It has been a slow season of late at the Yard. The teams of our destiny have not performed as cached in our memories. The sordid scandals of the past year have squished the comic tendencies out of our cynical nature. Our research staff did uncover this quiet little story about an Ivy League Taiwanese kid rising from obscurity to become a starting point guard of the New York Knicks! We hoped to get the word out to our loyal membership but Sports Illustrated trumped us while we were stranded wine tasting in Napa. It was a great story but the barrel tasting at Peju Vineyards winery is not something to be skipped for a scoop. Linsanity would have to wait and it appears to have run its course anyways. There are not many priorities at the Yard but Napa cabernets always trumps Asian point guards even if they play in NYC.
We needed to rest up anyways for our largest event of the year-The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. For 14 days of March and the first two days of April, college basketball and all of its madness will rule the Yard. There will be 62 basketball games played all over the nation. We had a practice run during championship week trolling through 272 conference tournament games starting last weekend and culminating with the Big Ten title game. There have been upsets and upstarts and the first round is still four days away.
Preparing for the 48 hour Thursday-Friday shift of 32 tournament basketball games later this week is not a regiment we take likely. With three TV’s playing three different games, the Yard was scanning round robin through the ACC, SEC, Conference USA, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, Atlantic 10, Big 10, Southland Conference, Pac-10 and Mountain West Conference season ending tournament games. We got started on the Deuce at 8:00 AM settling in for the highly anticipated Vermont Catamounts versus the Stony Brook Seawolves matchup. We warmed up the second 48 inches of LCD madness at 8:30 with the Marshall-Memphis game on CBS. Remote dexterity had to be taken to another level with the SEC and ACC Semifinals tipped off simultaneously on ABC and ESPN. Four games and only three TV’s, our skills were being tested to extreme viewing levels. Jo at the Yard was caught switching on the Food Channel on the main screen when we took a quick lunch break after the UNC-NC State game. No explanation was needed as we recovered the remote with extreme prejudice and returned to our myopic programming. Anthony Bourdain will still be on TV April 3 and Jo is just going to have to hang in there until then.
With household priorities re-established, the day marched on. There was a small tear when the Norfolk State University Spartans earned their first ever NCAA bid with their victory over the Bethune-Cookman Wildcats. Duke gave us another reason to root against them when they signed Austin Rivers. The Dukies were already in our cross hairs but signing the progeny of Celtic head coach Doc Rivers was another pinch of venom in our legacy cauldron of distain. It was nice to see them get upset in the ACC semifinal by Florida State. Ohio State looked formidable against the Michigan school in Ann Arbor. The State University in East Lansing will be a more formidable opponent for the Buckeyes. Coach Tom Izzo is gearing up for another long run into March. If Missouri does not get the #1 seed in the Midwest after winning the Big 12 Tournament, there should be an SI investigation. The Tigers boat raced Baylor in the Championship game after Baylor boat raced the Jayhawks in the semifinal. Kansas and Missouri split the season series. Kansas will get the #1 seed because they are Kansas. Missouri will get shipped out as a #2 seed because they are Missouri. Pacific 10 conference tournament is the worst of the lot. Colorado versus Arizona is like watching a mid-major before that was a cool thing. UCLA may be on well documented hard times but the whole conference sucks this year. The Mountain West has better players and is more entertaining to watch than any team in the moribund Pac-12. Let the games begin!
All of the major recruits who left UCLA in the past three years will be playing in the NCAA tournament this year. If all of them had stayed at UCLA, the Bruins would have been a Final Four type of team. Chace Stanbach and Mike Mosher of UNLV left UCLA and were All Conference selections in the MWC. Kendall Williams and Drew Gordon were MWC All Conference selections at New Mexico. Matt Carlino was all WCC Honorable mention as a freshman point guard at BYU. With those who stayed, UCLA will be lucky to get an NIT bid.
Final Seconds: UCLA has marketing posters at the Sports Arena asking for donations to help support athletics. The poster broke down all of the related costs for a student athlete including tuition, housing and books. The data factored in $3,875 for health and fitness per student athlete. The numbers sounded reasonable but the student athlete that was the canvas for the narrative was UCLA’s 6’10” 305 pound center Joshua Smith. Observing Josh’s health and fitness these past few years as he has piled on the pounds while huffing and puffing up and down the court, one has to wonder where that money went? Not the best example for that marketing pitch.
