NBA Playoff Update 2 -- The Laker Road is Clear...

Spurs eliminated in 6 clears the road for the Lakers all the way to the Finals.

Lakers still given two losses in the first round to scare them into submission a bit, though.

Couple of things to look at:

• The two preferred teams in the Eastern Conference (both winning their series 4-1) got more free throw attempts than their opponents in every game of their series except for the token win Indiana received at home.
• The Thunder-Nuggets five-game series ended with 352 free throws, an average of 70.4 a game. Those two teams had basically the same number of free throws than the entire Heat-76ers series, PLUS the Indiana Pacers. Gee, think someone had The Over in an otherwise meaningless series?
• Number of seven-game first-round series: Zero.
• Records of the teams with more FT attempts: Bulls-Pacers: 5-0. Heat-76ers: 4-1. Celtics-Knicks: 1-3. (Yes, the Knicks actually had more free-throw attempts in 3 of the 4 games, still losing them all!) Magic-Hawks: 1-5.
• Eastern Conference: Bulls and Heat series: 9-1. Celtics and Hawks series: 2-8. Gee, anyone wonder where this is heading? Bulls vs. Heat.
• Western Conference records: Grizzlies-Spurs: 4-2, including a +16 for Memphis in their clincher. (Spurs are done at the top level.) Lakers-Hornets: 2-2-2. (Clearly a case of the league telling the Lakers to STFU! The two games the Lakers clinched with? Lakers +9 and Lakers +8, the latter on the road!!) Mavs-Blazers: 3-3. (The home team had the advantage for all the games but 1, and the two Mavs wins in Dallas when they had the advantage were both +16!) Thunder-Nuggets: 2-3, but the last game was a +21 for the Thunder.
• Total for the Western Conference? 11-10-2. Total for the league? 22-19-2.

So, at first glance, you'd think there was nothing to this.

Remember, though, the Bulls and Heat series were decided by the referees in this regard, at 9-1. Once the league sent their message to the Lakers, they got two large advantages to advance.

This is what happens when you have only three relevant teams in a 16-team playoff.

$Cam goes #1 -- consolidation complete.

What a crock of...

Gigantic defeat for the owners in court -- probably reshapes the NFL for the players...

And the owners lose again, BIG.

The league year must start immediately, and the only question now, frankly, is how bad the damages are going to be.

I'm thinking $4-5 BILLION -- TREBLED.

The owners had NO INTENTION of playing this season. If they did, I also do not believe the Green Bay Packers would've won Super Bowl XLV.

And they're going to get smacked, hard.

Barring a successful (unlikely) appeal:

• I believe a number of teams will go into court receivership.
• I believe a number of owners will be compelled to sell.
• I think Roger Goodell's days are numbered as Commissioner.

And if people really start to take a look at track records, I'm sensing some players might be gaining ownership interest once the dust settles.

NBA Playoff Update

Thanks to Brian Tuohy for continuing to compile on his website the key statistic of the playoffs -- the differential in free-throw attempts.

We are learning several things in this case-study:

The league does not give a Tinker's Damn about the Celtics, Knicks, Hawks, or Magic.

The Bulls have already eliminated the Indiana Pacers in five games.

The Heat are up 3-1 on the 76ers.

In those two series:

• The Heat have gotten more free-throw attempts in all four games. (Including an absurd 39-15 differential in Game 1.)
• The Bulls had more free-throw attempts in all four of their wins (and some additional apparent help, as Tuohy adds in. The one game the Pacers won (in Indiana, of course), they had more free throw attempts.
  

In those two series, the team with more free-throw attempts is 8-1.

In the other two series:

• The Celtics swept the Knicks, despite the Knicks getting more free-throw attempts in three of the four games.
• The Hawks are up 3-2 on the Magic, and the team who has more free-throw attempts in 1-4.

In these two series, the team with more free-throw attempts is 2-7.

What does this say?

There are only two relevant teams in the Eastern Conference (the Bulls and the Heat), and they WILL meet in the Eastern Conference Finals.

How about out West??

The Lakers are being sent a message direct from David $tern: Shut up, or your reign is over!

This isn't only because of the Kobe gay slur, either.

A few days after this, the Lakers were fined $75,000 by the league for unauthorized public comments about their CBA situation.

