And Suh almost does it again!!!

He almost got his third pre-season fine this last week, and how seven officials and the league office (especially with the latter having the benefit of game film) can miss THIS...

Let's be clear on a couple things:

• The contact to Brady was legal, especially under the clarification regarding quarterback contact...
• He was clearly attempting to intercede in the fracas that had a Patriot offensive lineman face-masking another player (and got called for it)...

The problem comes at 0:54 of the clip, and the announcer sees it. Suh throws a punch at the lineman who face-masked his teammate.

He basically misses, but any referee at any level (possibly short of professional) who sees that tosses Suh.

If the kids need to know why, blame the culture of football...

And we have our first major refereeing controversy...

On it's surface, one can understand why: An Ohio High School football team, the Louisville Leopards, was playing in one of it's first games in the season, shortly after the death of a close friend who died in an accident.

Here's the Yahoo! story on it.

And here's the response of the athletic director of the school, one of the few people who agrees with me that the call was correct!

One problem: That's a 15-yard penalty for excessive celebration. That penalty eventually helped lead to them losing the game on a last-second field goal.

Here's the biggest problem: The call was absolutely and 100% proper and correct and forced!

Normally, I will rant and rail and yell and scream and bitch as the day is long about acts of unsportsmanlike conduct, of which this (though it will be tagged as such, since that was actually the call) was not, and you'll get no dispute from me.

So I won't blame the kids.

HOWEVER:

We have a culture in football in this country of open violence, semi-rioting, and very violent fights, of which there are literally dozens across the country posted on YouTube (and I'm talking high schools here, Miami-Florida International from a few years back is not necessary here!).

Blame what we have made football in to: A test of manhood, effectively, a dick-sizing contest.

If we didn't have to analyze almost every conceivable action which could be made after a touchdown (remember, even spiking the ball is a 15-yard penalty in all levels except professional!), calls like this would not have to be made.

Here's the relevant clause: It is an unsportsmanlike conduct foul for a player to engage in:

“any delayed, excessive or prolonged act by which the player attempts to focus attention upon himself.” (emphasis mine)

That it is an act meant in tribute to a dead friend matters abjectly zero. That's 15, and the correct call. In fact, I'm surprised they didn't get tossed too.

All-the-all-the-outs-in-free!! Sounds like the players' union blackmailed Goodell.

Neither of the two cases mentioned earlier this week will result in 2011 suspensions, as ESPN.com reported both players were notified of that, though a 2012 trial could result in one of them still getting banned.

Gee, you think the legal challenge to any suspension during the lockout would mean anything in this?

Goodell, you fucking piece of shit... Blood is already on your hands, so let's get some more while we are at it!!

Fuck off, Enabling Commissioner.

Couldn't have said it better myself, but ESPN won't let me...

So they finally opened the can of worms and their September 5 issue of ESPN the Magazine has Michael Vick (in all of his facets) as the cover story.

I opened up this can of worms two years ago, and was banned from posting anything on ESPN as a result!!

(Protip: If you don't think this doesn't mean that they want Philly to win the damn Super Bowl with him as MVP, you're fooling yourselves...)

Well, somebody went and did the same thing that effectively got me banned and asked the question in a very intelligent article:

What if Michael Vick were white?

You can read the answer that they put in the magazine at the link.

Here's my answer:

1. He would have had less of a chance of being raised in a culture in which violence is about the sole means of societal advancement.
2. Hence, he probably would've had less of a chance to be involved in anything such as dog-fighting.
3. At the same time, however, we probably never would've heard of the guy. As the article correctly points out: "When Michael Vick plays, I see streetball. I don't just mean that sort of football where you have to count to four-Mississippi before you can rush the quarterback, nearly everything breaks down and it's all great fun."
   

Basically, he would not BE Michael Vick if he weren't black. (The article by Toure: "All of that is why, to me, Vick seems to have a deeply African-American approach to the game. I'm not saying that a black QB who stands in the pocket ain't playing black. I'm saying Vick's style is so badass, so artistic, so fluid, so flamboyant, so relentless -- so representative of black athletic style -- that if there were a stat for swagger points, Vick would be the No. 1 quarterback in the league by far.")

