who made that leap of faith with the first deer antler extraction but Ray Lewis is playing like a young buck in the playoffs. We only hope that his final game is a victory for the much maligned player and his team. San Francisco winning appears to be the smart money and general unease engulfs Yard staff and their families. We will weather the storm but with the Lakers being the last hope for the foreseeable future our footsteps are in a quagmire of distressed hope. Ray Lewis has been loved and reviled by the press and the nation. Many are sick of his constant self-promotion and praise the lord let the devil be gone mantra. He was indicted and acquitted of murder charges following the Ravens’ Super Bowl victory in 2000. It was a hot topic at the time and Lewis’ future hung in fate until he agreed to testify against his old running mates who had not gotten out of the hood. That was twelve years ago when Lewis was 25. He ran with people most of us never hope to ever meet. He appears to be a far different person at 37 than he was at 25. Most of us hopefully are! Why this is all getting throw on his legacy now when it has not been mentioned in many years is surprising. It is old news and irrelevant to the current events. SF 49er cornerback Chris Culliver demeaning gays and saying he would not accept a gay player in the locker room is relevant. Players have their opinions about social issues that they should keep out of the press. SF is a bastion for its support for gays and gay unions. Culliver is as myopic as the fans who quickly forgave him lest he get beat deep on Sunday. Jim and John Harbaugh facing off in the Super Bowl brother against brother, east versus west and Cabernet versus crab cakes. It is a great story and we hope the game keeps up with the hype. Most times it does not. The Ravens have not faced a defense like the 49ers in the play offs. Denver and New England are nowhere near as tenacious as SF on defense. The Ravens did win both games on the road and had to rally to win. The 49ers have not faced a defense like the Ravens and had to rally to win on the road. Colin Kapernick has a much better Wikipedia page today than he did in September. It will be his game to lose. We hope he thinks about that often tonight and tomorrow afternoon and the rest of his life. John Harbaugh seems like way more fun than Jim if that counts for any edge. Jim is intense and seems almost humorless to a fault. He has a John Nash like look on his face most of the time that never belies the madness below the surface. John is more jovial and circumspect with a smile and a laugh. The Yard has invited him to join us for beers win or lose. Not sure anyone still believes that the Guggenheim Group overpaid for the Dodgers. They have been spending money like a drunken sailor but the deal that they just inked with Time Warner Sports Net is worth four times the value of the price they paid for the franchise. TW has guaranteed the Dodgers $280 million in television income annually for the next 25 years. The rest of the NL West paid $297 million in total salaries in 2012. The Dodgers will have almost that much coming in the front door every year before they sell a ticket of a hot dog. Money does not buy championship but it is a better place to start than without it. Money is something the Dodgers rarely had to spend before McCourt was sent packing with his $2 billion windfall. Baseball is risky and big money shelters big risk. Hopefully, it also keeps ticket prices down! Lance Armstrong finally almost sort of came clean with Oprah about doping his way to seven Tour de France titles. The Yard was surprised that people were outraged that Lance had done that same doping every cyclist on the planet had done. How could he have beaten them without doing that? As Dennis Green coined, “Lance Armstrong is who we thought he was!” He did not have most of fooled because most of really do not care about competitive cycling. American sports fan only follow winners and no American had ever won the Tour in the events first 83 years. Greg Lemond became the first American and now the only American to ever win the tour. Armstrong was a compelling story from the beginning. Lance was a cancer survivor with one testicle, banging Sheryl Crow, raising kids and winning everything. His biggest fault was his arrogance. He was respected and revered by the annual Tour fan. He was reviled and feared by his cycling peers. Many people were in on the scam but Lance aggressively silenced all of them. Armstrong was prick of diva proportions. He had the biggest bankroll and the best attorneys. Any who dared to confront him faced monstrous litigation and backlash from Livestrong Nation. In the end, he is who we thought he was. March Madness Notes: The Big 10 or 12 is the best conference in the nation. They are the SEC of College Basketball but with biology and math and stuff like that as well. The Big 10 has five teams in the top 25 with the top team in the country as well. The State of Indiana has produced 12 of the 60 starters in the Big Ten. The best of those players start for the Hoosiers. It is just what we are saying..