This was only a very short time before the playoffs, and I already asserted that I believe the first incident probably cost them the title this year to begin with, and Phil Jackson openly telling reporters that there will be an NBA lockout this year (he's right, but that's beside the point!) might well be the dagger.

So, what happens?? The Lakers are now 2-2 with lowly New Orleans (well, lowly by Western Conference standards -- it took ten games above .500 to make the Western Conference playoffs, while the 12th-place Golden State Warriors (who just fired their coach as a result!) would've only missed the Eastern Conference playoffs by one game!!).

The Lakers have not received a free-throw advantage of over +3 the entire series, while the Game Two New Orleans loss actually had New Orleans get a +10 in the free-throw attempts.

One or two more incidents, and the coronation of the Eastern Conference will be complete.

Next: The Spurs are done, unless $tern really gets on the beat here.

The Memphis Grizzlies won Game 1 with a -14 free-throw differential, lost Game 2 with a -12, and had the advantage slightly in both games (both wins) in Memphis.

If there is a Game 6, I'd watch that one VERY VERY closely. Memphis leads 3-1.

Next: Cuban's rants must be doing something right.

I always had a gut feeling that Mark Cuban was more than happy to take fines to get the league to be forced to listen to him.

Look at Game 4 (Blazers +13, two late calls got Cuban ranting as the series went 2-2), and then Game 5 (Mavericks +16). Dallas leads 3-2.

Finally: The league doesn't care about Oklahoma City or Denver -- someone's probably got the over in all the games of this series!

289 free throws in four games????

Seventy-two free throws per game???

The entire Bulls-Pacers series had 266, in one more game.

The entire Celtics-Knicks series had 174.

189 in the first four for Heat-76ers.

252 in the first five for Magic-Hawks.

228 for the first four for Spurs-Grizzlies.

225 for the first four in Lakers-Hornets.

226 for five games in Mavericks-Trailblazers.

You don't think someone has The Over here in this last series???

Hmmmm...

Anatomy of a $Cam, Part I: How do you command that kind of money?

When I start typing this, it is Thursday night.

One week from tonight, the used-car salesman will take to the podium and conduct an
NFL Draft for a league which is technically locked out.

That could be the subject for another post.

What I am going to do here, though is discuss the player now universally considered
the #1 draft pick on most "Big Boards" -- mock drafts conducted to keep the
Pavlovian NFL fanbase drooling until the shyster takes to the podium.

Thing is, I predicted this no less than on November 11, 2010 -- and was almost
laughed off the Internet for the proposal.

Over the course of the last several weeks, as $Cam Newton has rocketed up draft
boards to be the near-universally believed #1 draft pick to the Carolina Panthers,
I began to think a bit more cleanly about what I said then.

The story is that his father, Cecil, was shopping him around and turned down
several colleges because the money was not there. Illegal money, by all NCAA rules
before the farcical bullshit which basically handed the national title to Auburn
seven weeks before it was played!

But he was able to get an offer of $200,000 to get his son to sign to Auburn.

Consider the earlier post about the Real Sports allegations by other Auburn
players.

$200,000 is far more than a "book bag full of money".

It has to make one believe that there was a lot more to getting Cam Newton into the
fold at Auburn (or at any other school willing to pay the price) than simply
signing him.

There is an old saying that Mr. Moldea put in his book Interference which talks
about The Mob and how they tamper sporting events for gambling purposes:

"You don't put big money on a game you don't know the result of."

So, consider this from three angles: The angle of Auburn University, the angle of
the Newtons, and the angle of the middlemen involved.

First, Auburn, which has been in the middle of a pay-for-play scandal for some
time.

Presuming they would have no qualms paying Newton some form of money to get him
signed, why would they go many times over the standard rate (or what appears to be
it) for most players they've signed?

UNLESS...

Now, the Newtons: How do you feasibly command that kind of money to get $Cam to
sign, even if he is the #1 JUCO prospect?

UNLESS....

Now, the middlemen: How do you (like a prospective school) not laugh off the
demands of the Newtons and the like?

UNLESS.....

That kind of money would only be consider-able for a player who satisfies the
following conditions, as I've said before:

1) He's going to get the school where the school wants to go. And in the SEC,
that's not only an SEC Championship, but a B$C$ National Championship. So it
basically has to be in the cards that the school which signs $Cam is going to win
it's conference, get in the title game, and win it.

