The madness of March has enveloped the Yard. Vast resources and focus groups have been redeployed. In an effort to corral the economic woes of the day, the Yard has invested heavily in trying to hedge which upsets could potentially dismantle one’s tournament pool. Forget the $165 Million the AIG boys are trying to justify, is Arizona going to upset Utah? Is UCLA running out of gas? And is USC for real for another day? Which school will have the thrill of victory? CNN and Fox News will fill in the agony of defeat.
The Yard does question why CBS Studio Host Greg Gumbel would encourage a national television audience to visit CBS.com to watch these 60+ games at work if they were unable to stay home and watch it on television. Marketing is not a core competency at the Yard. But even we might suggest that with double digit unemployment, encouraging the employed to f—k off at work and watch hoops might seem..well just a bit disconnected. NCAA championship hoops are huge, but CBS, get a grip? The US economy is already in the “play in” game and CBS.com is not your end game.
CBS does a great job with March Madness. In contrast, Fox could not have been any worse with the BCS. CBS does 60+ games over three weeks across the entire nation. Fox had six games over seven days in NFL Cities. Fox trotted out several announcers for BCS games that would never work at another network. CBS brings knowledgeable voices to every hamlet that the tourney is played. The games are memorable and the announcing is not the story. Fox will always be about American Idol not American Sports.
And damn, does it not seem that ESPN has become more about ESPN than the “SP” DNA that founded this unique enterprise? Sunday we had Jay Bilas and Dick Vitale bitch slapping each other about St. Mary’s being left out of the tournament. Young Jay against and grumpy Dickie V for, in a UFC ESPN Face-Off. First thought, St. Mary’s? Second thought, St. Mary’s? Jay B. and Dick V slapping each other over St. Mary’s in Prime Time was great theater. Dickie V, hello can you spell Billy Packer?
USC got up off the deck and became the 6th team from the Pac-10 to make the tournament in a year when the conference deserved four. Sorry, St. Mary’s, the Yard voted you ahead of the Trojans but they won their conference tournament. DeMar DeRozan showed the Nation why he is another “one and done” at USC with his play this past week. Not sure how the Trojans won three games in four days after losing six of seven the previous 21 days but with their only chance to the dance on the line, they were dancing fools.
What happened to the Bruins this year? Senior Luc Richard is playing 26 minutes a night in Milwaukee averaging 7.5/6.1. Sophomore Kevin Love is playing 25 minutes a night for the T-Wolves averaging 10.3 pts and 8.3 rebounds. And Junior Russell Westbrook is playing 33 minutes while scoring 16 points nightly for the Oklahoma City Thunder.
March Madness is not just rooting for the teams that you love, it is rooting against the teams that you hate. Yard dictum is clear to not let such emotions bleed into your brackets. UCLA Myopia has tortured us the past three seasons in our picks. Last year, we finished behind Big Ron and he chose his picks based on mascot names. Let the devil be gone!
The Yard roots against Duke and not sure why? It seems to be the school that the White Boy McDonald’s All-Americans attend. The Yard fretted that Duke might surpass UCLA’s legacy some years back when this vitriol was first brewed. The Yard will root against them and their coach with the funny mouth ad infinitum. Duke has lost so many times in the first round since, it seems like beating harp seals to root against them so follow your heart.
UNC might make the Final Four but dangummit if we do not hate those Tarheels always. In the case of UNC, it is their myopic fan base. They are like USC Football fans with mullets. You can argue with the Yard about our Tarheel nation vitriol and our legal counsel rebuts with two words…dental floss.
Tyler Hansbrough has 26 assists while taking 366 shots over twenty eights games this season. He is the way, the light and the third round loss of a team that has to rely on a Pyscho T who never gives the ball up. He is not the second coming of Larry Bird, he is the third coming of Mitch Kupchack.
The Florida Gators were Bruin arch rivals and they kicked some Bruin booty for two straight years. It is not just fair to call the Gators out when they can no longer get into the tournament. The SEC is a football conference. Billy Donovan, the Orlando Magic was a dream job. You should have followed your pocketbook; the heart can always be fed.
Christian Laettner, Tyler Hansbrough, Joakim Noah, they are all featured on the Yard dart board. What do they have in common besides Yard angst? They took all of their most important shots in college. None of these college stars was or will ever do squat in the NBA.
There is work to be done on the court, off the court and in our neighborhoods. The Yard has calibrated our priorities in these trying times but the spirit, passion and momentary brilliance of these next few weeks can kick start all of our spirits! Keep your friends and family close and your enemies closer.
