• First off, I know I’m not the only one who thought NBC’s coverage sucked hard.  I don’t even care about the tape delays so much (since I’m not around to watch during the day anyway), but there was so much else to hate.  Look, I get that television networks are businesses, and the primary goal of a business is to make money.  But really, could NBC have been any more clumsy about the unending barrage of commercials?  After awhile it felt like I was watching one long infomercial for Visa, Verizon, AT&T, Diet Coke, Lexus, and McDonald’s among others.  (It’s the Visa show, brought to you with limited Olympic interruption!)

• I totally missed the opening ceremonies, but from the online commentary I saw I don’t think I missed much.  Slam poetry, for real?

• Every time I saw the Olympic logo I kept thinking of the cover for Rush’s Test for Echo album.

• Speaking of Rush – how the hell do you have a closing ceremony that celebrates the essence of Canada and not include Rush?  Avril Lavigne?  Nickleback?  WTF???

• Say Apolo Ohno again.  I dare you, I double dare you mother*^@%&@%!

• I’m not ashamed to say I watched more curling than any other event.  I do feel kind of bad for all the crap John Shuster took for leading the U.S. team’s march of futility, but it was damn frustrating to witness.

• To watch the commercials and little human interest stories that dominated NBC’s coverage, you wouldn’t think any of the athletes had fathers.

• I’m not going to bellyache about the U.S. men’s hockey team falling short in the gold medal game – considering they weren’t even expected to medal at all – but it would’ve been sweet to win the whole thing.

• Great job by Steve Holcomb’s gold-medal bobsleigh team, but if I never have to see his ass jiggle in that skin-tight suit again it’ll be too soon.

• Dear Julia Mancuso – STFU and stop whining.  Joannie Rochette cried less than you, and that poor girl just lost her mother.

• It’s cool and all that Shaun White dominated the Halfpipe, but I can’t get into it.  It’s the equivalent of the slam dunk competition at the NBA All-Star game.

• Best line of the entire Games goes to Bob Costas just prior to the closing ceremonies, praising Canada for their “innovations in science and whatnot”.

• I seem to remember coverage of the Beijing games being spread out over a lot more networks (with a much greater variety of events), but maybe I’m imagining things.

• Ballet, classical choirs, and giant glowing hamster balls.  Holy crap, Sochi means business.

Well the mob has spoken and they’re not happy.  In addition to the deluge of anti-Shuster Tweets, the captain’s Wikipedia entry has undergone some creative editing.  Luckily it’s all saved in the article history.  Here are a few choice ones just from today (in addition to the edits that show him as deceased):

• A personal tidbit – “Shuster failed four times to make a game-winning shot in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. He chokes more than a prostitute.”
• Interesting - “Growing up Shuster was an avid baseball fan. In 2003, he attended a playoff baseball game. When a foul ball was headed towards the stands, he made a play for it but unsurprisingly he couldn’t make the play. Steve Bartman is now blamed for the epic loss because Shuster couldn’t make the play.”
• Now that’s just mean – “John Shuster has single handedly ruined the USA chances to compete for the gold. He missed 3 final shots that could have been made by a one armed, one legged, brainless monkey”
• I didn’t know this was his nickname – “John “chokey mcchokestein” Shuster (born November 3, 1982) is an American curler from Chisholm, Minnesota and Olympic medalist.”  (another variation had his occupation as “choker”.)
• Sorry to hear that – “After the lost to Denmark, Shuster’s fiancee officially denounced their relationship, stating that he would have failed as a husband down the line sooner or later. Shuster’s father is currently disappoint.”
• Can’t argue there – “Shuster won the 2010 United States Olympic Curling Trials and is destroying the reputation of the United States at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver.”
• Here’s a whole bunch of gems:
  • “He currently works as a quality control specialist for Toyota.”
  • “Upon John’s pathetic performance at the 2010 games, he has decided to retire from the sport. And an hero.”
  • “In a side note, in 2008 Shuster attempted to commit suicide. Unsurprisingly to those who know him and have watched him play, he failed at the attempt; Shuster used a gun and once again completely messed up the shot.”
  • “Shuster’s 2005 college roommate stated that he only bought Shuster a shot once. He said that after the first attempt, he never trusted Shuster with a shot ever again.”
  • “Shuster has come to be known as the biggest choke artist of the 2010 Winter Olympics, and is the lone reason the USA curling team has not won a single game this Olympics.”
  • “Shuster said he draws inspiration from Bill Buckner, Brad Lidge, Scott Norwood, and the city of Cleveland.”
  • “Nicknamed “The Largest Choke Artist Alive”, Shuster distracts his opponents with horrible shots and general terrible overall play. He is known for folding under pressure situations and never making clutch, let alone easy, shots.”
• Of interest to etymologists – “The term “you messed up,” has officially been replaced by “you Shustered it.”"
• Yes, but has he ever vomited during play? - “His inability to hammer out points in clutch situations, such as during the 2010 Olympic games, Shuster has recently become known as the Donovan McNabb of professional curling.”