2) He's going to be the Heisman winner. Largely, in this day and age, that's a
direct corollary of the first point, especially as a quarterback. The Heisman
winner has not appeared in a B$C$ National Championship Game only three times! Ron
Dayne never appeared for the Badgers. Ricky Williams never appeared for Texas.
Carson Palmer never appeared for USC.

Chris Weinke of Florida State and Tim Tebow of Florida both appeared in the B$C$
title match the year after they won the Heisman.

Two of those three were the first two years of the B$C$.

So, especially in the position Newton is going to be in, the first point
effectively implies the second, as the last person to win the Heisman and not to
appear in the B$C$ title game won the Heisman eight years before!

3) He's going to be the #1 Draft Pick in the next NFL draft.

Why these? An economic concept called ROI. Return on Investment.

For the Newtons, they want maximum value.

For the school, they want to go where they feel they need to go. In the SEC,
that's a B$C$ title and nothing less.

For the middlemen, a cut of the cash -- either then, or later (say, an NFL
contract??)...

But then you ask: How is this possible? How can people make these kinds of
decisions involving this degree of illegal money...

UNLESS......

UNLESS THEY KNOW THE RESULTS BEFOREHAND!!!

Let's put it this way: Let's say that you decide you want to try to do this, and
you have the raw physical tools and all of such.

So you begin to shop your services (illegally!) to the different schools.

You say your going rate is $200,000 to get a commitment.

How else do you not get laughed off than if the parties involved know they can get
a return on the investment, unless you get injured?

So what I am proposing is simple:

$Cam Newton, his father, and the middleman KNEW that $Cam, barring a catastrophic
injury, WAS going to be the quarterback of the National Champion (it'd only be a
question of who he signed with).

He WAS going to be the Heisman winner.

and he IS going to be the #1 Draft Pick (even though he couldn't sniff the #1 pick
with a police dog, even just after the title game).

Now you ask: How is THIS possible?

Well, I propose that we learned a few things from the Communist countries back in
the day, and we're perfecting them as we speak.

There's a Sports Machine in the United States.

And I've got an idea how it works...

"Year of the Quarterback", eh you freaking dogkilling loving freaks???

I had a feeling this was going to end VERY badly.

EA Sports and ESPN teamed up to, through ESPN's SportsNation, do a tournament poll to determine the cover person (not athlete) for Madden 12.

Each of the 32 teams got one representative. (Seattle had no worthy players, apparently, so their fans, as "The 12th Man", were the Seahawks' representative.)

I would like to announce, seven days early, the Madden 12 cover person:

Dog Killer. Ron Mexico. Piece of Shit Michael Vick.

How do I know this?

Because ESPN or some sabotage operation (though almost certainly the former!) eliminated probably the only player who could've defeated him, and through VERY suspicious means...

Aaron Rodgers, of the Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers (and it'd feel a lot better saying that if Brian Tuohy hadn't known the result of the game three hours before kickoff), was the #1 seed in his quarter of the draw.

He defeated Ndakumong Suh (the AP Defensive Player of the Year as a rookie) by a 3-1 margin.

He did the same to Sam Bradford.

He then defeated Danny Woodhead of the Patriots by 56-44. OK, I can live with that -- the Patriots are always on The Short List.

So will someone please explain to me -- other than the obvious fact that EA, ESPN, and the inner-city black demographic which Madden and the NFL seem to want to cherish want DogKiller Vick to be on the cover (again! - and he'd be the first player in history to grace the cover twice) -- how Rodgers loses the cover poll semifinal by 61-39 (better than a 3-2 margin)...

... to PEYTON HILLIS of the CLEVELAND BROWNS!!!

Hillis has only started in the league one year (last year). He did have a 1,000-yard rushing season and 11 touchdowns. He was a backup for two years previous to that.

He beats Ray Rice, Vick's replacement (Matt Ryan, and by only 51-49!), and Jamaal Charles of the Chiefs.

And it's not like much of the rest of his quarter of the bracket had any real stars in it (Maurice Jones-Drew, Tim Tebow, Dwight Freeney, and Jordan Gross).

