The Noise Factor

Fact: society is not color-blind.  We aren’t.  Regardless of how open-minded we are or far from racist we may be, we aren’t color-blind.  

However, I find the recent comments from Donovan McNabb to be very bitter and inaccurate.  The most criticized quarterback in the NFL today happens to be Rex Grossman, who is very white.

McNabb plays in Philadelphia where criticism comes from everyone in and out of the football stadium.  Grossman plays in Chicago - one of the biggest cities in the United States.

The second most criticized quarterback, in my opinion, comes from the city that never sleeps: Eli Manning.  Not only does he face the tough media and fans, he also has a name to live up to.  Makes sense since he plays in a large city.

This is not me trying to prove a point - this is just the way I see things.  Maybe you see it different.

But I’m not going to sit here and tell you McNabb does not get criticized.  He does.  But instead of looking at the situation as him being a black man who’s prone to criticism because of his skin or the way he plays the quarterback position, look at other reasons such as completion percentage or wins/losses.  If he wasn’t pathetic the first two weeks we’d be looking at a man who’s led his team to a 2-0 record and we’d be loving him the way we always have.

Oh wait, could we love him so much that we could call him, "overrated"?

Ponder that for a second while I imagine Jeff Garcia in an Eagles uniform as the starter and wonder what could be going on this season.  

Ok back to the overrated comment.  The one way someone can be considered overrated is when we lift a player’s status above what the player has earned.  More than just Rush Limbaugh has believed that notion about McNabb.  Therefore, he has been treated well for his play at one time or another.

What also struck me were some of his quotes:

In regards to Peyton Manning and Carson Palmer: "Let me start by saying, I love those guys. But they don’t get criticized as much as we do. They don’t." (1)

- Yes, except they have performed - regardless of the weapons they have and Donovan does not.

In an interview on HBO’s "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" to be
broadcast Tuesday, McNabb said black quarterbacks "have to do a little
bit extra" because there are relatively few of them, adding "people
didn’t want us to play this position." (2)

- Well, I want the best quarterback to play the position regardless if he is black, white or another color.  With the stakes so high in the NFL, I bet all the coaches want to see the best player at that position as well, regardless of skin color.  And, just to clarify things here are a list of other starting black quarterbacks:

Steve McNair - Past his prime, still effective at times

David Garrard - Not that good, but decent start to the season

Vince Young - So far so good, but not quite established just yet

Jason Campbell - Not that good either

Tarvaris Jackson - Even worse

So there will be criticism and its not about skin color. 

Just a final question as we get set for Week 3 in a few days: does Bryant Gumbel need to turn some of his interviews into a race issue?   This isn’t the first time Gumbel has been around race issues on his programs.  Wonder if he thinks we hate his terrible play by play skills because of the color of his skin.  Absurd.

I’m not here to say there isn’t a race/color issue in sports because someone probably has a problem, but ultimately sports is all about winning and the majority of people feel that way.  McNabb is a good quarterback who didn’t get blindsided during the interview, he just got a little shortsighted. 

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Athletes have to be in incredible shape when it is time to step up during crunch time. Some athletes need to be in shape 365 days a year. Great physical specimans, a lot of them. Drug suspicion aside, they are physically gifted for the most part.

Entertainers entertain. They get in shape to be able to perform in a movie or on stage. But they don’t build their life around being in great shape - well, not every entertainer at least.

I know this story happened during my time off, but I felt this was relevant because I was talking about this with my brother this afternoon. It was the story about Maroon 5’s Adam Levine and his alleged rambling about how Tennis star Maria Sharapova is bad in bed.

Dude, you are a poppy-rock singer. If your list of top-notch women you’ve bagged wasn’t so impressive I would have assumed you got Kanye West’s flawed jaw to clamp down on you because you (and Kanye) seem very questionable on the surface. Nonetheless, I won’t question your man card. But you need to know that there is a big difference between nailing an entertainer who’s 5 foot 3 with big juggs and getting a 6 foot-plus woman who’s physically in better shape than you.