Unlike many people, I believe his entire persona, and the crimes, were products of a racial-cultural divide which has not made blacks inferior, but less desirable to society -- specifically unless that society sees value in them.

And if you don't believe me, read this part of the article for yourself:

Toure says: "The problem with the "switch the subject's race to determine if it's racism" test runs much deeper than that. It fails to take into account that switching someone's race changes his entire existence. In making Vick white, you have him born to different parents. That alone sets his life trajectory in an entirely different direction. Thus when this hypothetical white Michael Vick ... wait, I can't even continue that sentence in good faith. I mean, who would this white Vick be? That person is unknowable. When you alter his race, it's like those Back to the Future movies where someone goes back in time, inadvertently changes one small thing about his parents' dating history and then the person starts to disappear. If Vick had been born to white parents, you wouldn't even be reading this right now. That Vick would have had radically different options in life compared with the Vick who grew up in the projects of Newport News, Va., where many young black men see sports as the only way out.

This is not to say there aren't insights to be gained from hypotheticals. One pertinent question: Would a white kid have been introduced to dogfighting at a young age and have it become normalized to the extent that he builds it into his life after he joins the NFL? It's possible, but it's far less likely because what made Vick stand out among dogfighters is less race than class. The deep pockets of an NFL star led to a kennel that was too big not to fail eventually. But if it did, though, would this white kid have been busted?"

It is this divide which has me shaking my head at these feral black-on-white robbery/lynch mobs which have come up all over the country -- and that mentality comes from the same place as Michael Vick's, as a dog-fighting thug piece of shit and a football player.

The vast majority of the players (Rapistburger is one counter-example to be mindful of, yes...) who are running afoul of the NFL's Personal Conduct Policy and a lot of the NCAA violations are black. Increasingly, Roger Goodell is taking the mantle from David $tern: A white man marketing a black man's game.

If we are going to "clean up sports", we have to deal with this divide. We have no choice but to do so. These things come from the same place that druggists and gang leaders in Florida allow little kids in the Florida youth football leagues to make money (while gambling on their games, no less!!!) to play football to keep roofs over the heads of their parents.

Michael Vick is a piece of shit who should never have been allowed to walk the streets again for dog-fighting.

Michael Vick is a street thug.

Michael Vick is also a hero to many aspiring black street thugs all over the nation.

But that is NOT simply because he is black, but because of his conduct. The problem is that it would a naive idiocy to not believe that his race and his conduct are not somehow intertwined.

AnarchAccountant says it well in the comments to this article:

"Here is the real answer to this question: If Michael Vick were white, he would not have been hailed as the jesus-like all conquering hero by ESPN, both before and after his dog fighting issue.

The dog fighting part is just window dressing, could have been any crime, which one is not important. What is pushing such questions and controversy is the four-letter networks undying need to create a hero, particularly one with "swag", one where they can sell the attitude and the danger. Same way it was done with Allen Iverson who was mentioned in the article.

No-one wants Vick to be white. Not the worldwide leader, not all the companies marketing products to the black community, and certainly not all the writers and commentators who never cared that Warren Moon was a great quarterback and so desperately want Vick to be an affront to America."

I believe the Philadelphia Eagles, as of the pre-season, are going to be rigged to win the Super Bowl. Michael Vick, his crimes, and who the league is marketing to (this inner-city thuggish mentality which appeared to start with the likes of Ray Lewis, Rae Carruth, and the Madden series of about the last 10-12 years) all point in this same direction.

So, let's see, Mr. Goodell...

That's FOUR $20,000 fines in the fucking preseason?? They're not getting the message.

Along with the previously-mentioned Suh fine:

• Another fine in week one was undrafted Jacksonville rookie Mike Lockley, dinged $20,000 for his fourth-quarter hit against the Patriots...
• The Ochocinco hit (the second already against the Patriots) previously referenced has drawn Mason Foster a $20,000 fine by the league, and a warning for 85 not to reimburse him.
• Denver's Rahim Moore got a $20,000 fine for an illegal hit vs. Buffalo.