So he then beats the Super Bowl MVP and quarterback of one of the most popular teams in the National Football League by better than a 3-2 margin????

WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE KIDDING?

You want to present Michael Vick as this reformed God, but he's done nothing for me but to confirm he's a slimy piece of shit.

Vick defeated Andre Ware by a 3-1 margin. Then he beat Andre Johnson, Patrick Willis, and Adrian Peterson by approximately 3-2 margins apiece.

I've got no choice but to vote for Hillis, but I have a feeling another Madden boycott is in order, if not far worse -- and I better not go further than that. I had to reconsider a tweet to ESPN because I felt I might get my Twitter account suspended for what I'd like to do to DogKiller's Madden 12 displays...

NBA Playoffs Begin: Hail to the Chief?

It's that time again. NBA Playoffs, and David $tern'$ fantasy about creating the perfect showcase for his "heroes".

And then one of them has to open his bigoted fucking mouth at a referee. Kobe Bryant was fined $100,000 (and should've been banned for the playoffs) for using a homophobic slur at a referee.

Brian Tuohy does a very good job of looking at the NBA contenders, with respect to how he views the NBA will probably fix the 2011 playoffs.

Some quick hits to think about over the next two months:

EASTERN CONFERENCE

1) I never thought Miami would win the title this year. Come back to me, if there is an NBA, in 12-14 months, and panic if they are still not coming together. I did feel, as many did, that they would be in the Finals, though.

I do so no longer.

2) Forget Indiana, Philadelphia, or Atlanta. I still don't understand, in the first two's case, how teams with that low of a record get in! But none of these are relevant.

3) New York??? Can't see it now, and I do think the power is going to shift east, but also south. New York might well play a supporting role (as it has done before!) in the post-negotiations NBA, but I can't see them getting the nod for some time.

4) Orlando has had that role for the last number of years. With Miami AND Chicago in the mix, that's probably done.

5) Boston is on the way out, but they do have their ring for putting together their threesome of "heroes".

Which leaves my choice for $tern'$ pick to win the East. Barry Hussein Soetero.

Yes, that means the Bulls are the pick -- and I only really believed this in the last couple of days. I (like others I've talked to) have believed for the entire season we were headed for Lakers-Heat. But then Kobe (as Kobe has done before) screws things up with his conduct.

Kobe's rape case probably has cost him at least two more championships, if not more. The Detroit title in 2004 (and probably the Boston title four years later) were because the league, for a five-year period, could not trust Bryant with the title.

So now you have to pick a team which feasibly could win the title you had basically assigned to the Three-Three-Peat for Phil Jackson before he retires (almost certainly after this season).

And that's where the Basketball Fan in Chief comes in -- Soetero only cares about his sports teams, probably manipulating a Stanley Cup and an NFC runner-up to Chicago, with what would be the crown jewel of getting the first post-Jordan Bulls title.

WESTERN CONFERENCE

The Western Conference begins and ends with the Lakers -- so much so that I still recall a sports radio host from FOX Sports (not in the current slots -- this was an overnight host and NOT JT the Brick) saying the league should rig The Finals to get the Lakers in every year for ratings purposes.

That's all fine and good, but you now have a large-scale complication: Kobe and his slur.

We know that with David $tern, the referees are sacrosanct, even as co-participants in the farce.

Ratings might get them there, but can $tern trust Kobe with one more title before he turns the league over to the Miami Heat?

My guess is that he cannot. I do believe the Bulls win the title now, for Mr. Soetero.

ADDITION ON EDIT: Tuohy does raise one very good question. Especially with the fact that Mark Cuban has openly accused the league of rigging games, and the penchant and reputation of the NBA for doing so...

Why has the league not expelled Cuban from being the owner of the Dallas Mavericks?

For the love of all that is holy: Is that Dodger Stadium or Galatasray?

Something happened at Opening Weekend in Los Angeles which just disgusted me.

Anyone who's taken a walk in the area around Dodger Stadium knows it's not a pretty sight -- not that unakin to Oakland and the Network Associates Coliseum.

But it's Giants Weekend as well as the opener, and it sounds like one Giants fan has paid for it with his life.

Bryan Stow was a 42 year old paramedic.

He's about to die because of the fact that he wore the wrong colors in a gang war in Los Angeles' turf.