Fallen Leads

The fall season at the Yard had brought so much hope and promise. The Dodgers had not completely wilted since blowing up their clubhouse in August. The Giants were only up by a couple of games. The Bruins stormed into the top 25 in football which had not happened since the beginning of the Yard. The Lakers had signed Dwight Howard and the Trojans were on the cover of Sports Illustrated. The Dodgers were not going to win this year with that pitching staff regardless of the lineup. Dodger management wanted to make a statement and they did. The team that came out of Glendale, AZ in April was broken up in the early vestiges of a pennant race in August. The Giants were close with Lincecum struggling and NL batting leader Melky Cabrera just suspended for 50 games for juicing. The Guggenheim team doubled down on this season with the dealer showing five. The Giants flipped a six and took the NL west. The Dodgers started to heat up while winning six in a row. We came across that tidbit by accident when we had time to dig that far into the sports page. This Bruin season for the Yard had started so strongly with a huge upset of Nebraska and a 3-0 start for the first time since time began as calculated in Yard metrics. We had an opportunity to see the Bruins play Houston while spending the first half that same Saturday night watching the Dodgers rally to win at the Ravine. The Bruins were the most dominant that we had witnessed in the lapses previously asserted. We got sucked in like a politician with an intern. Full of optimism and Benjamin’s, the Yard took the Bruins while giving 10 to Oregon State. It was our first bet laid on the Bruins to win in many years. We had made some dough betting against them but betting with them was something new. Oregon State bitch slapped the Bruins at the Rose Bowl for most of the afternoon. Our parlay and our hopes were dashed that Saturday afternoon. The Bruins came back against the woeful Buffs last week but the Yard will be slow to return to that misguided fervor that rattled our psyche for a few weeks. The Lakers picking up Dwight Howard was to prepare of the passing of the baton from the aging superstar to the unproven one. The Lakers have engineered these trades for the past forty years dating back to bringing in Wilt to win their only championship of the Jack Kent Cook and Jerry West era. Kareem was traded to LA several years later and the foundations of Showtime were born. Jerry West went all in on the trade that brought Shaq from Orlando last century. West drafted Magic and Worthy to play with Kareem. West drafted Kobe to play with Shaq. The Buss family knows that all of the smiling faces paying $2500/night to mug on TV are there because of the stars on the floor not the ones in the seats. Dwight Howard will shepherd in the next star to carry the Laker’s star five years from now. USC making the Sports Illustrated cover was taken as a good omen by the Yard. The SI curse of being on the cover has more evidence for rather than against. It is rare that the SI pick to win the BCS championship ever does. Matt Barkley and his two heralded wide receivers mugging for the cameras and talking about coming back to win a title put a big target on their back that they do not have the horses to protect. Barkley might have considered what has happened to the last two high profile quarterbacks that opted to come back for one more year at the coaxing of their coach. Cason Palmer won the Heisman Trophy and he is now wallowing in Oakland going nowhere. Matt Leinhart stayed for one more year won the trophy and now he backs up Palmer for Raider nation. Neither won the championship that “they came back for one more season to win”. Barkley will not either. Barkley’s would have been a top five pick in April. He would be sitting on the sidelines for an average team learning his new profession. Andrew Luck is making $15 million over three years for the Colts. RG-3 is pulling down $14 million over the same period. Barkley would have been at least earning $11-13 million over the next three years. His stock is falling as fast as his coach’s. Barkley should have thought a little harder about the impact of playing one more year for Lane Kiffin would have on his future value. Kiffin knew the impact having Barkley come back for one year would have on his. He might not have another year at USC if Barkley left and USC struggled. What could Barkley possibly learn from Lane who still has so much to learn? Off Season: When the votes are in the biggest loser from the steroid era was not the fans it was the Baseball Hall of Fame. The fans had a lot of fun while all those homeruns were flying out the park and Roger the Rocket was winning seven CY Young awards. It was exciting even if it was enhanced. The long dreaded testing for PED’s outed the cheats and brought performance back into this galaxy. People are still taking chances but the Players Union and Baseball ownership saw their salaries and valuations spike because of this chemically enhanced statistics without taking a hit to their reputation. The real loser has been the Baseball Hall of Fame. To earn entry to the baseball HOF, a players needs to be named on 75% of the ballots that are cast. This past year, 520 votes were cast and Barry Larkin was the only player voted in to the HOF. Barry was a good if not great shortstop of his era but he had a career batting average of .295 with a 198 homeruns. He would not have sniffed the Hall in another era. Bert Blyleven got voted in last year. Blyleven won 277 games over a 22 year career. He won 20 games once and a career ERA of 4.74. He was outstanding serving up homerun balls. He gave up 430 for his career with records of 43 one year only to break it a few years later by giving up 50 homeruns. The Hall and its voters are working so hard to keep out the supposed cheaters that it is morphing into the Hall of Really good. Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds might have inflated their statistics by juicing but everyone was. Enhanced pitchers were facing enhanced batters. The players were great already but they decided they would go the extra dark mile while baseball looked the other way and we flooded the turnstiles. No decision will be fair on how to filter these accomplishments but allowing good players to line the walls in Cooperstown among the truly legendary is a crime as well.