“You never know who is swimming naked until the tide goes out.” Warren Buffet
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Find The Madness!
The print and television media are doing an extraordinary job of relentlessly reporting negative economic data ad nauseum. As we pound another piton into our morning trying to eek out shallow victories in the carnage of that day , the news networks remind us that the worst is yet to come.
The Yard suggests that we all divert our attention to the escape and redemption that is March Madness. College basketball will reign supreme for the next month. By April 6, a new NCAA Hoops Champion will be crowned in Detroit. It is quite remarkable that this new champion will be crowned at the city that is the face and ground zero of this unfettered economic meltdown. All of the games are easily accessed from your sofa portal. Heroes are included with your basic cable.
So get engaged with something other than despair, famine and pestilence. Root for unpaid athletes who will perform heroic deeds, cheered on by brightly festooned fans and college coeds. If that is not a place you want to escape to, then by all means tune into the nightly news and remember there is still a seven day waiting period to buy a hand gun.
The Yard applauds the signing of Manny and the Dodger nation has weighed in with a boon in ticket sales and enthusiasm. Frank McCourt impressed us while staring down uber-Agent Scott Boras. Manny playing for a three year deal while playing under the terms of a one year deal is the best of Manny’s.
The MVP of the Lakers this year is Lamar Odom. Kobe is given the rope to do what he does every night. Lamar has to judge the length of his twine nightly in the shadow of Kobe. When Bynum went down, the Lakers could have stumbled like a Celtic sans Garnett. Odom did the brick and mortar work while the Kobe splashed the brilliance. The brick and mortar is required before brilliance can be applied. The Yard loves hard working athletes in the last year of a contract and brilliance always!
The recently released list gracing Pete Carroll as the highest paid employee of a private university in the entire United States did not surprise us. The $4,415,740 million that USC invests in one employee was not that shocking either in light of the local priorities for the myopic. It blew our minds that #2 on the list was Dr. David Silvers of the Columbia University School of Dermatology at $4,332,759. What the hell are they doing at Columbia anyway?
Anyone who is a member of this advertised Clipper Nation, please contact the Yard and let us know where you are hiding.
Commissioner Bud Selig announced this week that as commissioner he had unequivocally eradicated the abuses that he ignored as an owner. Bud is now paid $14 million a year to clean up a mess he helped make.
Let us stay the course, never out kick our coverage and find victories in our daily lives.
“When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.” Jacob Riis
The Yard suggests that we all divert our attention to the escape and redemption that is March Madness. College basketball will reign supreme for the next month. By April 6, a new NCAA Hoops Champion will be crowned in Detroit. It is quite remarkable that this new champion will be crowned at the city that is the face and ground zero of this unfettered economic meltdown. All of the games are easily accessed from your sofa portal. Heroes are included with your basic cable.
So get engaged with something other than despair, famine and pestilence. Root for unpaid athletes who will perform heroic deeds, cheered on by brightly festooned fans and college coeds. If that is not a place you want to escape to, then by all means tune into the nightly news and remember there is still a seven day waiting period to buy a hand gun.
The Yard applauds the signing of Manny and the Dodger nation has weighed in with a boon in ticket sales and enthusiasm. Frank McCourt impressed us while staring down uber-Agent Scott Boras. Manny playing for a three year deal while playing under the terms of a one year deal is the best of Manny’s.
The MVP of the Lakers this year is Lamar Odom. Kobe is given the rope to do what he does every night. Lamar has to judge the length of his twine nightly in the shadow of Kobe. When Bynum went down, the Lakers could have stumbled like a Celtic sans Garnett. Odom did the brick and mortar work while the Kobe splashed the brilliance. The brick and mortar is required before brilliance can be applied. The Yard loves hard working athletes in the last year of a contract and brilliance always!
The recently released list gracing Pete Carroll as the highest paid employee of a private university in the entire United States did not surprise us. The $4,415,740 million that USC invests in one employee was not that shocking either in light of the local priorities for the myopic. It blew our minds that #2 on the list was Dr. David Silvers of the Columbia University School of Dermatology at $4,332,759. What the hell are they doing at Columbia anyway?
Anyone who is a member of this advertised Clipper Nation, please contact the Yard and let us know where you are hiding.
Commissioner Bud Selig announced this week that as commissioner he had unequivocally eradicated the abuses that he ignored as an owner. Bud is now paid $14 million a year to clean up a mess he helped make.
Let us stay the course, never out kick our coverage and find victories in our daily lives.