He was not a Crip, nor a Blood.

He was a Giants fan at the Dodgers-Giants opener in Dodger Stadium.

He is still in a medically induced coma, and there is no question in my mind that they will eventually have to turn off the switch.

I make reference to Galatasray, one of the most infamous clubs in Turkey, to harken back to the 2000 UEFA Cup semifinal series with Leeds United of England. Several Leeds supporters were killed in Turkey because they dared support their team in the opposition's turf.

Brian Tuohy makes repeated reference in the start of his book "The Fix is In" to the fan mentality which has run amok. He also, on his website, quotes Howard Cosell in his book I Never Played the Game about what Cosell calls Sports Syndrome.

Cosell put out six points as to the basis of Sports Syndrome, and I'd like to harken on a couple of them as it relates to this murderous disgrace in Los Angeles:

1. The game is sacrosanct—a physical and almost religious ritual of beauty and art.

I have made clear on repeated occasion that one of the major problems with sports (and I've had it exposed to me by very close friends across the spectrum of people I know) is that The Game has become Religion. The Sport has become EVERYTHING, and to subsume all else. Given this, would it not surprise one that the Dodger fans (those prone to violence and who hate the "Hated Ones", as the Giants are called) would treat it a personal affront and an invasion of gang turf if one Giants fan showed up, with the predictable result (see later)...

2. Only those who have played the game can understand and communicate its beauty.

Not really of the greatest relevance here, but one has to wonder if this is part of some of the sanctification of the process, like this one...

3. All athletes are heroes, to the point where some are cast as surrogate parents in the American home.

One has to wonder if this is not just "parents" -- a recent study showed that violent incidents increased 10% on Sundays in NFL cities where teams were favored and upset (versus other NFL Sundays).

4. Winning isn’t everything…it’s the only thing! (Something Vincent T. Lombardi never said!)

And if that victory is a defense of one's turf that kills somebody and you win the game, is that even more so?? MADNESS!

5. Sport is Camelot. It is not a place for truth—only for escape, for refuge from life.

The key here being that there is no place for the actual truth. This leads to the ultimate point vis-a-vis this incident:

6. The fan is sacred, even as sports are. He pays the freight, thus he is an entitled being. The media people tell him this every day. Therefore, once within the arena, his emotions whetted by the Sports Syndrome, the fan adopts what John Stewart Mill found to be the classic confusion in the American thought process, the confusion between Liberty and License—a natural and probable consequence of which is fan violence.

These dogs (and I live in Southern California) felt they had the license to beat the shit out of anyone who talked smack and wore a Giants jersey.

Talking smack, to an extent, is part of any sports situation. I once was in the front row, watching a holiday tournament involving my university at the time (The University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire) while they were #1 in the NAIA polls in 1992.

They were playing Hawaii-Hilo in the designated "home game" of the tournament, and, after some contention about a call from the Hilo coach, I yelled out "SIT DOWN, COACH!!!"

We've all heard it a hundred times and done it a few.

The coach stopped, looked right at me, and put his hands out to say, "OK, I'll sit down... Yeesh."

The next night, after the third-place game, I walked over to the same coach (on no one's order but my own), shook his hand, apologized, and wished him well.

I'm no saint when it comes to fandom, but there is a fucking difference between good-natured ribbing (especially in a rivalry like Giants-Dodgers) and KILLING SOMEBODY OVER IT...

I know that the police in LA pressured everybody for draconian security, but, sadly, there appeared only one solution.

If the pig-fuckers who wish to be violent want to turn American sports stadiums into their European and South American soccer counterparts, then exact the same punishment: Play games with NO FANS allowed inside.

OK, how do you explain the Bonds verdict, without accusations of jury tampering?

So the Barry Bonds jury came back, and could only agree that Barry obstructed justice, and deadlocked on the three remaining perjury charges.

So will someone please explain to me how this is possible...

The jury has to convict with a unanimous 12-0 verdict for any charge they bring back a result of Guilty on, and must acquit with the same unanimity.

