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Change: The tool of the Devil

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 by Edward Carifio

Me, I’m not about change - said the guy who was single living in a po-dunk east Texas town three years ago and is now married with a child in Arizona.

So maybe I am about change. But not in sports. And especially not with team names. That’s something that’s sacred and not to be taken lightly.

When the biggest laughingstock in baseball, the Tampa Bay DEVIL Rays, dropped the Devil from their name, I laughed. The worst franchise in pro sports history - except for maybe the Vancouver/Memphis Grizzlies - think a name change will help.

Well, the Devil Rays are winning, and it’s not because of a name change. It’s just a silly hook the club came up with to do the media’s job for it - and it’s working. If you read the sidebar in that link, you’ll notce the thing abut the $1 donation they dmand every time the term Devil Rays is used instead of Rays.

But a Devil Ray is fearsome. Heck, a Devil Ray is solid, unlike a Ray, which presumably means a ray of light looking at their knew logo.  So I’m offering a dollar donation to my favorite charity (The Let’s Buy Eddie a PS3 So He Can Finally Buy Grand Theft Auto 4 Foundation) for every time a media member DOES say Devil Rays.

And its not just the D-Rays. Same thing with the Angels. It’s bad enough they want to be the L.A. Angels, but the L.A. Angels of  is ludicrous. And damnit, its still the Washington Bullets!

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The saga that just won’t die… thankfully

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 by Edward Carifio

Am I the only one who doesn’t know who Mindy McCready is? Or at least, three days ago I didn’t.

Apparently, she confirmed that she’s had an affair with Roger Clemens. And oh yeah, she’s known his since she was 15, but the affair started later.

McCready - or, given her affair with Clemens, should it be McKready? - has had some run ins with the law.  Just check out here Wikipedia page … that’s mostly fact based, isn’t it? So she’s had a troubled life.

But what does this have to do with Roger Clemens? Frankly, I have no idea. The ESPN legal talking heads say the McNamee team introduced this to show him as a less-than-stellar character; someone who would, I don’t know, lie about taking HGH. Even though McCready’s testimony will probably be inadmissible. I think.

(And yes, that is Dean Cain in that last link, photo No. 7)

I don’t know where this go will next. All I know, Clemens made a mistake by pursuing this defamation trial. Even if he was innocent.  If he thought McNamee was such a scumbag, he’d know that they’d trot all all type of lies to defame him.

But it looks like he did have something to hide. And that makes the lawsuit an even worse idea.

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Fun with the NFL schedule

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 by Edward Carifio

The NFL released its schedule today. Instead of doing what every site does, focusing on what could be good games, I’m going to focus on some of the peculiarities this year, mainly dealing with prime-time games. (Note: Prime-time games for this column means games not played at 1 or 4 EST on Sunday. So Thanksgiving counts.)

For starters, three teams play all their games at the aforementioned 1 or 4 Sunday slot. It doesn’t take a genius to figure those three teams out or why they are their - Miami (one win last year), St. Louis (equally as horrible) and Atlanta (who let the dogs out?).

Hope you like Pittsburgh early in the year. They are the first NFL team to play five prime-time games this year, but despite that early love, they play just five PT games all year.

And despite not playing a PT game until Week 6 (thank God) the Patriots play the most prime time games, six. The teams at five - Pittsburgh, Dallas, Philly, Indy and Chicago. All make sense, right? Well, there’s one more I left out. Cleveland. Yes, the Browns will play five times in PT, including THREE Monday night games. And this is from a team that didn’t make the playoffs last year.

And boy could those three games be stinkers. They face Philly, which is an average team at best, they face Buffalo - yes Bills-Browns is a Monday night game on Nov. 17. Mark your calenders now. And they face the Giants - and we all know how well the NFC Super Bowl representative has fared in the following season.

The Cardinals have two of these prime timers, while the Chargers have four - the same number as the Super Bowl Champion.

There ya go.

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Starbucks, scumbags and Sonics in Seattle

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 by Edward Carifio

I’m going to start this column (blog, whatever) by saying I could really care less about the Seattle SuperSonics. Or Super Sonics - I was never really sure. They’re probably the pro sports team I am most neutral toward.

Ditto Seattle. Most major cities,I could be like - “Wow, that city rocks,” or “Damn, that city sucks.” But Seattle is in that neutral, never-thought-about pile.

But with that said, what is happening to the Sonics is a joke. And to be honest,  I’m a little confused about the whole moving to Oklahoma City thing. To be frank, I wasn’t paying attention, figuring it was just another bluff by an owner to get a new stadium. Who would want to leave the 14th largest TV market for the 45th? Not to mention, it’s the OKC? Has anyone ever said, at any point in their life, let’s go to Oklahoma City? Not unless you live in Enid, Okla.

So I’ve scoured the interwebs in search of information on how this travesty went down. Yeah, it was a slow afternoon. So without further ado, here’s what I could piece together.

Starbucks coffee guy owns the team, but he’s losing money because Key Arena, despite a renovation not to long ago, is a decrepit peace of cow dung. So Starbucks guys sells it to Cowboy Clay, a move approved in late 2006. So Cowboy Clay says get funding for a new arena by Halloween 2007, or we’re leaving.

Now, Cowboy Clay was par of getting the Hornets to the OKC when Katrina washed away the Hornets’ arena. And those games sold well, the OKC wanted to keep the Hornets. But David Stern, NBA commish, decided that would be to ghoulish.

Then in August of 2007, one of Cowboy Clay’s  co-horts tells the media that the team wasn’t bought to stay in Seattle. Cowboy Clay admonishes the co-hort, even though e-mails released this week show that all the ownership group had bad things to say about Seattle and how the team was going to OKC one way or antoher.

Well, those e-mails have really angered Starbucks guy,  who said part of the deal when he sold the team was that Cowboy Clay make a good-faith effort to stay in Seattle. These e-mails tell a different story. So now he is suing to re-gain control of the team and keep them in Seattle. But I think we know how that will end.

Perhaps the saddest part of the story is the Commish. Even in the face of these e-mails, he backs Cowboy Clay. The NBA is about to have no presence in the 14th largest TV market, but that’s fine. Anything so that OKC can have a team.

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Surprise, surpise, surprise

Monday, April 14th, 2008 by Edward Carifio

What makes sports great is it’s unpredictability. Tiger Woods was pretty much handed a Grand Slam before one event this year, and he craps his pants at the Masters (by his standards, anyway).

But sometimes, sports can be very predictable. As I write this, here are three of the top five stories on ESPN.com. No joke here; these are real.

  • Nuggets ‘Melo arrested, charged with DUI
  • Kansas State frosh Beasley to enter NBA draft
  • Stern stands behind Sonics owner despite e-mails

Now, is anything there really a surprise? The only thing surprising in the Anthony story is if the ‘I’ that Melo was ‘U’ was not marijuana - (Hey, have you ever been a part of a 50-win team that didn’t make the playoffs. Well, have you ever been a part of a 50-win team that didn’t make the playoffs - ON WEED?)

As for Beasley, how is this a story? He’d be in the NBA now if it weren’t for that new rule the league passed a couple years ago pretty much requiring a year of college.

And, gee, David Stern is being stubborn even when he’s egregiously wrong.  Sure, those e-mails - along with pretty much every comment they’ve ever said - proved the Sonics’ new ownership was Oklahoma City bound. And they were going regardless of what the city of Seattle did or didn’t do.

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