Anyway, you get the point.  Look on the bright side John – if nobody cared about curling they wouldn’t bother castigating you like this, right?

By the way, what’s Pete Fenson up to these days?

1. Helmet/Bullpen Carts:  I miss helmet and bullpen carts for a few reasons.  One is the pure fun and novelty of the concept.  I mean, the notion that a professional athlete needs motorized assistance to travel a few hundred feet is laughable on its face.  Still, despite all the cynicism of our modern age I have to think there’s room in peoples’ hearts for sweet rides like this or this.

Secondly, seeing an athlete with a career-threatening injury being carted off the field in what looks like a bizarre amusement park ride doesn’t seem quite so sad.  I’m sure carts like these are still in use somewhere, but not seeing them on the professional level is sad.  (Paul Lukas of Uni Watch wrote a good article on bullpen carts a few years ago)

2. Marching Bands at Halftime (Pro Football): It’s hard to envision a Super Bowl without a completely overblown, pretentious halftime show, but it wasn’t always so.  Marching bands (usually collegiate) were once a constant at football halftime shows, and provided an entertaining yet dignified spectacle.  No bad lip synching, no homogenized Disney garbage, and no nipple slips – just a bunch of really talented musicians doing their thing.  Imagine that.

Here’s a blast from the past – the University of Michigan Marching Band performing during halftime at Super Bowl VII.  And bonus – there’s helmet carts in the second clip!!!

3. Good Logos: Speaking of “when I was your age”-style rants, I do remember a time that sports logos were not created by soulless, marginally talented marketing agencies.  I also remember a time that a logo didn’t have to be all edgy or angry.  But even worse than the crappy logos given to newer franchises (like this) are the “upgrades” to old favorites.  Can anyone honestly assert that this is an upgrade over this?

What I like to see are logos that are fun and full of character (even if they sometimes straddle the line with cheesiness), like these old logos for the San Diego Padres, Baltimore Orioles, or the Boston Celtics.  If not fun, at least make it dignified and unique like the Detroit Red Wings, Oakland Raiders, or the Cincinnati Reds.

4. Pre- and Post-Game Shows Without Morons:  Somewhere along the way, television executives (never a bright bunch to begin with) got the idea that the entertainment value of a pre-game show was directly related to the amount of SCREAMING involved.  Voila, Terry Bradshaw finds a new line of work.  But at least the guy can usually string together sentences using understandable English.  Now when I have the misfortune of catching a minute of some pre-game shows (I’m looking at you, ESPN) I might as well be watching Telemundo for all I can comprehend.

And don’t even get me started on that blithering buffoon Chris Berman.  Where have you gone, Brent Musburger and Irv Cross?

5.  Atmosphere:  Once upon a time, just attending a sporting event and basking in the sights and sounds of the game was enough for people.  The crack of a bat or the crunch of a body check was all the soundtrack anyone needed.  But now that we’re in the ADD generation what we get instead is a 120-dB concert with sports in between.  No more room for spontaneous crowd reactions; it’s all nice and scripted.

I guess it’s easier this way.  How else would I know to get excited unless I heard the familiar “Hey ho, let’s go” refrain from “Blitzkrieg Bop” for the billionth time?  Is it a close game?  Must be, ’cause there’s AC/DC’s “Hells Bells” again.