Overtime: There are some records that will never be broken in every major sport. Most of them are unreachable because of changes in the games related to numbers of games, longevity of players, performance enhancements and other clinical stuff. One such record that had escaped our radar was the NBA record for average minutes per game by a single player. For any player to play all 48 minutes of an NBA basketball game is rare. It has happened on occasion and it is always well noted in the sports world. In 1961-62season, Wilt Chamberlin averaged 48.5 minutes per game for the entire season. He played an 80 game season.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Happy New Year from the Yard
At the heart of a New Year’s resolution is the desire to resolve to do something, ideally to the betterment of something or someone. Resolutions are easy to define and elucidate. Resolutions require resolve if they are going to happen. The Yard has defined many resolutions to pursue. Resolve is a more difficult resource to allocate with our limited focus, sports myopia and vices. We have resolved to take a much closer look at this resolution thing in 2012. We have created a task force internally and expect to have suggestions by Q2 2012 and hope to have a plan in place by this fall.
This post was going to be a New Year’s Day-ish post but the Yard plays by the same rules as college football and the Rose Parade. We don’t blog on New Year’s if it falls on Sunday. College football was very sacrosanct that there will be no college football whenever New Year’s Day falls on a Sunday. So when the BCS starts on a Sunday we have college football games all week most of which used to be played on one day. Apparently, on Sunday January 8 it is possible to play a college football game and not just any Sunday college Football game-The Go Daddy Bowl! So the Rose Bowl can never be played on a Sunday but Go Daddy on the following Sunday?! Bring it on! It is more about the Benjamin’s than the guy in the flowing robes.
The blog was having fits and starts underscored by issues with resolve to get to post for the New Year. Monday, we got caught up in the most amazing Rose Bowl Game in recent history. Oregon has been tearing up the Pacific-10 or 12 for the past three seasons but never won a bowl game. Wisconsin has been lighting up the Big Ten or Big Eleven-ish but lost to TCU last year in the Rose Bowl. Oregon and Wisconsin would have played in last year’s game if the Ducks had not traded up to play Cam Newton and the Auburn Tigers in the 2011 BCS Title game. It was a game for the ages and having the Ducks secure the final win in a nice Yard parlay helped ease the pain of the Bruins not saving hunger in the Kraft Fight Hunger bowl on New Year’s Eve.
The Bruins played in a better bowl game than the team deserved in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl. The Bruins were the first team in NCAA history to earn a bowl berth with a losing record. It was a second tier bowl for a third tier team and they played like they would rather be at home eating rather than in San Francisco leading the fight against hunger one miserable play at a time. We also forgot that one of the brother-in-laws went to the University of Illinois when the post-game phone call reminded us. The Illini were navigating on the precipice of mediocrity as well in 2011 but they were the cream of the crap on New Year’s Eve. The game was the first game since the end of the Neuheisel era if there was one. UCLA did play in the first Pacific 12 championship game although they were 31 point underdogs. Yard interns are researching that but that might have been the heaviest underdog in any championship game in any sport, at any level…ever! The Bruins easily covered the spread losing only 49-31 in Rick’s last game. The 50-0 beat down by USC the week before is one of many reasons Rick is not coaching today. Our earnest wish for Christmas was a bright future in the NFL for Mr. Barkley in 2012. It has been a wonderful season but that gift was not found under the tree.
Barkley decided to return for his 6th or 7th year at USC. Lane Kiffin told the press that Barkley really needed one more year at USC to be ready for the NFL. What Lane meant was that USC really needed one more year of Barkley to compete with the SEC for a BCS berth. When Barkley won the starting job as a freshman, not too many top prospects were eager to come to USC and play the Matt Cassel role. It is hard to understand why Barkley would come back for another season. Even with the new NFL labor deal, a first round pick will be getting nearly $15 million on a guaranteed contract. At time of press, the Yard is not certain how much of his USC money is guaranteed but anonymous sources say that it is not Reggie Bush type money. Barkley should have considered that he will never have another opportunity during 2012 to earn $5 million. He will earn NFL money and probably a lot of it. But the $5 million that would have been in his checking out account next year will be gone forever. Barkley should have also considered how his predecessors fared by staying for one more year of being Trojan nation’s epochal center. If the end game is being well paid in the NFL, staying one more year at USC is bad bet on your future. Carson Palmer and Matt Leinhart stayed one more year when the NFL beckoned. Palmer has wallowed in Cincinnati and now Oakland. Leinhart has just wallowed.