Face it, Adam, your comments about how you “really thought, like a lot of guys, that she’d be the loud screaming type. But instead, she just lay there like a dead frog. She even got angry if I started to moan, said it ‘ruined her concentration.’ It was so disillusioning that I went on Paxil (an antidepressant) for a month afterwards. Really, it was much more of a shock than when I found out there’s no such thing as the Easter Bunny.” (1), basically tells us that male entertainers have no business being with a female athlete. You guys can’t get it done. Enrique is the exception because he has great genes in his family for snagging women. Enrique’s been a celeb since the day he was born, Levine has not. (1- source: www.starpulse.com)

Levine’s comments also tells us he may be the problem in bed because Maria has had real men before and that he would rather embarrass the girl who was 18 at the time. Face it, very few women at 18 know what they are doing. She got laid out by those comments. I know Levine’s denying it but if this is true then this cat is a total scumbag. It really makes me wonder if he ever gave a f*** about her and him. Pun intended.

He needs to stick with making music and his own kind - female entertainers. Only the male athletes can cross-over. Very few male entertainers can match up with a goddess like Sharapova. Dolph Lungren is one of them.

In sum, a guy who has no business scoring as many hotties as he does shouldn’t open his mouth about anybody. Regardless if it’s true, he had to have said something to someone and it came back around.

I still think he got through Kanye’s wire. That’s just me.

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The feelings I have about cheating stem back to when I was a kid watching a television show or movie where there was an athletic activity going on.  Most of the time the good guy/girl/group would triumph over evil - even if the evil group happened to cheat at a certain event to win.  Only in make-believe would we see cheaters not winning.  Unfortunately in todays world we do not have the luxury of A) seeing cheaters lose every time like you see on TV or B) having the knowledge of knowing who is cheating.

This weekend we found out the New England Patriots, a team I have rooted for since the age of 12, allegedly used cameras on the New York Jets sideline - for reasons of benefit for their team.  As I sat there thinking about the accusation and the penalty that would follow if  proven guilty, I remembered what use to go down during my playing and coaching days in baseball.  Obviously these are two different sports but both use signs during games.

People use to often refer to stealing signs in a baseball game as "bush".  I use to refer to it as "bush signals".  If you are the opposite team, you better not allow me to know what signs are coming.  Do not allow me to know what your steal sign, bunt sign or hit-and-run signs are.  Otherwise, we will pitch accordingly and you will be ours all night. 

Is Football different than Baseball?  Yes, I will admit that.  However, there is a bigger issue that hasn’t really been discussed at length.  That is the audio issue.  Apparently there was some audio equipment close to the coaches on the field.  That means someone on the Patriots staff could hear what play would be called.  That is a much bigger issue.  Why?  Because a lot of coaches cover their mouths when they send a plan in.  If they cover up, they can’t figure anything out.  Otherwise, why use a camera when binoculars will do the trick, right?  Only audio equipment will pick up Andy Reid’s plays, right?  That’s why having audio equipment near the coaches should be a bigger issue and it isn’t.  For the life of me, I cannot understand why…

I certainly know if I was mic’ed up during games in which I was a coach I’d be in big trouble with the opposition.   It also makes sense that New York knew about this; Eric Mangini did coach under Bill Belichick.  Regardless of how many organizations try to gain an edge by doing something underhanded, New England is the only team under fire and only they can blame themselves for that.

Other stuff…

- Greg Oden may miss the entire 2007-08 season because of cartilage damage in his knee.  This is a big blow to both Oden and the Portland Trail Blazer organization but this may be a blessing in disguise.  Portland isn’t ready to make any noise this year but if they get smoked this year, get a top 4 pick for next year, get Oden healthy and allow some of the perennial powerhouse teams to get older and weaker, Portland then has their team set up for the next decade.  It’s like 1997 when San Antonio lost David Robinson and Sean Elliot and ended up drafting Tim Duncan thanks to their horrific season.  They weren’t a bad team but got decimated with injuries.  Then San Antonio became even greater than they were before.  That may not happen with Portland, but with Oden being out it certainly gives them a chance to really load up with young talent.

- HGH being tested by 2008?  Gee, I’d love to have some audio equipment in the room where the MLBPA have their own internal meeting.  Wouldn’t it be great to be a fly on the wall for that one.  "Hey, you seem to be sweating hard big guy.  Is everything ok?".  That said, I can’t see the Players Association agreeing to that. 

- Mark Bell was suspended by the NHL for 15 games for a drunk driving/crash episode that occurred over a year ago.  The court sentenced him a few months ago and it was only until recently that the NHL took action.  I thought the league wanted to be taken seriously?