6.  The WWF in the Mid-to-Late ’80s: Say what you want about Vince McMahon, the guy almost singlehandedly took what was a regional, backwater sport (yeah, I know) prior to the ’80s and turned it into a true entertainment juggernaut.  And boy was it a great time to be a wrestling fan from about 1984 through the rest of the decade.  The high point of the year was always WrestleMania, but thanks to a colorful cast of characters the WWF was fun to watch all year.  The bright outfits and shiny boots, the colorful stereotypes (Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff anyone?), and the big but not yet freakish men themselves all combined together to create lasting impressions.

The list is as large as Hulk Hogan’s legendary 24-inch pythons – Andre the Giant, George “The Animal” Steele”, The Junkyard Dog, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Captain Lou Albano, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, and so many more.  Even the announcers and other peripheral figures were entertaining.  Who can forget the immortal Gorilla Monsoon and “Mean” Gene Okerlund, or managers like Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, Classy Freddie Blassie, and Jimmy “Mouth of the South” Hart?

7.  Bowl Games With No Corporate Sponsorship:  Look, I don’t begrudge any organization looking to maximize profits legally.  But I will never, ever get used to seeing ugly corporate logos besmirching classic sporting evens like the Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, or Gator Bowl.  Worse yet are bowl game organizers that don’t even try to hide their avarice.  Who gets excited for the Meineke Car Care Bowl or the PapaJohns.com Bowl???  Thankfully the Rose Bowl has partly avoided this awful trend, as their sponsor merely gets listed as a ‘presenter’.

8. Trading Sports Cards for Fun:  OK, so this is only marginally related to sports, but I remember clearly being in a sports card store when I was a teenager and watching some little kid haggle with the owner over a card like he was engaged in negotiations for nuclear arms reduction.  That’s when I knew that collecting and trading sports cards had morphed from a fun hobby to a cutthroat business.  It had been years in the making, what with all the new card manufacturers and ever more ridiculous marketing gimmicks designed to do nothing more than part kids from their money (Coach cards?  WTF?).

I stopped collecting that day.

I’m all too familiar with the host of complaints that accompany the Olympic Games every time they’re held – they divert money that would be better spent on more worthwhile things, local citizens are at best inconvenienced and at worst harassed or violated in some way, the organizers and even some of the athletes are crooked, it’s an antiquated event that has no relevance for our modern, connected world, yadda yadda yadda.

Are a lot of these complaints are valid?  Sure.  I’m not blind to that reality.  Truth be told I don’t know how thrilled I’d be to have the Olympics in my backyard either.  But I honestly think that more than ever we need grand spectacles like the Olympics so that, if only for a few weeks, we can focus on human accomplishment rather than human misery.

Don’t worry, the rest of the world will still be living in poverty and needlessly killing each other when we’re done watching, and we can all go back to feeling guilty and depressed then.  But dammit, I wanna forget about that just for a bit and see some curling!

So despite all the negative press the upcoming Games are sure to receive, I’m on record as being a fan.  Except for that hideous London 2012 logo – holy crap is that an eyesore.

Nor am I bowled over by A-Rod’s claim that he doesn’t know what substances he took that caused him to flunk.  Barry Bonds used a similar defense, and it doesn’t pass the smell test.  Am I seriously supposed to believe that a person whose career depends on their body being in peak physical condition would just blindly take substances without knowing what they are or what they do?  I guess in Rodriguez’s mind it’s better to be seen as a total moron than a cheater.  Now he can be both.

Anyway, there is much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands over A-Rod, a player to whom many baseball fans looked at as the “clean” savior that would break Bonds’s tainted home run record and restore some credibility to the game.  D’oh!

So I think that how you feel about A-Rod now has a lot to do with how you feel about baseball in general.  For those who still think of it as some sacred American institution (and that includes all those venerated individual records), Rodriguez’s transgression is yet another gut punch and unforgivable betrayal.