“When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.” Jacob Riis
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Heroes? We don't need no stinking heroes!
The Yard has been on the road these past weeks. There is a self imposed deadline to get these rambling diatribes to our loyal and apparently patient constituency. Yard deadlines are more fluid than concrete. All paid subscriptions are free for the month of February to underscore the Yard’s commitment to bootstrapping out of this economic quagmire.
The Yard recognizes that Barack’s audacity of hope is audacious. In less than thirty days, Barry in the Paint has lobbied and authorized the manufacture of more Benjamin’s than currently exist in the known universe. The magnitude of printing that much dough overwhelms the reality that most of us will never see even an Abraham from this Romanesque trajectory of spending. We fear we all will be paying for solar panels in Stockton and broadband in Topeka until we take the big dirt nap.
The Yankees not to be outdone had already bailed out the Teixeira, Sabathia, and Burnett families with a $400 million stimulus package for their three households. With the new $1.3 billion Yankee stadium coming on line that includes $220 million in public financing, the Yard salutes these audacious moves by NYC in the face of the most daunting economic crisis in this country’s history. The Yard shares the perennial Yankee optimism that all of the usual suspects from Wall Street will still be there to snap up those $1000/game seats behind home plate this season.
The Yard sincerely hopes that the US government has provided Citibank the $400 million necessary for the naming rights for the Mets new stadium that had been committed by this previously financial stalwart. We also hope that Jerry Jones can find someone to spend $350 million to name the new billion dollar NFL theme park where the Cowboys play. Cowboys at the Yard was soundly rejected by Dallas senior mismanagement, despite a lucrative placement on this very blog site. It did have a nice ring but they cited an unfavorable posting on this very blog site in recent months. WTF: We did not think anyone poked around in the Yard Archives.
As spring training camps open, there was outrage that Joe Torre’s book on his years with the Yankees broke the unspoken code of silence in the locker room and shared intimate details of his time with the Yankees. The Yard is more outraged that the Secret Society of the Bong’s unwritten code of paranoia was broken when Michael Phelps was outed by some a-hole with a camera phone. In the murky recesses of the cannabis culture’s ethos, this was an unforgiveable breach. We would suggest that photo did shed some light on Phelps 10,000 calorie a day diet.
Bud Selig is outraged by this serpentine steroid mess. He has suggested that he wants to change the records from the steroid era. The Yard suggests that the records prior to 1947 be thrown out also because black athletes were not allowed to play. Babe Ruth hit 714 homeruns without ever playing a night game, playing west of Saint Louis or facing an African-American left handed pitcher. The Yard finds that more outrageous and offensive than steroids.
We also find Bud to be an outrage. He personally benefited financially more than almost every other owner during this period of performance enhanced fan interest. As the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, he turned a $13 million investment in 1970 into a $180 million sale in 2004. The Yard CFO crunched the numbers and the Selig’s did ok on that deal. Bud’s investment in the Brewers netted him $30,319 per game owned. “Wait just a second, what were the dates on that steroid era again?”
The victim of steroids malfeasance is not A-Rod’s testicles or baseball’s cherished records. Both will be pilloried in the years ahead. The victim is our youth and the Norman Rockwell print of our Yard that just got tagged. Cynicism and acceptance are strange bedfellows. We cling to the sports kernel embedded in our youth while the media reminds us daily that that was a time long ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Baseball players were the heroes of our youth. They were regular guys who played the game we all played. Many ball players had to have an off season job just to float the family boat. They lived in the neighborhood, drank beer, and sinned amongst us. They were not that far removed from the neighborhoods, synagogues and churches of their youth. It was their skill, not their money that separated them from us. We forgave their transgressions because they gave at the Yard. Sandy Koufax’s highest salary was a one year, non-guaranteed $125,000 in 1966. That year, Willie Mays was also paid that exorbitant amount with similar terms.
In 2001, Alex Rodriguez signed a contract to be paid $154,320 per GAME! All of the money was guaranteed for a term of ten years. He says he felt pressure to live up to that money so he juiced it up. The pressure of figuring what to do with $1.04 million in monthly after tax income must have been overwhelming. It must have been brutal to endure 1,134 games under these oppressive circumstances. Even to this day, Alex is forcibly required to accept $167,000 per game and he contends that he overcame his juice diet. Of course, this money is only for the regular season. Post Season Alex, well you get what you pay for.