- Mike Tyson is going through his possession of cocaine case and nobody even cares.  How the mighty has fallen.  We use to eat Mike Tyson news up all the time.  Then again, we cannot fault Mike entirely as boxing has continue to plummet in terms of it’s appeal.  Let’s face it folks, MMA has started to take over and boxing is now left wondering what it needs to do to get it back to the good ole’ days.

…Im off tomorrow and Monday on assignment so I’ll be back on my show on Tuesday.  I should have a replay going tomorrow morning of THIS morning’s show.  Have a great night and even better weekend.

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A nice 4-week hiatus is exactly what The Dan ordered.  I kept tabs on what was going on here (with the exception of hotblondemilf, I missed that one).  Needless to say I walked away for a brief period and did it exactly the way I came into this small fraternity - quietly.

One of the lessons I revisted during my time off was the one fact of life that people take for granted: no matter what happens or where you go, everything will continue as it should.  Bloggers will continue blogging, the world will continue turning and life will continue whether or not you are around.  And while I’m still here I may as well do what I can with the time I have.  Speaking of which, I might as well take off my age since I had my birthday last week.  However, starting next year I will be going backward in age.  So next year I will be 24 again, and then 23, 22, 21….

If only we could do that to athletes - on second thought some athletes already do…

MLB Pennant Races

- We all love a photo finish at the end of the season to decide who gets to play in October and who gets to play with themselves while watching it.  Unfortunately, what we will be left with are a few good teams and not much to show in the National League.  Let’s be straight; the Detroit Tigers have shot themselves in the pants badly over the last two months when they were riding high after a big sweep of the Boston Red Sox prior to the All-Star break.  They have played themselves out of a playoff spot in the American League.  But can you tell me the teams out of the NL Central and NL West are better than Detroit?  Not a chance in hell.  There are some weak teams in the Central and the stronger teams in that division cannot take advantage of that.  They have been putrid all year and they could STILL make the World Series.  Why?  Because the hottest team in October prevails.  Ask the previous 5 World Series winners.  I’d consider Detroit the 5th best team in baseball, just ahead of the Mets, and they won’t touch the playoffs.

Why I love Toronto?

I read several blogs pertaining to the team they love.  Nobody wrote about the Toronto Blue Jays so I will and I will keep this brief. 

I don’t have a clue why I love the Blue Jays except for one reason: The Underdog.  They aren’t just an underdog against Boston and New York, they are an underdog in their own city.  The fans turned their back on the franchise who desperately wanted no part of the strike or replacement players at any time.  They are in love with a franchise that steals their money and has no incentive or motivation to win, and that is their joke of a hockey team - The Toronto Maple Leafs.  The hypocrisy of my city that use to draw 50 000 people a night to baseball games and now they draw half that blame the strike of 1994.  They lost fans in 1994 so that is a total lie.  Yet hockey shuts down for a year and not a single season-ticket holder budges.  Not one fan gave up their tickets despite the way the sport and the franchise has treated them.  Hence, the Jays are underdogs.  I root for the underdog.  I loved them when I was younger and when they were winning titles.  But I support them because I am loyal to the team who may not have a great GM but they know their backs are against the wall every single year.  I’ll support a franchise who is hungry than a franchise who will throw their food away.

Federer v. Wood

There is no discussion - the most dominant player out of the two is Roger Federer.  His run over the last 2+ years is something Tiger has never touched - and may never will. 

People want to talk about Tiger’s competition being better than Federer’s and that isn’t true.  Take Roger out of the sport and you have Rafael Nadal who would be well on his way to being ahead of the pace to run down Pete Sampras’s majors record.  At 21 Nadal would be looked at as one of the all-time greats.  Don’t believe me?  Well if he had 5 titles at this age he’d be way ahead of Federer at that age with no Federer to track him down. 

Without Tiger, Phil Mickelson would not even be close to being regarded as one of the best ever. 

Nothing taken away from Tiger because he has jacked his sport to a whole new level, but Federer simply won’t be thought of as the better athlete.  The reason: he isn’t American.  Sorry folks, but it does have an effect.  Being American would give him more exposure in North America and exposure would be huge for him, his sport, and his legacy.

NFL is back

- Thank god. 

I have to cut this short because dinner is calling my name.  Don’t be a stranger - listen to me tomorrow at www.chevradioam.com.  I still leave Thursdays to you.  I hope to hear from you all.
 

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