It would be impossible to review all of the stories that we thought of covering in 2012. The popularity of the Kardashians was one carousel we missed. We just do not get that one but Kim’s porn tape is not bad…from what we hear. Ruth Madoff’s revelation that she and Bernie attempted suicide after the scandal broke was not surprising. Trying to commit suicide by taking a couple of Ambien before going to bed did not show much resolve in their plan! Yard favorite Adele had a break out year in music. Her soulful songs about boyfriends who wronged her have been atop all of the award lists. One universal axiom for the Yard audience is never date and then piss off a chick songwriter. Taylor Swift, Alanis, and Avril have all had chart toppers about failed relationship and the bastards that failed them. Russell Brand better keep an eye out for the Katy Perry shit storm heading his way in 2012.
As the sun rises in 2012, we at the Yard sincerely hope that our musings and rants have provided humor and distraction in your day. We never have set the bar high just a constant stream of random utterings about stuff that incites or amuses us. We appreciated your feedback all year and plan to continue with the same random resolve that makes this all possible.
New Year's Day… now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Mark Twain
This post was going to be a New Year’s Day-ish post but the Yard plays by the same rules as college football and the Rose Parade. We don’t blog on New Year’s if it falls on Sunday. College football was very sacrosanct that there will be no college football whenever New Year’s Day falls on a Sunday. So when the BCS starts on a Sunday we have college football games all week most of which used to be played on one day. Apparently, on Sunday January 8 it is possible to play a college football game and not just any Sunday college Football game-The Go Daddy Bowl! So the Rose Bowl can never be played on a Sunday but Go Daddy on the following Sunday?! Bring it on! It is more about the Benjamin’s than the guy in the flowing robes.
The blog was having fits and starts underscored by issues with resolve to get to post for the New Year. Monday, we got caught up in the most amazing Rose Bowl Game in recent history. Oregon has been tearing up the Pacific-10 or 12 for the past three seasons but never won a bowl game. Wisconsin has been lighting up the Big Ten or Big Eleven-ish but lost to TCU last year in the Rose Bowl. Oregon and Wisconsin would have played in last year’s game if the Ducks had not traded up to play Cam Newton and the Auburn Tigers in the 2011 BCS Title game. It was a game for the ages and having the Ducks secure the final win in a nice Yard parlay helped ease the pain of the Bruins not saving hunger in the Kraft Fight Hunger bowl on New Year’s Eve.
The Bruins played in a better bowl game than the team deserved in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl. The Bruins were the first team in NCAA history to earn a bowl berth with a losing record. It was a second tier bowl for a third tier team and they played like they would rather be at home eating rather than in San Francisco leading the fight against hunger one miserable play at a time. We also forgot that one of the brother-in-laws went to the University of Illinois when the post-game phone call reminded us. The Illini were navigating on the precipice of mediocrity as well in 2011 but they were the cream of the crap on New Year’s Eve. The game was the first game since the end of the Neuheisel era if there was one. UCLA did play in the first Pacific 12 championship game although they were 31 point underdogs. Yard interns are researching that but that might have been the heaviest underdog in any championship game in any sport, at any level…ever! The Bruins easily covered the spread losing only 49-31 in Rick’s last game. The 50-0 beat down by USC the week before is one of many reasons Rick is not coaching today. Our earnest wish for Christmas was a bright future in the NFL for Mr. Barkley in 2012. It has been a wonderful season but that gift was not found under the tree.
Barkley decided to return for his 6th or 7th year at USC. Lane Kiffin told the press that Barkley really needed one more year at USC to be ready for the NFL. What Lane meant was that USC really needed one more year of Barkley to compete with the SEC for a BCS berth. When Barkley won the starting job as a freshman, not too many top prospects were eager to come to USC and play the Matt Cassel role. It is hard to understand why Barkley would come back for another season. Even with the new NFL labor deal, a first round pick will be getting nearly $15 million on a guaranteed contract. At time of press, the Yard is not certain how much of his USC money is guaranteed but anonymous sources say that it is not Reggie Bush type money. Barkley should have considered that he will never have another opportunity during 2012 to earn $5 million. He will earn NFL money and probably a lot of it. But the $5 million that would have been in his checking out account next year will be gone forever. Barkley should have also considered how his predecessors fared by staying for one more year of being Trojan nation’s epochal center. If the end game is being well paid in the NFL, staying one more year at USC is bad bet on your future. Carson Palmer and Matt Leinhart stayed one more year when the NFL beckoned. Palmer has wallowed in Cincinnati and now Oakland. Leinhart has just wallowed.