So all the jurors believe he obstructed justice. However:

• One of the jurors, and only one, not only believed that the prosecution did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was injected with a syringe (and, hence, perjured himself when he told the Federal Grand Jury he did not), but stood with that belief to the point of a mistrial on that charge. This, even though one of the star witnesses for the prosecution (with no rebuttal witnesses from the defense!!) said she saw Greg Anderson (who, IMHO, should rot for the rest of his days for voluminous obstructions of justice!) inject Barry. JURY TAMPERING??? Probably, but it leads to an 11-1 for conviction, and that's not enough.
• On the subject of perjury for knowingly taking steroids, the prosecution, even with all of the stuff said about Barry beforehand and all the witnesses in the trial being for the prosecution, could only get 4 out of the 12 to believe Barry perjured himself on the steroid question. The level of incompetence (or abject blindness on the part of San Franciscans -- remember, of course, that the jury pool is from San Francisco's voter rolls!) this appears to indicate on the part of the prosecution is staggering. ANY FOOL CAN SEE FROM HIS PICTURES AND HIS PERFORMANCE THAT HE WAS ON ILLEGAL PEDs!!! And yet, with all the resources and all the time wasted on this trial, you can't get more than FOUR of the jury to believe that beyond reasonable doubt?
• And on the HGH perjury question, it was worse. They only got THREE to believe Bonds perjured himself on that one.

So the question that I have is the following:

You have the jury convicting Bonds on obstruction, but one juror believes he did not use a syringe, and majorities of the jury believe Bonds when he said he didn't take steroids or HGH knowingly. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? You either have to explain to me how the one juror who voted to acquit on the syringe perjury question votes for obstruction anyway, or explain how that one juror believes he took steroids or HGH...

Something happened here -- that much is clear. We've already got a scumbag in Greg Anderson who's been in and out of jail repeatedly for contempt of court (which should be updated to repeated obstructions of justice -- if Anderson were compelled to testify and forced to do it, Bonds would be exposed and this would be the end of it!!), and he knows and is not talking!

Basically, I think Bonds walks. I think the judge views this verdict, will do the one logical thing and toss it (simply because he'd have to come to the question as to how do you obstruct justice in this case if no perjuries are proven), and I don't think it's going to get retried.

And then the Hall of Fame talk starts. He's going to be the ultimate Litmus Test: He goes in, and Roid-ger Clemens, A-Fraud, Rafael Palmerroids, McLiar, So-So, and the rest of the cheating scum get in too.

I don't think he goes in, and I still believe that this entire era (from the Cansecos to A-Fraud) will eventually, to the extent possible, have to be wiped from the books.

Funny thing, the fraud that is our Major League of Baseball: The Hit King is banned for life, the Home Run King is a felon, the second to the aforementioned Hit King a bigoted scumbag.

And you still want your kids to get the glove?

As I will say in the next post, you may wish to watch where you go...

Brian Tuohy on the lockout -- and me on why it needs to destroy the National Football League

Brian Tuohy, in one of his most recent posts on his The Fix Is In website, talks about the NFL lockout and the largest bargaining chips both sides have on the lockout.

This post is a very good discussion as to the lockout and the problems which should be exposed in this league.

So consider this a commentary on that post.

The first thing which I think a lot of people misconceive about the lockout is that it is only, as Brian puts it, trying to get a "small redistribution of that wealth", the $9-10 billion in league revenues that are one of the main sources of contention.

The league is trying to vastly redefine itself. An 18-game season is just one way. I truly believe that there is, in the works, a means to create an elite group of franchises in the league who will trade the championship between themselves. (The NFL is, in a realistic sense, the last of the major sports leagues, as I've said before, with any real degree of year-to-year parity.) I also believe that the owners are attempting to gain a measure of power which will have them lord over the players.

Brian decides to take this discussion a step further and offers solutions which he believes could end the lockout. He offers various proposals which I will offer my opinions on.

First, he goes to the Owners' side:

One of his core assumptions is his belief that the players "are the attraction, and they are what the fans pay to watch."

In a healthy situation, one might believe this. I don't. I believe one of the things which has completely compromised the National Football League (and football in general) is the fact that the attraction of the game is now The Game, as a religious construct.

Death in the family? Rally around football. Ignore your own grief, The Game will make you feel better when Your Team wins...

Economy going into the crapper? President wants us around football at the expense of reality.

Wedding? Make sure the event doesn't compromise the current "Big Game".

Etc. and so forth and so on.