And Commissioner Goodell spent the better part of Tuesday preparing suspensions for the personal conduct policy for Tennessee's Kenny Britt (two New Jersey arrests during the lockout and two arrest warrants in Tennessee) and Tampa Bay's Aqib Talib (assault with a deadly weapon)...

Mr. Goodell, these players want to maim each other and wreak havoc off the field.

They want to be able to injure each other, and anyone else in their way. If I were Commissioner, Britt would be sitting quite a while -- he has had SEVEN brushes with the law in the last 2+ years. Goodell met with him for resisting arrest, evading an officer (both over a 71 in a 50 ticket), another resisting arrest charge over a possible marijuana situation (for which he still faces a court date in about a month)...

No, Mr. Britt, that is NOT "22 years old and coming into the league and things happen!" I'd sit your ass for 2-4 games as things stand now, and if they can prove you had the Mary Jane, another 4 under the drug policy, whether or not it's your first offense.

And Talib doesn't play til that's resolved -- the league can pay his salary if he's found innocent.

I'm putting together a Fair Play table this year -- I want to track the fines, suspensions, major penalties, etc. I'm really beginning to think who wins the Lombardi Trophy may come down to who sees the least of Commissioner Goodell.

And here's another preseason helmet-to-helmet...

HEY, GOODELL, THE MESSAGE AIN'T GETTING THROUGH!!!

Watch this for another round of the preseason-week 2 fine blotter.

Ochocinco, open your pocketbook...

Yahoo! Sports pointed this one out to me.

Watch the clip. Pre-season game in week two (Thursday night) sounds like it's getting another fine.

Tampa's Mason Foster is getting a letter from the Commish and a fine for a helmet-to-helmet (which was flagged!) against Chad 85.

But Chad Ochocinco says on his Twitter he'll reimburse the fine, even though the guy went helmet-to-helmet on him and probably could also have been hit with the new "defenseless player" rule as well!

Commish, FINE CHAD OCHOCINCO TOO. This crap has got to stop, or these will continue to encourage the dirty hits.

Terrell, you get to join, but the suspension comes with you...

Meant to do this post closer to the Don's (Goodell's) announcement, but what the hey... Had to mourn the passing of one of the longer regular-season winning streaks in recent Wisconsin memory. Good job, Spring Valley -- even though the ol' school at Plum City finally falls on harder football times, you still gotta do it.

Anyhoo... One of the bigger stories of the week is that the decision was finally made on Terrell Pryor (the thug QB at Ohio State who fled, rather than face the music)...

He gets into the Supplemental Draft (which he probably had a hand in further delaying), but the five-game suspension comes with him. He won't appeal that.

Now, Mr. Goodell, you do realize that you have now suspended Pryor 2 1/2 times what you did Michael Vick.

Of course, this would be moot if you didn't use another Ohio State miscreant to make a point a few years back.

I call it the Maurice Clarett Rule (with the Reggie Bush Clause).

The Clarett Rule would read that any player who leaves college while under suspension by his school or the NCAA loses a year. This means that a player leaving after his three years must sit out a fourth (completely without football) to get in the NFL. A player getting suspended during the fourth year must sit a fifth.

The Bush Clause is two-fold. First, that carries over to players found later ineligible while they are in the NFL -- a player who would otherwise fall under the Clarett Rule when he entered the league is suspended, without pay, for one year.

The second part of the Bush Clause is that any player suspended under Clarett or Bush is re-investigated to determine if any portion of his relevant eligibility (read as: what got him in the NFL) was legal at all. If not, he's GONE -- permanent ban.

Fraud is serious business, and it's time to see how many of these players should never have played in college nor the NFL.

And we're off on the NFL fine blotter with a THREE-TIME LOSER!

Well, whaddya know, the Detroit Lions big guy has done it again.