It would be impossible to review all of the stories that we thought of covering in 2012. The popularity of the Kardashians was one carousel we missed. We just do not get that one but Kim’s porn tape is not bad…from what we hear. Ruth Madoff’s revelation that she and Bernie attempted suicide after the scandal broke was not surprising. Trying to commit suicide by taking a couple of Ambien before going to bed did not show much resolve in their plan! Yard favorite Adele had a break out year in music. Her soulful songs about boyfriends who wronged her have been atop all of the award lists. One universal axiom for the Yard audience is never date and then piss off a chick songwriter. Taylor Swift, Alanis, and Avril have all had chart toppers about failed relationship and the bastards that failed them. Russell Brand better keep an eye out for the Katy Perry shit storm heading his way in 2012.
As the sun rises in 2012, we at the Yard sincerely hope that our musings and rants have provided humor and distraction in your day. We never have set the bar high just a constant stream of random utterings about stuff that incites or amuses us. We appreciated your feedback all year and plan to continue with the same random resolve that makes this all possible.
New Year's Day… now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Mark Twain
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Thanksgivings from the Yard
Thanksgiving weekend always brings family, friends, football and food together with random precision. Some years that weekend also hosts the USC-UCLA rivalry game. It used to be every Thanksgiving when the Yard was but a mere sports sapling. It was a treacherous weekend in those days. USC was winning national championships and UCLA was earning their gutty little moniker with an occasional upset of their cross town rivals. Yard allegiance to the Blue and Gold was embedded by mom. She attended UCLA for a year or so before dad promised her the world if she dropped out of school while he cleaned things up in Korea working for the US Army. We have to always respect that decision so UCLA came with the deal.
As the Yard evolved, it became apparent that mom had few allies in this UCLA loyalty even within the family. Apparently, granddad attended USC School of Pharmacy and with the right mix of a USC pounding of UCLA and Tennessee sour mash he could be one mean SOB. Mom had his sister and her husband as UCLA defendants. They were teetotalers with too much southern genteel for school yard taunts. Grandpa usually had the better fuel on the field and in his tank. Cousin Mike was the most vocal Trojan booster and the king of vodka inspired vitriol. It was unclear if he ever attended the two night classes at USC that he claimed. This fact never mitigated his passion for the Cardinal and gold. In any event, there was a lot to be thankful for but UCLA never brought much to the dinner in those days. In the years since, we never looked back on the original commitment with mom but damn it is never easy.
The NBA is moving rapidly into the abyss of irrelevance on the sports landscape. We sort of understand that the NBA player feels that they are the show that people pay to see play. That same show goes on every day on the play grounds of Los Angeles and New York in front of less fortunate and the only money changing hands are side bets. Without a stadium, parking, television rights, merchandising there is no revenue to share. The NBA under David Stern built those revenue streams and underwrote all of the associated risk. The NBA players are taking the stance that the business built by ownership with ownership money is 57% theirs.
Foolishly management had given them 57% of their business in the last labor negotiation.
Understandably, the players wanted to maintain that inequity. The players failed to consider a few things in this disastrous work stoppage. It is lost on them that the economy has been a bit sketchy of late. A whole bunch of people are not working at all. Those that are working are figuring out what to spend their discretionary income on and the NBA is moving off most household wish lists. No one is asking their ownership for a 50/50 split or they are striking! The NBA has a flash of relevance on Christmas Day when the Lakers play someone who has won a recent NBA title or have a grudge with Kobe. Then it disappears to TBS until after the NFL and March Madness ends. If the Christmas games get scrubbed, that will be the unofficial end of this NBA season. 70% of the American public already reported to USA Today that they do not care if the NBA cancels this season. Tick, tock…
Revenue sharing has been an issue in professional sports for the past decade. It is not just the revenue between the players and ownership but small market teams and large market teams. The Lakers spend more money on players than the Indiana Pacers or Milwaukee Bucks. The Yankees spend more than three teams in their division...COMBINED! It is a more complex issue than this Blog is chartered to debate.
Forget about these over entitled professional athletes and owners, what about the inequities in college athletics? The SEC will probably win the BCS title this year again. It will make it six in a row for one conference of sixteen teams. It is not one dominant team. Four different SEC teams have won national championships since 2006, Florida, LSU, Alabama and Auburn. At this moment, the top three teams in the BCS standings are from the SEC. We are quite certain that the math and chemistry departments at these fine institutions have not seen a whole lot of this BCS largess. Donors are quite clear to these schools that the money needs to go to the football program.