The Game itself, The Sport, has taken on a religious level of significance in this country, subsuming all else. So I cannot agree with the premise given, not that it isn't necessarily well-founded.

That said, Brian offers that the owners should give the players what they want, with some exceptions:

"However, the owners should hold firm on one thing: rookie pay scale cuts. It’s foolish for them to consistently pay over-hyped rookies guaranteed money prior to them ever playing a down of professional football. That money should be paid to the proven players busting their humps in the trenches each and every week."

Sounds good in theory. The problem comes to the point that most of these players, as I stated in my last post, have basically been playing professional football for several years already in the college ranks (and possibly even high school), if they've been getting enough visibility to be impacted by these pay-scale cuts.

It certainly stands to reason why the point should be made. Just ask the Chargers with Ryan Leaf, or the Raiders, who should be arresting JaMarcus BackFat for impersonation of a football player.

It gets back to the question I ask about college football: Is college football a real college sport, or are the colleges fronts for a minor-league system, especially at the top levels?

But the meat and potatoes of why Brian's approach wouldn't work come to the next point that the owners would demand:

"In redistributing this money to tenured players, a caveat should go along with it. Owners should tell the players this: we will no longer cover for you.

There should be a zero tolerance policy in the NFL for criminal behavior.

Player arrested for a weapons violation? Out of the league. Assault and battery, especially of a woman? Finished. DUI or drug arrest? Done. No second chances. No half-hearted public apologies and sob stories traded for a lucrative contract.

Crime = expulsion. Plain and simple."

This would be the one thing which could make me a football fan again. There's one major problem:

You cease to have an NFL at that moment.

You would literally have to shut down the National Football League for at least one season. You would probably have to do the same with major college football -- with a recent admission that one major-college player in ten would already have to be banned.

You would also have to create a National Sports Commission, with inter-disciplinary power to remove players from the ability to play football at any level.

In 1998, as Tuohy notes in his book (page 23 in the Nook version), a prominent survey indicates that 20% of the surveyed players in the league had criminal records. (A similar FOIA request about the NBA's American-born players puts their number about 40%!!)

You'd have to think it's worse today, especially with the news continuing almost every day about the farcical nature of the purported "structure of the National Football League".

Just ask Mike Vrabel.

You'd literally have to expel a third of the league -- MINIMUM -- if this took effect. That's why you won't see it, especially with Tuohy's premise.

It needs to be done, but, especially as criminal as college sports have become, where do you get the players, The University of Wisconsin at Whitewater?

Roger Goodell has just announced Tuohy's final point for the owners:

But the players would never agree to this, nor will they agree to the HGH testing which the NFL supposedly wants to impose upon the end of this labor dispute. Why? Because the decertified Players’ Union always has protected these miscreant athletes whenever and wherever they run afoul of the league or the law. Instead of rooting out the bad apples—and the NFL is loaded with them—they grant them chance after chance to “rehabilitate.”

If the National Football League did just these last two things, they would not be able to fill five 53-man rosters from the current players.

I said it, that's my opinion, and that's how reliant I believe the players have become reliant on criminal elements and drugs to "be the man".

Many of these players have probably laid a trail of rape and robbery since high school (dear God, what are the high school cheerleading squads even for, if nothing more than just a sexual conquest for the starting quarterback?), and don't get me started on the drugs...

Every major team (and many top players on top of it) have "fixers", effective Mafia-types to clean up the mess so that the players can continue to be presented as these Adonis-types we are all supposed to literally prostrate ourselves to and worship.

Facts are facts: Any real attempt to clean up the league now forces a major reorganization in American sport.

The National Football League needs a long lockout for this to even be considered, and probably needs to be destroyed. Goodell is part of it, but the nature of the conduct of the players and what they do cannot be ignored.

Tuohy then goes to the other side of the argument, the players.

If the players would be bold enough, they should simply begin their own league.

Again, taking from his premise that the players are what the people come to see, his central proposition is, in fact, that the players should threaten to destroy the National Football League and create a player-oriented league.

There are certainly questions -- some of the stadiums currently in use are tied to the National Football League (most prominently the likes of Lambeau Field and Jerry Jones' billion-dollar Palace), so do you start playing the games of his hypothetical "Madison Cheeseheads" at Camp Randall?