Ndamukong Suh has been fined $20,000 for his third offense against the league in a year by committing violence against quarterback. This one was for an unnecessary roughness hit on Cincinnati's quarterback (Andy Dalton) during the first pre-season game last week.

He was also fined last year during the preseason for flagrantly face-masking Jake Delhomme, then of the Browns ($7,500), and dinged double that for a regular season unnecessary hit on Jay Cutler of the Bears ($15,000).

But this means that Suh is now a three-time loser with the league -- but will he be suspended?

We'll be watching, Roger...

My opinion: The only reason this thug isn't considered one of the dirtiest players in the NFL is that he doesn't play for a relevant team.

I had a little answer for Mr. Suh on his Twitter when he blasted the NFL for the fine:

@ndamukong_suh I want a suspension too, you dirty-hitting THUG!! Three-time loser, 2X in preseason!! And you've only been here a year???

ON EDIT: Cincinnati was the opponent this year, not Cleveland. But this makes him a three-time loser within a one-calendar-year period.

And "The U" is back in trouble again..

Anyone surprised on this one?

Maybe only by the source, a massive Yahoo! sports investigation into the University of Miami and MORE problems there.
A described "renegade Miami booster" apparently is found to have given literally THOUSANDS of NCAA violations to at least 72 Miami football players over an eight-year span from 2002 to 2010, and the NCAA is investigating, right up to University President Donna Shalala.

Nevin Shapiro is in prison for his involvement in a nearly $1,000,000,000 Ponzi scheme, and apparently used some of this money to lavish Miami players over the course of the last decade.

He apparently was not only an agent, but had created an agency for work on these players, and funneled money not only through it, but the current commissioner of the UFL!!!

"Willful violations"? Let's understand something here: If "The U" was getting players locally, chances are they have been playing professional football for pay since about age ten, and often with drug and gang money!! Outside the Lines basically put the spotlight on that a few months ago.

It is abjectly implausible to believe that the University of Miami could ever have a clean football program -- then (watch 30-for-30's "The U" for a good idea) or now. Basically, this guy, he claims, has become "Little Luke", the person carrying on the illegitimate legacy of Luke Campbell, the guy from 2 Live Crew who was paying Miami players back in the day!

Shapiro apparently was pimping prostitutes for at least three dozen players at Miami.

Players were openly getting money for "tournaments" and "bounties" sponsored by Shapiro.

Basically, just about every conceivable violation of the law and NCAA by-laws could be traced to this jackass.

Frankly, how this university still has a football program is beyond my understanding, but unless someone can point out to me where they already under a sanction for possible "repeat violator" status, I can't see more than a significant bowl ban, etc.

So, they're rigging the US Open draws...

Leave it to Outside the Lines to come up with another little gem.

Today's "Rig Job of the Day" comes out of tennis. The US Open draw appears to be rigged to allow the top (at least) two seeded players.

ESPN and OTL examined the draws for the last ten years of all four major tennis tournaments.

They then tried to simulate 1,000 such "decades" of draws to determine the likelihood that a draw which would appear to be random (under the guidelines of the sanctioning bodies and the tournaments) would be as helpful to the top seeds advancing to at least the second round of the Grand Slam tournament.

According to the article, the unseeded players at the US Open are supposed to be placed into the bracket truly randomly. You could get the #1 seed, you could get a qualifier. But it is supposed to be random.

For 10,000 such draws of the US Open, the average difficulty of the first-round opponent for the top seeds only correlated to a difficulty of an actual first-round opponent in one of the last 10 US Opens about 3 times out of a 1,000 for the men's draw.

(Comparing that 0.3% to the other Grand Slams, ESPN found Wimbledon did so a little more than a third of the time (37%), and the French (69.5%) and Australian (71.2%) did so quite a bit of the time.)

One would have to think this is a business decision. I mean, even consider the lower Wimbledon number -- you don't think they want to serve their #1 seeds a dish of Fresh Qualifier To Squash at Centre Court to open their tournament?? Ya think????

The higher seeds, the further they go, people are going to know who they are... And that means tickets and ratings. Think this is coincidence? Really????