Other schools have taken notice. Oregon’s emergence is financially inspired by Nike founder Phil Knight. Oklahoma State is in the mix in no small part to the $200 million T. Boone Pickens gave the school with explicit instructions that the money was not to be frittered away on academics. Pickens wanted every penny spent on improving the football and basketball teams. UCLA Alum and super-agent Michael Ovitz spearheaded a campaign to raise $200 million for UCLA. Would the money upgrade the moribund athletic facilities? Would there be an on-campus football stadium? No, UCLA built this Ronald Regan Medical Center. It is supposedly world class and people are getting cured and stuff but man…priorities!
This is a good place to end this diatribe to wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving from the Yard!
"I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land." Jon Stewart
As the Yard evolved, it became apparent that mom had few allies in this UCLA loyalty even within the family. Apparently, granddad attended USC School of Pharmacy and with the right mix of a USC pounding of UCLA and Tennessee sour mash he could be one mean SOB. Mom had his sister and her husband as UCLA defendants. They were teetotalers with too much southern genteel for school yard taunts. Grandpa usually had the better fuel on the field and in his tank. Cousin Mike was the most vocal Trojan booster and the king of vodka inspired vitriol. It was unclear if he ever attended the two night classes at USC that he claimed. This fact never mitigated his passion for the Cardinal and gold. In any event, there was a lot to be thankful for but UCLA never brought much to the dinner in those days. In the years since, we never looked back on the original commitment with mom but damn it is never easy.
The NBA is moving rapidly into the abyss of irrelevance on the sports landscape. We sort of understand that the NBA player feels that they are the show that people pay to see play. That same show goes on every day on the play grounds of Los Angeles and New York in front of less fortunate and the only money changing hands are side bets. Without a stadium, parking, television rights, merchandising there is no revenue to share. The NBA under David Stern built those revenue streams and underwrote all of the associated risk. The NBA players are taking the stance that the business built by ownership with ownership money is 57% theirs.
Foolishly management had given them 57% of their business in the last labor negotiation.
Understandably, the players wanted to maintain that inequity. The players failed to consider a few things in this disastrous work stoppage. It is lost on them that the economy has been a bit sketchy of late. A whole bunch of people are not working at all. Those that are working are figuring out what to spend their discretionary income on and the NBA is moving off most household wish lists. No one is asking their ownership for a 50/50 split or they are striking! The NBA has a flash of relevance on Christmas Day when the Lakers play someone who has won a recent NBA title or have a grudge with Kobe. Then it disappears to TBS until after the NFL and March Madness ends. If the Christmas games get scrubbed, that will be the unofficial end of this NBA season. 70% of the American public already reported to USA Today that they do not care if the NBA cancels this season. Tick, tock…
Revenue sharing has been an issue in professional sports for the past decade. It is not just the revenue between the players and ownership but small market teams and large market teams. The Lakers spend more money on players than the Indiana Pacers or Milwaukee Bucks. The Yankees spend more than three teams in their division...COMBINED! It is a more complex issue than this Blog is chartered to debate.
Forget about these over entitled professional athletes and owners, what about the inequities in college athletics? The SEC will probably win the BCS title this year again. It will make it six in a row for one conference of sixteen teams. It is not one dominant team. Four different SEC teams have won national championships since 2006, Florida, LSU, Alabama and Auburn. At this moment, the top three teams in the BCS standings are from the SEC. We are quite certain that the math and chemistry departments at these fine institutions have not seen a whole lot of this BCS largess. Donors are quite clear to these schools that the money needs to go to the football program.
Other schools have taken notice. Oregon’s emergence is financially inspired by Nike founder Phil Knight. Oklahoma State is in the mix in no small part to the $200 million T. Boone Pickens gave the school with explicit instructions that the money was not to be frittered away on academics. Pickens wanted every penny spent on improving the football and basketball teams. UCLA Alum and super-agent Michael Ovitz spearheaded a campaign to raise $200 million for UCLA. Would the money upgrade the moribund athletic facilities? Would there be an on-campus football stadium? No, UCLA built this Ronald Regan Medical Center. It is supposedly world class and people are getting cured and stuff but man…priorities!
This is a good place to end this diatribe to wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving from the Yard!
"I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land." Jon Stewart
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