The_Admiral

On 6/1/2018 at 7:51 AM, SilverBullet1929 said:

Was there an ownership change to coincide with the rebrand or was it only because of the opening of Miller Park?

It was scheduled to coincide with Miller Park, but a crane fell down and killed a bunch of construction workers, delaying construction, so they ended up wearing the Times New Roman uniforms in the unexpected final year of County Stadium. The Seligs didn't sell the Brewers until 2004.

NBC also had XXX and XXXII (XXXI was on Fox, I shan't forget that one) before losing the rights to the NFL for years. Four out of six, not bad.

There were some hiccups in the Super Bowl rotation in the '90s because of the Olympics, weren't there? I think NBC got an extra game or a game a year early because of the Olympics, something like that, but the AFC-NFC-GotW rotation has held steady for a long time now.

Don Cherry yelled at Bettman on TV about Quebec City not getting its expansion team. Bettman got all twitchy and said "there are logistical problems." You see how screwed up this whole situation is? It made Don Cherry support Quebec!

Olbermann must have had good producers or medication on his last whirl with ESPN, because he was much more dialed in than he was by the end of his Legitimate News career (his Current show was particularly embarrassing). I know we're not supposed to say "stick to sports," but when Olbermann covers serious issues within sports, he's more in his element than when he's, for the sake of argument, trying to bring down the entire Bush Administration by doing Howard Beale shtick on a low-rated cable infotainment channel. His lot in life is basically being Dark Bob Ley. And, as they say on deadspin.com in every single post, And that's okay!

Olbermann's last ESPN show was really good but he might be one of those broken-brain #resistance liberals now shouting about DRUMPF, I dunno. I'll be interested to see what they have him do.

I thought it was just Shanahan having CTE himself.

Jeremy Jacobs again earned his front-and-center spot in an article about how bad or stupid the NHL is, but this one stuck out too:

- In an August 2015 deposition, Nashville Predators co-owner Thomas Cigarran testified that there doesn't need to be a medical study of NHL retirees “from a legal or moral standpoint” although he said “it might be smart business...”

Certainly punctures the myth of the Predators being a distinctly moral team because one guy plays for them.

3 hours ago, Digby said:

Another thing I think Simmons deserves credit for, though, is that while he was definitely the proto-basketblogger, I think his passion and his knowledge of the NBA is tough to dispute, and traditionally his basketball writing keeps the sport in perspective and appreciates it for what it is, instead of falling down the rabbit holes of NBA as social criticism and high art that the rest of them do.

Agreed on Simmons knowing his stuff on the NBA, but as long-winded as he's always been, he's not the prototype for terrible basketball writing online. That would be Bethlehem Shoals and all the FreeDarko bloggers. That was where all the metaphysical "What Steve Nash Teaches Us About Offense And The Human Condition" crap really took hold. As is often the case, it was cool when one guy did it but insufferable when it became almost a major house style.

still got it, baby

6 minutes ago, McCarthy said:

Also the way they cover the NBA like it's on a plane above all other sports, like the happenings on the court are more important than other sports is slightly off-putting. I think that comes from Simmons. It's a basketball league whose players sometimes speak up when it comes to social commentary, but it's mostly just a league that plays basketball. 

You could just as easily be talking about Deadspin here, too. Maybe that's the true basis of their Simmons animus: they're two brothers fighting over who Daddy loves more.

You can't write about basketball on the internet without having a very specific series of brain lesions. Deadspin's final NBA post, scheduled for August 18th, will be "LeBron James is redefining what it means to redefine The Redefinition of redefining how we redefine Redefining LeBron James. And that's fine!"

11 hours ago, McCarthy said:

Deadspin is a bunch of people who should be better who have turned into extremely online guys. I like a lot of what they do, but they also get sucked into internet bull too often.

What began as a necessary check on the excesses of ESPN has spread into flailing at everyone who has the temerity to not be them: last I checked, they're feuding with Barstool, Reddit, The Ringer, Vice, and now even their own parent company. I wouldn't handle my own death well either.

On 5/22/2018 at 11:11 PM, Ark said:

 

The Marlins are going to look similar to this soon, aren't they.

I really, really miss Sports on Earth. On rare occasions its Leitchiness would be a little thick, but they had writers I like (Jeb Lund, Dan O'Sullivan, even Leitch himself) and were a far better example of what intelligent, right-thinking sportswriting should be than Grantland/Ringer's pop-culture aspirations or Deadspin's clickbait and bratty-rich-kid sniping. 

Barstool and Deadspin are having another dumb slapfight because Deadspin exposed the identity of PFT Commenter (he's, uh...some guy Drew Magary was friends with, it's not like the Fire Joe Morgan guy turning out to be the creator of Parks & Rec) and now all the Barstool drones are all mad about it. PFTC, to his credit, told everyone to leave the writer of the piece alone. Deadspin tried to frame it as needing to expose his name so that he can't make money for himself and for BAD PERSON Dave Portnoy without sullying his own name but no one's really buyin' that. It's really just Deadspin flailing out of professional jealousy because Barstool is making good money selling crap and Deadspin is probably about to go out of business once again.