But Brian's best idea, whether or not it would be in a new league, comes down to the simple philosophy that even Vince McMahon figured out for his professional football league:

More wins mean more money. Win as a team, lose as a team. Every player is accountable, and accountable to each other.

Everybody gets paid the same (if you want variation by position, fine, though Brian does not propose it), but if you really want to get paid, WIN.

It would do one more thing, especially if such a league took off and carried the "National Religion" banner forward -- it would reduce the probability that the games would be fixed. It would not eliminate it, by any means, but it would reduce the possibility, since, to really get paid, you have to perform on the scoreboard.

Could you really risk tanking a game or shaving points if you didn't get that money back from losing the game in your side affairs? And wouldn't some of that carry over into endorsements, etc.?

Brian, once again, gives good ideas to think about. I don't think some of them would work, because of the criminal fraud that the Religion of Football has, in and of itself, become.

B$C$ Pay-For-Play/Sex-For-Sign -- What do we have here??

Leave it to HBO to really muck things up.

A recent Real Sports show (which might still be airing on HBO for a bit) seems to want to blow the lid off this whole college football farce, leading up to and including the B$C$.

In it, at least four former Auburn players make the following charges:

• One player, at LSU for a camp, was given $500 in a "money handshake" to try to get him to sign with LSU.
• The same player also received "money handshakes" from Auburn and from Michigan State.
• He then went to Ohio State for recruiting, and not only received approximately $1,000 in similar constructs, but was offered (and accepted) sex from girls at a party that a couple of the Ohio State players had accompanied the prospective recruit to.
• This caused the player to commit to Ohio State. (And who would blame him, because basically it would mean that he would have enough meat to satisfy his manhood by being BMOC, on top of the money he was going to receive, above (scholarship) and below the table!)
• Then, someone from Auburn sent him literally a bookbag full of money. That got him to sign to Auburn.
• The same player also reports pay-for-performance benefits as well. One time, his performance actually got him enough money to get a car which he desired ($7,000, cash). A sack could be worth $300-400. A four-sack game versus Alabama ("the only game that matters")? $4,000!
  
• A second of the four was also offered a large sum of money to go to Auburn, but didn't take it because he wanted autonomy.
  
• After changing his major (because, in his OWN WORDS: "so my classes didn’t interfere no more but I didn’t bother to go because I knew I was only there to play football.”), he is called up to the coach's office because he has "mail". The "mail" had $500 in it.
• This was repeated several times that season and made more frequent during his senior year.
• The other two players both reported similar "money handshakes", one of whom (injured before he ever played a down) received somewhere around $3,000 to sign with Auburn.
• One of the players was skimming tickets for $1,000/pop for the annual Iron Bowl showdown.

So why do I go in such detail?

College sports, at the major college level, are a CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE.

We are so past the need for a National Sports Commission (on this and many other subjects) that stuff like the B$C$ and the NCAA are probably, now, unsavable.

Look at the allegations. Auburn. Ohio State. LSU. And you can't think some of the other SEC schools aren't involved either. And we already know all the crooked shit going down with U$C.

There's college football for you. And NOTHING is going to be done to change it.

Why? Because it ends college sports.

Most schools are losing money on their athletics. Some, quite badly. The University of California (at Berkeley) just dropped baseball, for one example.

Remember what the one guy said in the quote I put up: The only reason he even goes to college is to play football. We need to stop the student-athlete canard.

Are the colleges, especially at the Division I/FBS level, actually colleges, or criminal fronts for minor league sports franchises?

We need to stop the belief that these are actually students. If they get their degrees and the like, that's excellent -- and many do and God bless them for doing so and taking advantage of the legal opportunity given to them.

The problem is simple: These are not students. The schools do not conform to the NCAA rules (if they do, they have no meaningful players to speak of, especially with this sort of competition). There is massive criminal conspiracy, up to and including the NCAA (else a number, if not all, of the major programs would be closed).

The solution is to understand reality. The football players come in in August for camp. They play August-January, get a couple months off to heal, then Spring Practice and the intrasquad Spring Game. Then who knows what until August again.

These aren't students. It's time for the NCAA to either shut down this enterprise as we know it or do the one thing the BC$ was designed to do: Force the NCAA out of major-college football and create a true minor league, with very few relevant teams and a bunch of cannon fodder.