But for those who, like me, view the game mainly as a pleasant enough distraction and good way to kill a few hours on a summer afternoon, the news is met with a collective “meh”.   It’s hard for me to get too worked up over just another miscreant on what is a fast-growing list for sports in general.  Sure, he’ll have to endure endless “A-Roid” taunts this season (from Yankees fans as well as opposing teams’ fans), and the highlight shows will suffer no shortage of fans bringing giant novelty syringes to the ballpark.  But they’ll still pay to see him play and at the end of the day, as long as he’s out there hitting home runs he’ll be forgiven.

It seems the question posed in Gladiator still applies today – Are you not entertained?

Oh.  My.  God.  If that logo doesn’t scream “Banged out by a student at a local community college’s graphic design program” I don’t know what does.  Reading the press release announcing the franchise’s new name and logo/colors is laughable.  Here’s my favorite part:

With a nickname denoting energy and power, a classic-look logo, and the colors of an Oklahoma sunset, Oklahoma City’s NBA team unveiled its identity today.

A classic-look logo?  If by ‘classic’ you mean ‘sometime in the last 5 years’ then sure, it is I guess.  And if the team name is Thunder, why would you want the colors of an Oklahoma sunset?  Wouldn’t the presence of a pretty sunset typically indicate a lack of thunder?

And I just can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen other logos like it before.  Hmmm…hey, I remember!

So yeah, good job on your new WNBA logo, Oklahoma City.  If you ever change your mind, you can use this logo I designed for you:

Curious?  Yeah, I thought so.  I haven’t watched a second of MSNBC’s Olympics coverage, but I think I need to start right away.  Particularly for the “Olympic Update” segments featuring co-hosts Tiki Barber and Jenna Wolfe.  Tiki, as most of you probably know, was a running back for the New York Giants until 2006, when he retired under less than friendly terms with the team.  They of course went on to win the Super Bowl without him at the end of last season.

That’s what Wolfe is alluding to at the beginning of this clip.  Pretty nasty dig for the situation I must say.  But then Tiki took it to a whole ‘nother level with his supposed slip of the tongue.  It’s at the 28-second mark:

Wow.  Just wow.  There is no way that was accidental, and Wolfe knows it.  Notice how she can’t even look at Tiki after his remark.  Now that’s interesting television, people.

• Two-hour segments on what Bill Parcells had for lunch, what color underwear Bill Parcells is wearing, and what Bill Parcells thinks of Francesa.
• All on-location shows to be held at Belmont Park.
• Francesa will have to quiz himself on the weekend’s sports TV ratings, leading to the debut of his colorful cast of voice characters.
• Callers will be cut off in mid-sentence so Francesa can explore the lyrics to obscure Bruce Springsteen songs.
• With no more tennis coverage or discussion, there will finally be some time to talk about baseball!

My prediction is that Russo finds moderate success in his satellite radio role, while Francesa is either forced to take a new partner within a year or is out of the afternoon slot.

But while most of the media focus has been on the story of another aging star quarterback moving to a new team (invoking names like Joe Namath and Johnny Unitas in the process), what about those like Rodgers, who are left behind to deal with the aforementioned legacies?  While some have managed to step out of the long shadows cast by their predecessors, most have not.  Here’s a sampling:

Scott Hunter, Green Bay Packers – Selected by the Packers in the 6th round of the 1971 NFL draft, Alabama University’s Hunter had the unenviable task of replacing the legendary Bart Starr, who retired that year.  It was Starr, after all, who helped lead Vince Lombardi’s team to dominance in the ’60s, winning five NFL championships and the first two Super Bowls.  But age and Lombardi’s retirement in 1968 took their toll on the mighty Pack, and the team quickly descended into mediocrity despite Starr’s best efforts.

With Hunter under center, the 1972 Green Bay squad regained some of their past glory.  They won 10 games and took their first divisional title since 1967, but lost 16-3 to the Redskins in the Divisional round of the playoffs.  They never made it back the postseason for the rest of the decade.

After 1973 Hunter bounced to the Bills, Falcons, and finally the Lions, where he ended his career after the 1979 season.  He finished with a career record of 21-18-3, and threw for just over 4,700 yards.  The Packers, meanwhile, were never more than mediocre for a few decades before head coach Mike Holmgren and the quarterback-who-shall-not-be-named arrived in 1992.