In the coming years, the all-time hits leader, home run leader and greatest pitcher of our lifetimes will be denied access to baseball’s Vatican, Cooperstown. Heroes? We don’t need no stinking heroes! Today’s professional athletes are not our heroes. We do not need to be protected from this illusion by Bud Selig or the US government. It died long ago in a galaxy far, far away.
The Yard recognizes that Barack’s audacity of hope is audacious. In less than thirty days, Barry in the Paint has lobbied and authorized the manufacture of more Benjamin’s than currently exist in the known universe. The magnitude of printing that much dough overwhelms the reality that most of us will never see even an Abraham from this Romanesque trajectory of spending. We fear we all will be paying for solar panels in Stockton and broadband in Topeka until we take the big dirt nap.
The Yankees not to be outdone had already bailed out the Teixeira, Sabathia, and Burnett families with a $400 million stimulus package for their three households. With the new $1.3 billion Yankee stadium coming on line that includes $220 million in public financing, the Yard salutes these audacious moves by NYC in the face of the most daunting economic crisis in this country’s history. The Yard shares the perennial Yankee optimism that all of the usual suspects from Wall Street will still be there to snap up those $1000/game seats behind home plate this season.
The Yard sincerely hopes that the US government has provided Citibank the $400 million necessary for the naming rights for the Mets new stadium that had been committed by this previously financial stalwart. We also hope that Jerry Jones can find someone to spend $350 million to name the new billion dollar NFL theme park where the Cowboys play. Cowboys at the Yard was soundly rejected by Dallas senior mismanagement, despite a lucrative placement on this very blog site. It did have a nice ring but they cited an unfavorable posting on this very blog site in recent months. WTF: We did not think anyone poked around in the Yard Archives.
As spring training camps open, there was outrage that Joe Torre’s book on his years with the Yankees broke the unspoken code of silence in the locker room and shared intimate details of his time with the Yankees. The Yard is more outraged that the Secret Society of the Bong’s unwritten code of paranoia was broken when Michael Phelps was outed by some a-hole with a camera phone. In the murky recesses of the cannabis culture’s ethos, this was an unforgiveable breach. We would suggest that photo did shed some light on Phelps 10,000 calorie a day diet.
Bud Selig is outraged by this serpentine steroid mess. He has suggested that he wants to change the records from the steroid era. The Yard suggests that the records prior to 1947 be thrown out also because black athletes were not allowed to play. Babe Ruth hit 714 homeruns without ever playing a night game, playing west of Saint Louis or facing an African-American left handed pitcher. The Yard finds that more outrageous and offensive than steroids.
We also find Bud to be an outrage. He personally benefited financially more than almost every other owner during this period of performance enhanced fan interest. As the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, he turned a $13 million investment in 1970 into a $180 million sale in 2004. The Yard CFO crunched the numbers and the Selig’s did ok on that deal. Bud’s investment in the Brewers netted him $30,319 per game owned. “Wait just a second, what were the dates on that steroid era again?”
The victim of steroids malfeasance is not A-Rod’s testicles or baseball’s cherished records. Both will be pilloried in the years ahead. The victim is our youth and the Norman Rockwell print of our Yard that just got tagged. Cynicism and acceptance are strange bedfellows. We cling to the sports kernel embedded in our youth while the media reminds us daily that that was a time long ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Baseball players were the heroes of our youth. They were regular guys who played the game we all played. Many ball players had to have an off season job just to float the family boat. They lived in the neighborhood, drank beer, and sinned amongst us. They were not that far removed from the neighborhoods, synagogues and churches of their youth. It was their skill, not their money that separated them from us. We forgave their transgressions because they gave at the Yard. Sandy Koufax’s highest salary was a one year, non-guaranteed $125,000 in 1966. That year, Willie Mays was also paid that exorbitant amount with similar terms.
In 2001, Alex Rodriguez signed a contract to be paid $154,320 per GAME! All of the money was guaranteed for a term of ten years. He says he felt pressure to live up to that money so he juiced it up. The pressure of figuring what to do with $1.04 million in monthly after tax income must have been overwhelming. It must have been brutal to endure 1,134 games under these oppressive circumstances. Even to this day, Alex is forcibly required to accept $167,000 per game and he contends that he overcame his juice diet. Of course, this money is only for the regular season. Post Season Alex, well you get what you pay for.
In the coming years, the all-time hits leader, home run leader and greatest pitcher of our lifetimes will be denied access to baseball’s Vatican, Cooperstown. Heroes? We don’t need no stinking heroes! Today’s professional athletes are not our heroes. We do not need to be protected from this illusion by Bud Selig or the US government. It died long ago in a galaxy far, far away.
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