Just now, monkeypower said:

And calling it minor league is kind of flippant.

CFL Legend Henry Burris, I'll call it what I want

55 minutes ago, mcj882000 said:

Only the goddamn NHL could try and influence a foreign election to suit their own needs and fail at it.

*Brian Burke undoes tie, drunkenly flails fists at random people while mumbling about a barn, pisses all over the floor, lets out unholy belch*

"It's time for some game theory."

1 hour ago, monkeypower said:

personally, I feel the Stamps need to get a new stadium before the Flames do

Why? If the Saddledome is an impediment to touring acts and isn't ideal for the Flames either, then that's the priority over a minor-league football stadium that only gets used a few times a year. I'm sure it's fine enough for what it has to be. That billion-dollar omniplex the Flames wanted was a stupid idea. Pay for your own normal arena and leave it at that.

Quote

“Look at the income base and the population base and there probably isn’t a smaller market, so they’re going to really have to distinguish themselves in some other way, I would think.”

9.5 million people or whatever in the television viewing area and a really nice arena would seem to do the trick. Houston is fool's gold, they'll never understand.

Also, I believe there are considerably more people within a 50-mile radius of Quebec City's arena than there are in Winnipeg's. Population Explorer shut down, though.

Over on the Don Waddell side of things, let me remind you that he once used a first-round draft pick -- the one they got from Pittsburgh in the Marian Hossa trade -- on a player in Junior B. Junior Freaking B! I realize that drafting players out of Junior A is common because lots of elite but college-bound Canadian prospects play there to maintain amateur status, and that many great NHLers have come out of Junior A, but Junior B? Two levels down from CHL? With a first? Why? But did the pick work out in the end? No, they failed to sign him to a contract and received a compensatory second-round pick as a result. Of course, by then, the Thrashers were already dead, so at least Waddell couldn't blow the redraft. The Jets used the pick on Eric Comrie, who will probably be Hellebuyck's backup next year. 

So I guess where I'm going with this is that every year before the draft, there's a minor ruckus over the possibility that one of the top three teams in the draft, perhaps even the team drafting first overall, will TRADE THE PICK, gasp!, or at least "listen to offers," and we're going through that now with the #2 pick and the Hurricanes. Most of the time, especially in the last few years, these picks don't get traded, and all the talk about the #2 pick going for a top center, top defenseman, top prospect, and three Hawaiian islands is just noise to get us hyped for transaction season, noise I've learned to tune out. But with Don Waddell back at the controls, I'm allowing for some of that noise, because a man who would use a first-round pick on a Junior B player can be talked into almost anything. 

This is spectacular. It's Blackhawks Head Coach Denis Savard all over again: a team legend gets a permanent assistant-coaching job through multiple head coaches because he's the only distinguished alumnus who would return the owner's calls. Then because nobody else will take such a job as toxic as head coach, he gets promoted to it despite being ill-suited to anything more intricate than telling the guys to play harder. He will look angry and get angry and serve up a big specialty-bakery cookie of a soundbite and everyone will jerk off over his "compete level" while the team loses because they give up odd-man rushes where no one thought odd-man rushes could be given up. But where the story diverges is that Brind'Amour is a roided-out steakhead being charged with a roster full of flakes who couldn't land a check if they wanted to. Prepare for Teuvo Teravainen getting wallpapered on every shift because no one knows where they're supposed to be. Blame it on low COMPETE LEVEL!!!

Somehow Brind'Amour both preceded and survived the Canes' era of "smart hockey," where they gamed their Corsi and never took penalties and never made the playoffs. Now that smart hockey failed, they get to do dumb hockey! And Don Waddell is here to help! This is so much better than letting a French-Canadian cable company buy the team. We couldn't have that.

Then we're due!

I wish we could cut to the chase already and see this Dundon guy get arrested for fraud or embezzlement or something. I'm bored.

2 hours ago, Sodboy13 said:

The Hurricanes have hired Rick Dudley to work with Don Waddell, after literally no one they were interested in wanted to be their GM. Disruptive Brain Genius Tom Dundon is building success through the 2010-11 Atlanta Thrashers front office.

Head Coach Craig Ramsay and cynically padding the roster with 13th-forward black guys like Akim Aliu and Nigel Dawes can't be far behind.

In a related move, after promoting Ron Francis to president and then promoting him to president who doesn't have an office so he can just work from home, he's now been promoted to not having to work for the Carolina Hurricanes anymore:

It's been a long way down for the man who three months ago was considered one of the best general managers in the entire league (by writers whose friends worked for him). "Terminating a contract" in the NHL is what you do for players who want to move back to Europe, or smuggle bricks of Percocet across international borders.

When Fox Sports did their "pivot to video," Deadspin and Deadspin-adjacent people were some of the loudest voices screaming about what an injustice it was. Now Deadspin itself seems to be pivoting to video, except instead of whatever inanity Fox Sports does, it's Rachel Maddow with shoulder-length hair complaining that sports movies for children/teenagers are Actually Bad. They also have videos of people eating stuff. I don't really get it.