Steve Young, San Francisco 49ers – You may have heard of this guy, as he did one or two good things in the NFL during his career.  You know, seven Pro Bowls, two league MVP awards, one Super Bowl title (two more as a backup) – that sort of thing.  But before all that, things weren’t exactly rosy for this BYU product.  In 1984 Young signed with the Los Angeles Express of the upstart USFL out of college.  His (and the league’s) last season was 1985, where things got so grim for the team that he was forced to play running back.

After a brief and rather inauspicious stint with the Buccaneers from ’85 to ’86, Young was traded to San Francisco to serve as Joe Montana’s backup.  It was here that he began to flourish, and by 1993 Montana was history (traded to the Chiefs) and Young was the undisputed starter.  It then took only a few seasons for him to get the proverbial monkey off his back and lead the 49ers to a blowout win over the Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX.

Concussions finally got the best of Young, whose last season in the league was 1999.  While he couldn’t eclipse Montana’s greatness, he left behind a pretty impressive legacy of his own.  He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005 and still holds the records for career QB rating (96.8), career rushing TDs by a quarterback (43), and TD passes in a Super Bowl (6 in XXIX).

Jay Fiedler, Miami Dolphins – Somewhere in between Hunter and Young comes Jay Fiedler.  Fielder entered the league from Dartmouth in 1994 and spent most of his time holding a clipboard with the Eagles, Vikings, and Jaguars (where he got his first start in 1999).  He came to the Dolphins in 2000, the first year of the post-Dan Marino era.

The Fins made the playoffs twice under Fiedler and new head coach Dave Wannstedt, in 2000 and 2001.  The 2000 team finished 11-5, won the AFC East for the first time since 1994, and beat the Colts in the Wild Card round before getting blanked by the Raiders the next week in Oakland.  The team matched their 11-5 mark in 2001 but were suffocated by the stout Baltimore Ravens defense in a 20-3 Wild Card round loss.  Fiedler threw one touchdown and seven interceptions in his Miami postseason career.

Although Miami posted winning records in two of Fiedler’s next three seasons with the team they failed to make the playoffs, and by the end of 2004 both he and Wannstedt were finished.  Fiedler signed with the division rival Jets as an unrestricted free agent in 2005 (as a backup for Chad Pennington) but suffered a season-ending injury in week 3.  He hasn’t played in the league since, while the Dolphins are still looking for a true successor to Marino.

Mark Malone/David Woodley, Pittsburgh Steelers – Four-time Super Bowl champion Terry Bradshaw staggered to the finish line of his career in the Steel City, missing most of the 1983 season after elbow surgery.  His lone start that year (December 10 against the Jets) was his final game, ending a run under center as part of the most dominant franchise of the ’70s.

Cliff Stoudt, who started in Bradshaw’s place during the ’83 campaign, signed with the USFL in 1984.  So the Steelers opted for a two-headed approach to quarterback in ’84, and those two were Mark Malone and David Woodley.  Malone had seen little action as a backup since being drafted by Pittsburgh in 1980, while Woodley came from the Dolphins (whom he led to an appearance in Super Bowl XVII just two seasons earlier) via trade after losing his starting job to Dan Marino.

The 1984 season began with Woodley as the starter, but by season’s end the job was Malone’s.  Pittsburgh took the AFC Central with a 9-7 record, won their first playoff game since Super Bowl XIV, and advanced to the AFC Championship, where they were swamped by Marino’s Dolphins.  The pair resumed co-starting duties in 1985, but finished just 7-9 and missed the playoffs.

Woodley unexpectedly retired before the 1986 season, leaving Malone to assume the role of full-time starting QB.  He kept that job until he was traded to the Chargers before the 1988 season, and was replaced by Bubby Brister.  Malone’s final season was with the New York Jets in 1989, where he played just one game.

Woodley, who was 24 when he made his Super Bowl appearance with Miami, never again lived up to the potential he showed when he replaced another legend – Bob Griese.  He fell hard into alcoholism and received a liver transplant in 1992 (not yet 35 years old at the time).  Woodley died in 2003 of complications from kidney and liver failure.  He was 44.