And it's worse in the women's draws for both Wimbledon and the US Open. Both the Australian and French effectively do retain fairness in most respects (over 90% of the time in both cases). Wimbledon (and I'd be shocked if this wasn't the attempts to keep the Williams' in the tournament as long as possible for American viewers/attendees/corporate money!) falls to about 30%.

The US Open? They could not come up with ONE DRAW in TEN THOUSAND which was as easy for the top seeds as the draws they've been getting in real life. A -- CLEAN -- ZERO!!!

The results? An average draw for a seeded player should come down with an average rating (if you rank the 128 players in each draw 1-128 and remove the top 32 for seeding purposes) of about 80.5.

The article notes that, for the top two seeds in the last ten years of the US Open, the average rank of the first round opponent for the men was 98.5, and 97.2 for the women!

So I cry ultimate BULLSHIT when Tournament Referee Brian Earley (who oversees the draw) states this about the US Open draw:

"What would the U.S. Open gain by fixing the draw in this way? I believe the U.S. Open would gain nothing," Earley said. "I think that that would be a risk that the U.S. Open would never take. Never."

BULLSHIT.

You gain viewers, you gain interest, you gain advertising revenue for the television networks, you gain storylines which can be exploited over the course of the two weeks of the tournament.

Especially in the United States, where (outside of the Williams sisters) there are few-to-no meaningful professional tennis players on the world circuit at this time, the better players are going to get people talking.

And you're a liar if you don't think that this doesn't come into play when the draws are made.

Howard Cosell's Sixth Principle of "Sports Syndrome" In Action: WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE???

As everyone collectively orgasms over the end of the lockout and the beginning of the NFL preseason with only one preseason game scrapped, I can say honestly that the only interest I have in the NFL this year is for articles like the one I am about to write, even though this one is NOT about the National/Neanderthal Felon League.

The newest incarnation of the Arena Football League is about to wrap up with it's ArenaBowl this weekend, but the incident which you are about to see comes from a semifinal game between Jacksonville and Georgia. It is held in Jacksonville, and Jacksonville has just scored an early touchdown in the first quarter of the game.

Then, All Hell Broke Loose, as you can see in this video...

The fucking douchebag in the endzone of the first row of seats reaches over, and grabs the kick returner the instant he catches the ball, killing the play (and, with a short field, there's always the chance of kick returns for scores, much more easily than in the 100-yard game). Then, at least four players from the Jacksonville team go over and congratulate the motherfucker for actually taking part in rigging the contest for the home team!

(And, yes, Jacksonville won the trip to the ArenaBowl, 64-55!)

The guy openly commits four penalties on the play, and three of which would've been called if he'd actually been in the damn game! He face-masks the guy, face-guards him afterward, and attempts to interfere with even him catching the damn ball!!

WHAT THE FUCK PODUNK HALF-INBRED "SPORTS LEAGUE" ALLOWS THE FANS TO DO THAT WITH PENALTY LESS THAN ABSOLUTE FORFEITURE OF THE CONTEST???

Well, unfortunately for the AFL Commissioner, Jerry Kurz, his e-mail is available for anyone to comment to him from the AFL's website.

So, I had but one question for him in this e-mail after witnessing this shithead piss all over legitimate sport:

How in the bloody blazes do you not expect fans to interfere with your contests on a routine and wholesale basis, after not only does the guy openly prevent the kick from being returned, but his home team compliments him on it??

You are not legitimate sport in any way, shape, or form -- especially if you are going to let the fans run roughshod over a playoff game.

That should've been grounds for forfeiture of the entire contest.

I will leave you with Howard Cosell's Sixth Symptom of Sports Syndrome -- we are beyond help at this point...

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.

And, now, it appears, in the right moment (Jeffrey Maier, anyone?), fixing the game for the home team too??

ON EDIT 8/10/11: Got an actual response from the Commissioner's Office. Didn't agree with all of it (he made note of the ejection of the fan and a penalty enforced on the play, as well as questioning rationality of forfeiting the contest), but I can see his position. Still, the absurdity of this action is just beyond words!