Todd Collins, Buffalo Bills – Despite falling short in four straight Super Bowls, Jim Kelly is to this day an icon in Buffalo.  A few years after he came to the Bills from the USFL in 1986, Buffalo became the most dominant team in the AFC.  It all finally came to end for Kelly when the Bills lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars, 30-27, at home in the Wild Card round of the ’96/’97 postseason.

At the time of Kelly’s retirement, only Fran Tarkenton, Dan Fouts, and Johnny Unitas among Hall of Fame quarterbacks had passed for more yardage.  His replacement was Todd Collins, who was drafted by Buffalo out of the University of Michigan in 1995.  He had performed fairly competently in a handful of spot starts over two seasons before winning the starting job outright in 1997 (over such luminaries as Alex Van Pelt and Billy Joe Hobert).

Collins started 13 games in ’97, and threw for 2,367 yards, 12 TDs, and 13 interceptions as Buffalo went 6-10 (their worst record since Jim Kelly’s first season) and finished fourth in the AFC East.  With that, he headed west to Kansas City (the Bills didn’t exactly throw themselves on the hood of his car), where he spent eight years doing little more than taking up space on the Chiefs’ bench.  Collins didn’t play a down until being appointed the team’s #2 QB in 2001.  He finished his Chiefs career with 229 passing yards and one touchdown.

In 2006 Collins signed with the Redskins but again saw no action.  His shot finally came in 2007 when starter Jason Campbell injured his knee late in the season.  Collins rallied the ‘Skins, already reeling from the murder of teammate Sean Taylor, to four straight victories and an improbable postseason berth.

Although the Redskins were pasted by the Seahawks in the Wild Card round, Collins’ accomplishment can’t be denied.  After playing precious little football outside of practices and scrimmages for a decade, he led a team numbed by tragedy to a place few thought they could go.  Although he enters the 2008 season as the team’s backup once again, he was rewarded for his contributions with a new 3-year, $9 million contract.

What this means is that if you don’t feel like a) going to a bar or b) coughing up some big bucks for DirecTV and the NFL Sunday Ticket package, you’re pretty much screwed.  The situation got a little better for me when I moved to central Jersey about 4 years ago, as I’m now also in the Philly market and get the option of watching Eagles games.  But not much better, as I’m a lifelong Raiders fan.

My worst nightmare, come to life

I’ve come to accept my lot in life, and the fact that any football talk I’m exposed to around here is logically focused on the Jets and Giants.  But I fear that this situation will quickly become untenable, with the recent announcement that the NFL’s premiere drama queen, Brett Favre, was traded to the Jets.

This is not good, not good at all.  To no one’s surprise, the usual legion of Favre worshipers in the media are already working themselves into a nice lather over this momentous occasion.  Witness Sports Illustrated‘s Peter King – always good for at least one worthless/ignorant/insanely hyperbolic statement per article – declaring that, “One of the biggest stories in recent sports history just got a lot bigger: Brett Favre is a New York Jet.”

No Peter you giant tool, it’s not one of the biggest sports stories in recent history.  It’s an irritating display of aggrandizement on Favre’s part, and you clowns in the media have been all too happy to help.  It got so bad that ESPN, which fell on the wrong side of the credibility threshold a long time ago, introduced a separate “Favre” ticker item at the bottom of the screen.

I don’t begrudge Favre for wanting to play another season.  Pro sports is not like most jobs – once the window has closed on your useful playing life (which for the majority of players is in their 20s), it’s closed forever.  But this insane amount of press coverage does nothing but reinforce what has to be his belief that the sporting world revolves around him, and that people outside Wisconsin and Bristol, Connecticut actually give a shit what he does.

And so now he comes to the Jets, and the most intense media market in the country.  I will be helpless to escape the gravitational pull of his ego and the obnoxiousness of Jets fans.  And now I have to suffer through the usual game time pabulum like “he’s a real gunslinger” and “look at him, he’s just having fun out there!”.

And just wait until John Madden rolls into town.  I think he may actually spontaneously combust now.  And I may just light myself on fire.  I guess I could always watch the Giants or Eagles instead.

Man, now I’m really depressed.